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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.

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AI

Deezer will soon let you filter out AI-generated music

Deezer said that the new toggle will be rolled out by the end of the year.

Ukraine blindsided by Starlink throttling restrictions and intelligence gaps
Technology

Ukraine blindsided by Starlink throttling restrictions and intelligence gaps

Ukrainian troops have been caught off guard by restrictions on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite Internet systems that disrupted frontline operations, while Kyiv received no warning from its partners of a Russian missile attack on its energy facilities for the second day running, according to Ukrainian officials. Starlink terminals used by Ukrainian drone units began experiencing signal failures at speeds above 160 km/h, disrupting several missions early on Wednesday morning, according to military personnel and senior Ukrainian officials. “Logistics at the frontline and middle strikes are badly l

NASA Develops Batteries to Power Humanity’s Return to Moon
Science

NASA Develops Batteries to Power Humanity’s Return to Moon

5 min readPreparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Yi Lin, SPEARS testing and research lead at NASA Langley, holds one of the small coin-cell batteries that had just undergone thermal vacuum testing.NASA/Ryan Hill If you’ve ever had your car start sluggishly, or not at all, on a particularly frigid winter morning, you know standard batteries do not like extreme cold.

Early flu season: why you should get your jab sooner this year
Health

Early flu season: why you should get your jab sooner this year

September flu activity was higher than in the past four winters, and the main H1N1 strain has drifted from the one in this year’s vaccine.

Footy Fix: Manchester United defender sounds off on club; Manchester City host PSG at Etihad
Sports

Footy Fix: Manchester United defender sounds off on club; Manchester City host PSG at Etihad

A full slate of Champions League includes a return for Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho to his former club, Roma

World

Ronaldo’s among three Saudi Arabia games postponed due to Houthi attacks

Saudi Pro League postpones three matches after Houthi attacks, including one involving Cristiano Ronaldo's Al Nassr.

Business

The Buffett Effect

We study whether stock disclosures by recognizable investors generate abnormal market reactions beyond the reactions produced by comparable but non-recognizable managers. We define the Buffett effect as the incremental abnormal return to a disclosed new position that is attributable to the public recognition of the disclosing investor. We construct a recognition index from Wikipedia pageviews and ProQuest news mentions. Using data from 2000 to 2025 we compare market reaction to disclosures of 24

Danny Dyer in floating poo water protest on Thames
Culture

Danny Dyer in floating poo water protest on Thames

Along with the Sittingbourne and Sheppey MP, Dyer is calling for water companies to be nationalised.

AI

AI ethics analysis clarifies why different goals call for different ethical approaches

AI ethics has come under increasing criticism. Critics argue that while companies publish guidelines for AI development and use, the AI systems themselves often remain problematic. Researchers from the University of Bayreuth, Saarland University and the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Securit

Technology

LoopWAM: Closed-Loop Generalist Policy Improvement from Deployment Rollouts

Scaling expert demonstrations alone does not enable generalist robot policies to improve from deployment. Real-world rollouts contain successes, suboptimal behavior, and failures: imitating every recorded action can reinforce poor behavior, while filtering out failures discards evidence of physical interactions and their consequences. We introduce \textbf{LoopWAM}, a closed-loop world-action model that learns directly from this full quality spectrum, using rollouts from both itself and other dep

Are rollercoasters getting more dangerous? Experts weigh
Science

Are rollercoasters getting more dangerous? Experts weigh

A horror rollercoaster accident that left a man dead has reignited fears over the safety of thrill rides.

Health

MFG: Multi-turn Feedback Guided Molecular Optimization

Multi-objective molecular optimization is a critical process in drug discovery that aims to modify a given molecule to simultaneously improve multiple properties while maintaining a similar overall structure. This process often requires iterative modifications guided by computational or experimental feedback. Recent large language model (LLM)-based methods have begun to explore this iterative approach; however, these methods are not explicitly trained to leverage such feedback, while existing ap

Who needs it more? Michigan vs. Penn State features two coaches desperate for signature win
Sports

Who needs it more? Michigan vs. Penn State features two coaches desperate for signature win

Kyle Whittingham and Matt Campbell are struggling through their first seasons at Big Ten powers, but which coach is truly in 'must-win' mode?

World

Jerusalem Daily: UN demands Israel do more to stop settler violence

Netanyahu warns again of Israel’s ‘enemies’ planning an attack before elections.

