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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.

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AI

Microsoft president says UK is best placed to drive AI regulation

Microsoft President Brad Smith calls for urgent AI regulation, saying milk and washing machines have more oversight than AI companies.

Technology

Can Language Models Play the Wikipedia Game?

Language models increasingly support or automate information retrieval from document collections too large to index. This task is difficult when it requires specialist linguistic or scientific knowledge. We used the Wikipedia Game to test language models on an analogous information retrieval task. In the game, players must reach a target article using only article links. We compared sentence embedding models and LLMs across five Wikipedia languages and five academic-literature datasets. We const

Why the worst El Niño killed millions – and how we can avoid a repeat | New Scientist
Science

Why the worst El Niño killed millions – and how we can avoid a repeat | New Scientist

The world hasn't experienced an El Niño this strong since the 1870s, when it sparked a terrible global famine. Are we better prepared this time?

Six-item 'American Covid' kit pharmacist urges people to keep at home
Health

Six-item 'American Covid' kit pharmacist urges people to keep at home

Keeping the six items ready at home can help if you suddenly fall ill with the virus

College football odds, picks, predictions for Week 7, 2026: Computer likes Penn State, Auburn
Sports

College football odds, picks, predictions for Week 7, 2026: Computer likes Penn State, Auburn

SportsLine's model has revealed its 2026 Week 7 college football picks for matchups such as Ohio State vs. Indiana, Alabama vs. Tennessee and Notre Dame vs. BYU

World

France school shooting: Police detain pupil after two injured

Officials say a staff member disarmed the suspect, who hid a hunting shotgun in a guitar case, before police arrived.

When AI runs the company, what exactly is leadership for?
Business

When AI runs the company, what exactly is leadership for?

For quite some time in the already long series of articles I’ve been writing on what is and what should be corporate AI, I have been discussing concepts such as agents, working with ontologies and world models that represent the company, connecting them with management tools such as ERPs or CRMs, and basically, learning to optimize a company to the limit. However, now that we are talking, as Mustafa Suleyman says, about AI wiping out most white collar jobs in the next 12 months, we should try to

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade Spars With Rachel Campos-Duffy Over Ukraine: 'Putin Is the Hitler of Our Time'
Culture

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade Spars With Rachel Campos-Duffy Over Ukraine: 'Putin Is the Hitler of Our Time'

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade and Rachel Campos-Duffy clash over Trump's Russia policy, with Kilmeade comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler

AI

Universities are making different choices about AI. How will they fit with their public missions?

Artificial intelligence has moved quickly from an emerging technology to one that is forcing universities to make consequential choices.

This M5 Pro MacBook Pro is actually down to a normal price ($600 off)
Technology

This M5 Pro MacBook Pro is actually down to a normal price ($600 off)

Save nearly 20 percent on this monster M5 Pro MacBook Pro setup right now.

Science

Unifying spherical convolutions through lifting

We develop a unified description of convolution on the sphere by lifting to the rotation group. A number of definitions of spherical convolution have been proposed, differing in whether the kernel is axisymmetric or directional, whether the output is on the sphere or the rotation group, whether the signals carry spin, and in their computational cost. No unified treatment exists. Regarding the sphere as the homogeneous space $S^2 \cong \text{SO(3)}/\text{SO(2)}$, we lift a spin $s$ field to the r

Health

PhySeqNet: physics-informed fluorescent foci detection for BARseq spatial transcriptomics

BARseq enables spatially resolved gene-expression profiling across intact tissue, but its sensitivity depends on accurate detection and decoding of dense fluorescent rolonies. Existing spot-calling approaches can be conservative where signals overlap, while supervised deep learning is limited by the lack of reliable manual ground truth in real tissue images. Here we present PhySeqNet, a physics-informed deep learning framework for annotation-free fluorescent foci detection in BARseq. PhySeqNet t

What's next for Chargers? Why Khalil Mack should be traded, plus what to do about Jim Harbaugh, Mike McDaniel
Sports

What's next for Chargers? Why Khalil Mack should be traded, plus what to do about Jim Harbaugh, Mike McDaniel

Los Angeles must now determine whether to change offensive coordinators, retain its general manager and move veterans before the Nov. 10 trade deadline.

World

UK PM Andy Burnham vows to renegotiate post-Brexit trade deal with EU

PM Burnham confirms talks in Brussels next month, insisting the British public will be 'the boss' of the reset.

Business

Realized Tail-Risk Conditional Autoregressive Expectile Models: Accurate and Stable Forecasting Performance

A realized tail-risk conditional autoregressive expectile (RTCARE) model is proposed for joint forecasting of value-at-risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES). Realized tail measures such as the realized quantile and the realized ES, constructed from intraday high-frequency returns, are incorporated into the dynamics and measurement equations of the conditional expectile, allowing information about lower-tail risk to enter the forecasts. The parameters are estimated by Markov chain Monte Carlo, a

Madhuri Dixit's Husband Didn't Recognise Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan At Reception: 'Only Knew Amitabh Bachchan'
Culture

Madhuri Dixit's Husband Didn't Recognise Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan At Reception: 'Only Knew Amitabh Bachchan'

Dr Shriram Nene said that he didn't watch a lot of Hindi films.

NVIDIA And Cisco Cram 4x OSFP's Bandwidth Density Into An OSFP-Sized Module, Pushing AI Fabrics To 12.8 Tb/s With USFP
AI

NVIDIA And Cisco Cram 4x OSFP's Bandwidth Density Into An OSFP-Sized Module, Pushing AI Fabrics To 12.8 Tb/s With USFP

NVIDIA & Cisco have partnered to create USFP, an ultra-dense and compact form factor that drives up to 400 Gb/s speeds.

Technology

Splat2Act: From Captured Scenes to Personalized VLA Manipulation

A user who brings a generalist manipulation policy into their home or office wants it to pick up their objects from their shelves, counters, and tables. Yet even a strong generalist like $π_{0.5}$ achieves 0% pickup success in our captured deployment scenes without adaptation, and collecting real demonstrations in every user's environment is prohibitively expensive. We present Splat2Act, an automated real-to-sim-to-real pipeline that personalizes a pretrained vision-language-action (VLA) policy

Science

Necessary conditions for benchmarking next-generation AI in materials discovery

Current AI predicts materials by speeding up energy minimisation and training on large databases. However, scaling data generation prevents manual analysis by domain experts. If novelty is evaluated by chemical compositions or traditional representations in Crystallographic Information Files, or standard structure matchers based on manually chosen thresholds, one can easily generate millions of ``new'' compositions or files without discovering truly novel materials. This paper uses a hierarchy o

Seafood mix recalled over fears of contamination with deadly bacteria
Health

Seafood mix recalled over fears of contamination with deadly bacteria

An urgent recall has been issued for a packaged seafood mix sold in six states over concerns it may be contaminated with deadly bacteria.

Sports

Can Texas bounce back? Will the Big 12 go sideways? Connelly on an eventful Week 6

Georgia is in great shape, but what about Alabama? And what's up with Texas and the ever-fluid hot seat?

World

The ICJ’s Rohingya ruling will test the OIC’s promises

Backing the genocide case against Myanmar must be followed by concrete action to protect the Rohingya.

Business

Intentionally Overidentifying Local Projections

Local projections (LPs) have become a standard tool for estimating dynamic effects in macroeconomics and are typically implemented using ordinary least squares (OLS) for a given lag order. We propose an alternative approach that exploits additional lags as excluded instrumental variables (IVs). Under a finite-order model with martingale-difference shocks, the resulting (optimally weighted) IV estimator is never asymptotically less efficient than OLS and, as we show, can deliver substantial effic

Cannes Festival Winning Producer Quijote Films Launches In-House Scripted Series Division (EXCLUSIVE)
Culture

Cannes Festival Winning Producer Quijote Films Launches In-House Scripted Series Division (EXCLUSIVE)

Chile’s Quijote Films, behind Cannes Un Certain Regard prizewinner ‘The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,’ is venturing into high-end scripted series.

Loops seed round: $3.5M from a16z speedrun to unify AI shopping tools
AI

Loops seed round: $3.5M from a16z speedrun to unify AI shopping tools

‘A retailer does not need five different AI products’: Loops raises a $3.5M seed round to build one AI layer for commerce.

F1 in Singapore: There's a new fastest car now
Technology

F1 in Singapore: There's a new fastest car now

Formula 1’s lengthy 2026 season is entering its final stretch. The sport took to the floodlit streets of Singapore on Sunday night, but Saturday saw action, too; this Grand Prix weekend was also the final of six sprints this year. The night race might be one of modern F1’s greatest spectacles. From overhead shots, the track becomes a bright, illuminated ribbon among the looming darkness of the city-state’s overpasses and skyscrapers. At ground level, the cars shower glittering sparks from their titanium skid blocks as the drivers flirt with how close they can get to the walls.