FBI arrests and investigates this OpenAI engineer over a ‘sophisticated listening device’
Business

FBI arrests and investigates this OpenAI engineer over a ‘sophisticated listening device’

An engineer at OpenAI has been charged with secretly installing a recording device inside a conference room in what officials said Tuesday was an effort to capture sensitive conversations about the company’s technology.The employee, identified as a 35-year-old Saudi national named Abdulrahman Alfozan, was arrested Friday, a week after the ChatGPT maker discovered an audio recording device hidden inside a company conference room, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in S

Russell Brand was a 'sexual predator', prosecution alleges as rape trial begins
Culture

Russell Brand was a 'sexual predator', says prosecution as rape trial begins

The comedian and actor faces charges including rape and sexual assault from six female complainants who have never met each other, a court is told.

Anthropic’s self-replicating AI warning is an alarming deja vu
AI

Anthropic’s self-replicating AI warning is an alarming deja vu

Anthropic says its research found ‘signs of life for AI worms,’ that could colonize household devices. Experts say they have a point.

The Most Powerful Weight Loss Drug Yet Isn’t Approved, but Its Black Market May Already Be Turning Deadly
Technology

The Most Powerful Weight Loss Drug Yet Isn’t Approved, but Its Black Market May Already Be Turning Deadly

Though retatrutide isn't approved anywhere yet, some companies are already widely distributing and selling it alongside other unregulated peptides.

Science

Enabling Polyspectra via Stochastic Realizations of Inverse Decay Curvature Perturbations in Axion Inflation

Current and upcoming galaxy-redshift surveys offer a promising path for constraining inflationary physics. These constraints are often imposed by relating correlations of the primordial curvature perturbation to the late-time galaxy correlation functions. The primordial correlators can either be computed analytically, or via realizations of the primordial curvature perturbations that are initialized on a grid and evolved numerically according to the classical equations of motion. In this work we

Health

Brain Age Gap Progression in Individuals at Risk for Neurodegeneration

Neuroimaging is a widely used modality for characterizing neurodegeneration in various health conditions. Brain age gap has emerged as a promising biomarker for monitoring brain health from neuroimaging data using machine learning algorithms. Recent studies have leveraged coVariance neural networks (VNN)-driven pipelines based on the advancements in graph signal processing for relatively transparent construction of brain age gap from neuroimaging data. In this paper, we focus on a longitudinal s

Week 6 NFL score predictions, best picks today: Expert reveals exact scores for every NFL game
Sports

Week 6 NFL score predictions, best picks today: Expert reveals exact scores for every NFL game

SportsLine expert Eric Cohen reveals his score predictions for every game on the Week 6 NFL schedule

World

US Social Security benefits to rise by 3.6 percent in 2027

Retired Americans will see a $75 boost in monthly cheques as benefits rise amid widespread inflation challenges.

Ozempic is changing the hotel industry, and travelers have a new list of demands
Business

Ozempic is changing the hotel industry, and travelers have a new list of demands

From added protein in virtually every item in the grocery aisles to a rise in popularity of electrolytes and fiber, the Ozempic era has changed how Americans eat. Now, it is coming for how they travel.  Priceline’s 2027 Where to Next? Travel Trends Report found that Americans are keeping their GLP-1s top of mind when planning vacations, looking for travel opportunities that accommodate the needs of travelers using the medication. The trend is unsurprising due to the surge in popularit

Indian filmmaker GVM turns 25 years of cinema into a three-hour love letter for 4,000 KL fans
Culture

Indian filmmaker GVM turns 25 years of cinema into a three-hour love letter for 4,000 KL fans

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 14 — Gautham Vasudev Menon took about 4,000 fans on a nostalgic journey through his 25 years in cinema on Saturday night, in a first-of-its-kind, café-style...

AI

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Day 2

Day 2 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, full of all themes across AI, investor-only session, more roundtables, and more. Register to save 50% on your pass.

Lenovo Googlebook 15 Review: The Costs of Being an Early Adopter
Technology

Lenovo Googlebook 15 Review: The Costs of Being an Early Adopter

Buying a Googlebook now, even a laptop as quality as the Lenovo Googlebook 15, is an exercise in waiting and hoping for something better.

New Evidence Is Reviving the Theory That Amelia Earhart Survived Her Crash. And Then She Was Eaten by Crabs.
Science

New Evidence Is Reviving the Theory That Amelia Earhart Survived Her Crash. And Then She Was Eaten by Crabs.

We’ve long assumed the legendary pilot sank to the bottom of the Pacific. But a forensic experiment points to a much darker possibility.

This Simple Exercise Move Could Lower Blood Pressure, a New Study Says
Health

This Simple Exercise Move Could Lower Blood Pressure, a New Study Says

It only takes a few minutes and it requires no fancy equipment.