A Core Demographic of People Who Love AI: Pedophiles
Science

A Core Demographic of People Who Love AI: Pedophiles

AI models that are partially or fully open-source have led to a major surge in child sex abuse material online.

US turns to low-cost Blackbeard hypersonic missile to overwhelm Chinese defences
Health

US turns to low-cost Blackbeard hypersonic missile to overwhelm Chinese defences

At US$385,000 per unit, the carrier-launched weapons are being developed with an emphasis on affordability and mass production.

Pick Six: NFL Week 5 winners and losers, plus Marvin Harrison Jr. trade grades and Bills-Rams picks
Sports

Pick Six: NFL Week 5 winners and losers, plus Marvin Harrison Jr. trade grades and Bills-Rams picks

Here's everything you need to know about the NFL for Oct. 12

Oil surge keeps S&P 500, Nasdaq in check before earnings
World

Oil surge keeps S&P 500, Nasdaq in check before earnings

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were little changed on Monday, with technology stocks under pressure as oil prices hit about two-week highs.

As midterms approach, Trump is sticking with tariffs even though voters disapprove
Business

As midterms approach, Trump is sticking with tariffs even though voters disapprove

Maybe President Donald Trump really does believe that “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.Despite higher prices, criticism from trade experts and displeasure among voters, Trump holds fast to his belief that imposing the highest import duties on U.S. trading partners since the Great Depression is a winner.A recent poll suggests that is a big gamble with less than a month before the Nov. 3 midterms. Most U.S. adults disapprove of his trade policies, with more than 64

Tom Cruise film Digger forecast to become one of Hollywood's biggest flops
Culture

Tom Cruise film Digger could lose $245m at box office

The film dropped by around 60% in its second weekend, and could become one of Hollywood's biggest flops.

'GPU pricing to climb significantly' warns PC maker and 'elevated prices could stick around for some time' — while Nvidia's RTX 5090 might be on its deathbed
AI

'GPU pricing to climb significantly' warns PC maker and 'elevated prices could stick around for some time' — while Nvidia's RTX 5090 might be on its deathbed

There's a salvo of worrying rumors for GPUs including that graphics cards will get 'significantly' pricier.

Galaxy Z Fold 8 popularity saves Samsung from shipment slump
Technology

Galaxy Z Fold 8 popularity saves Samsung from shipment slump

The memory shortage continues to hit hard, but a strong product lineup helps Samsung retain its market dominance.

The Singularity—Humans Merging With AI—Is Coming Within 19 Years. But It’s Already Starting Inside You Now.
Science

The Singularity—Humans Merging With AI—Is Coming Within 19 Years. But It’s Already Starting Inside You Now.

Brain implants, deepfakes, and nanobots may be early steps toward a “You 2,” says futurist Ray Kurzweil.

People think I'm in my 20s and are stunned when I say I'm almost 50
Health

People think I'm in my 20s and are stunned when I say I'm almost 50

On her birthday last month, she posted a video holding a cupcake with candles that changed from 29 to 39 and finally 49 - sparking a fierce debate about her real age.

Bills vs. Rams odds, prediction, betting preview, start time: Monday Night Football picks, best bets
Sports

Bills vs. Rams odds, prediction, betting preview, start time: Monday Night Football picks, best bets

Best bets and betting preview for Bills vs. Rams on Monday Night Football

World

Deadly gold mine air strikes highlight Egypt-Sudan border insecurity

Deadly air raids on gold miners in Sudan expose deepening border lawlessness and regional instability.

It Is Not About What We Want To Eat – Yinka Quadri Reveals Why He's Supporting Tinubu For Second Term
Business

It Is Not About What We Want To Eat – Yinka Quadri Reveals Why He's Supporting Tinubu For Second Term

Veteran Yoruba actor Yinka Quadri has explained why he and other members of the Yoruba film industry are supporting President Bola Tinubu’s bid for a

‘The Beatles’ Biopics Producer Says Releasing All Four Movies at Once in 2028 Will Have a ‘Cumulative Power That’s Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts’
Culture

‘The Beatles’ Biopics Producer Says Releasing All Four Movies at Once in 2028 Will Have a ‘Cumulative Power That’s Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts’

Pippa Harris discussed the strategy to release all four Beatles movies simultaneously in 2028 and not expecting people to see them on the same day

AI

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 starts tomorrow: Your final chance to secure up to $100 ticket savings

Tomorrow at 8 a.m. PT, it all begins z— 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech operators will gather at San Francisco’s Moscone West for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 for three days of ideas, connections, and startups shaping what comes next. This is your last 24 hours to secure ticket savings of up to $100, and get 50% off a second.

Google announces the Fitbit Edge, a middle ground between Pixel Watch 5 and Fitbit Air
Technology

Google announces the Fitbit Edge, a middle ground between Pixel Watch 5 and Fitbit Air

Google is releasing its second Fitbit tracker of 2026, offering fans of the aging Charge 6 a more refined option. The new Fitbit Edge slots right in between the Pixel Watch 5 and the Fitbit Air, featuring a compact screen and more health sensors than the Air. You won't get all the apps and features of the Pixel Watch 5, but the Edge is only about half as expensive. The Fitbit Edge is essentially a new Charge 6, but it has more of a Pixel Watch aesthetic. Squish Google's smartwatch from the sides, and you've got the Edge.

Biotech Startup Proposes Genetically Modified Microbes for Mars Settlement
Science

Biotech Startup Proposes Genetically Modified Microbes for Mars Settlement

A new genetically engineered microbe may one day help humanity settle Mars, a nonprofit biotechnology research startup suggests. Our species has launched nearly 50 missions to Mars since 1960, all of them robotic. If everything goes according to plan, they've all been building toward crewed Red Plan

Health

Designing Protein Structures from Natural Language

A central challenge in de novo protein design is generating proteins with desired structural and functional properties. Existing design models typically require a dedicated input representation for each property, limiting the design objectives they support. We develop Prompteina, the first all-atom structure generation model that supports new and broader design objectives specified in natural language, analogous to text-to-image generation. To train Prompteina, we construct Prompteina-Data, a pa

Bills vs. Rams odds, picks, player props: Expert's best bets for NFL Week 5 Monday Night Football
Sports

Bills vs. Rams odds, picks, player props: Expert's best bets for NFL Week 5 Monday Night Football

A massive 54.5 total headlines the board as two high-powered offenses collide, creating prime opportunities on Josh Allen and Puka Nacua anytime touchdowns along with a sneaky Kyren Williams prop

Taylor man arrested in weekend double shooting, police say
World

Taylor man arrested in weekend double shooting, police say

Joeseph Garcia was arrested after allegedly fleeing from the scene, according to authorities.

Silicon Valley responds to Trump’s hands-off approach to AI regulation at Tech Week
Business

Silicon Valley responds to Trump’s hands-off approach to AI regulation at Tech Week

Tech Week is in full bloom in San Francisco, packing the city’s restaurants this week with venture capitalists and AI founders ebullient about the White House’s stance on regulating artificial intelligence — namely, don’t do it.And after months of debate about leading AI companies’ unchecked AI agents meddling with everything from U.S. government websites to healthcare data, the nation now finds itself further from governing AI systems than it was a few years ago.Presiden

Hepworth piece could fetch up to £8m at auction
Culture

Hepworth piece could fetch up to £8m at auction

A post-war sculpture inspired by the Cornish landscape is set to go under the hammer.

AI

Former Plaud exec raises $26M for AI app that listens to you in the background

Ambi is releasing apps for iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch that enables ambient capture

Amazon has over 1 million robot workers. What’s next for human employees?
Technology

Inside Amazon’s robotic arms race and what it means for the future of human work

No organization in the world operates more robots than Amazon. The company already has more than 1 million robots working in warehouses around the clock to make tens of millions of same-day and one-day package deliveries happen on a daily basis—and Amazon is poised to significantly grow that robotic fleet in the coming years as it establishes new factories to churn out increasingly more capable robot workers. Despite deploying so many robots, Amazon is also the second-largest corporate employer in the world, with more than 1.5 million full-time and part-time human workers, according to its 202

Do AIs already process information in a way that gives rise to consciousness? | New Scientist
Science

Do AIs already process information in a way that gives rise to consciousness? | New Scientist

A leading theory of consciousness explains experience as information flowing through a global workspace in the mind. On board a luxury yacht, neuroscientists and philosophers recently debated signs of a similar workspace in the chatbot Claude

Health

DyssomniaNN: Multi-Scale Spiking Neural Modeling of Human Sleep Disorders and Perceived Restedness

Clinical sleep medicine repeatedly documents profound divergences between objective sleep duration and subjective daytime impairment, notably exemplified by sleep state misperception in paradoxical insomnia and boundary instability in narcolepsy type 1. Here, we present DyssomniaNN: a multi-scale biophysical computational framework coupling Borbély's two-process regulation of sleep homeostasis and circadian drive with Saper's hypothalamic reciprocal flip-flop circuit and a recurrent corticothala

Big Ten admits Oregon vs. UCLA officiating error, the latest in a season marred by mistakes
Sports

Big Ten admits Oregon vs. UCLA officiating error, the latest in a season marred by mistakes

Sloppy officiating at the end of UCLA's upset of Oregon only adds to the early-season woes for Big Ten crews

Monroe athlete sues district over Title IX ruling on trans athlete
World

Monroe athlete sues district over Title IX ruling on trans athlete

A father and his daughter are suing Monroe Public Schools others, alleging they concealed from the volleyball team a trans girl was playing on opposing team.

Hilton’s AI Trip Planner Wants To Book Your Travel. Customers Aren’t So Sure Yet.
Business

Hilton’s AI Trip Planner Wants To Book Your Travel. Customers Aren’t So Sure Yet.

The hotel is using AI to keep bookings in-house, but most travelers still don’t trust a chatbot to plan their vacation.

Mastery Monday Fortnite (October 12): Start Times and Sprite Bonuses
Culture

Mastery Monday Fortnite (October 12): Start Times and Sprite Bonuses

Fortnite Mastery Monday returns October 12 with double Sprite XP. Here are the start times to master new Trick or Treat Sprites.

AI

This AI startup says it can generate permit-ready blueprints in minutes

Blueprints AI, a bootstrapped startup based in Santa Monica, developed software that produces code-compliant construction blueprints from a photo, PDF, or sketch.

Technology

Towards Physically Grounded Articulated 3D Assets: A Multi-Agent Pipeline and Benchmark

In this paper, we study physically grounded articulated 3D asset generation---moving the goal from reproducing how objects look to capturing how they move and function. Inspired by the literature on procedural and agentic generation, we present Artisan, a system that extends the latest method Articraft by introducing a multi-agent pipeline with physical simulation feedback, enabling comprehensive attributes beyond geometry, appearance, and physically plausible articulation, such as collision-fre

Scientists Shielded Fruit Flies From Earth’s Magnetic Field. Some Lived 20% Longer
Science

Scientists Shielded Fruit Flies From Earth’s Magnetic Field. Some Lived 20% Longer

Removing Earth’s magnetic field changed mitochondria, movement and lifespan in fruit flies.

People think I'm in my 20s - they're stunned to find out my real age
Health

People think I'm in my 20s - they're stunned to find out my real age

Cat Pierce, 49, believes the most important part of her beauty regime has nothing to do with what she puts on her face - and credits looking after her mental health and managing stress.

Bills-Rams, NFL betting promos: Pocket more than $3,000 in bonuses from top online betting apps, sportsbooks
Sports

Bills-Rams, NFL betting promos: Pocket more than $3,000 in bonuses from top online betting apps, sportsbooks

Top Week 5 NFL betting apps include DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, bet365, Caesars, Fanatics Sportsbook and Hard Rock Bet

World

Pope Leo continues working after lung surgery announcement

Pope Leo continues working after lung surgery announcement

When your AI system breaks—and what to do about it
Business

When your AI system breaks—and what to do about it

The announcement of a new AI model or feature fills me with a mixture of anticipation and dread. I’m excited to see what “new thing” I might be able to do, but I also know that some of my existing processes and systems might break as a result. Every AI tool comes with the disclaimer that it can make mistakes. You might set up a workflow that is perfectly fine one day and perfectly awful the next.  It’s an ongoing challenge. Unlike traditional software, once an AI system is up and running,

Dungeons and Dragons: World of Warcraft - Every Alliance Subfaction
Culture

Dungeons and Dragons: World of Warcraft - Every Alliance Subfaction

Dungeons and Dragons players can check out the long list of Alliance subfactions that may become allies or enemies in their WoW adventures.

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