Fantasy basketball rankings 2026-27: Top sleepers, breakouts and busts by proven NBA model
Sports

Fantasy basketball rankings 2026-27: Top sleepers, breakouts and busts by proven NBA model

SportsLine simulated the 2026-27 NBA season 10,000 times and identified Fantasy basketball sleepers, breakouts and busts

Houthis strike Saudi oil company Aramco’s headquarters, officials say - National | Globalnews.ca
World

Houthis strike Saudi oil company Aramco’s headquarters, officials say - National | Globalnews.ca

The officials said the top three floors in a building used by top executives were damaged. One official said the office of the Aramco chief executive was among those hit.

Business

How Well Do LLMs Perform in Peer Review? Evidence from Finance and Accounting

Referees increasingly use large language models (LLMs), while finance and accounting journals disagree about whether to allow it. We ask which part of a referee's job the models can do. GPT-4o, whose training data end before the 2024 conference season, referees the papers presented at the 2024 AFA and NBER finance meetings, and we compare its verdicts with publication in the top-three finance journals over the next two years. Papers the model scores one standard deviation higher are 44\% more li

Selma Blair’s on-again, off-again boyfriend issues public plea after actress’ violent plane outburst
Culture

Selma Blair’s on-again, off-again boyfriend issues public plea after actress’ violent plane outburst

Andy Kiernan asked the public to pray for the “Legally Blonde” star after her shocking arrest.

Forget the 10-Day Forecast. AI Just Improved Extreme Weather Warnings Up to 6 Weeks Out
AI

Forget the 10-Day Forecast. AI Just Improved Extreme Weather Warnings Up to 6 Weeks Out

This promising advancement could be a boon for disaster preparedness.

Technology

EgoExplorer: A Vision-Motion-Touch Observatory for Human Loco-Manipulation In Situ

Learning humanoid loco-manipulation from human demonstrations rests on observing how locomotion, posture, and object interaction evolve together as tasks unfold. Scaling collection across diverse environments, in turn, favors lightweight, portable capture systems. Yet, existing datasets provide only partial views of this coordination. Thus, we introduce EgoExplorer, a 100-hour vision-motion-touch observatory of human loco-manipulation built with a wearable system. With an emphasis on professiona

Science

Superexchange coupling between a dilute Gd3+ probe and orphan spins in a valence-bond glass

The valence-bond-glass state of the 4d^1 double perovskite Ba2YMoO6 combines Mo^5+ singlets with residual paramagnetic "orphan" spins whose coupling is hard to reach with bulk probes. We probe them by electron paramagnetic resonance of a dilute Gd^3+ ion on the Y^3+ site via broadband coplanar-waveguide transmission at 5 K. The isostructural nonmagnetic niobate Ba2YNbO6, doped with the same Gd^3+ probe, is a fixed-lattice control. The Gd^3+ linewidth nearly doubles in the magnetic host. Dipolar

Health

Should you turn to AI for mental health advice? | Newswise

AI chatbots should never be used to diagnose or treat mental health conditions. Instead, AI tools should be used as a supplement to professional care.

Sports

Is Ohio State's Jeremiah Smith the best WR college football has ever seen?

Larry Fitzgerald, Jaxon Smith-Njigba are among those endorsing the Buckeyes star.

World

Renewed fighting risks ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ in Yemen, aid groups warn

Almost one million people cut off from food aid as health infrastructure overwhelmed by war-wounded.

What this medieval sleep practice tells us about today’s hustle culture
Business

What this medieval sleep practice tells us about today’s hustle culture

The year is 1600. The sun has just set and you’re tucked up on your canvas sack on the floor.  But shut-eye in medieval times had a twist: instead of the eight-hours-a-night routine we’re familiar with, going to bed in the olden days meant getting up around midnight for a chunk of time known as “the watch” before hitting the hay again until morning. Maybe you get on with some chores. Maybe ponder or pray for a couple hours. Maybe you pen a letter by candlelight. Maybe you even had sex

Sally Rooney books withdrawn in UK over Palestine Action support
Culture

Sally Rooney books withdrawn in UK over Palestine Action support

The Irish writer is best known for novels such as Normal People, Intermezzo and Conversations With Friends.

AI

Floqer’s AI agents research sales prospects so teams don’t have to

The problem Floqer is trying to solve is familiar to anyone who has worked in sales or revenue operations.

Technology

ChunkAct: Action Chunking for Agentic Robotics

Agentic robotics places a large language model (LLM) agent in the robot control loop, where it composes perception, motion, and vision-language-action (VLA) tools under the guidance of a memory and thereby generalizes to new tasks without retraining. This generality comes at a steep price in efficiency. Every primitive requires a round of LLM reasoning over the full interaction history, so the cost of an episode grows with the number of primitives. We find this reasoning largely redundant: once

The Netherlands Has Its Own Stonehenge and It Reveals How People Tracked Time 4,000 Years Ago
Science

The Netherlands Has Its Own Stonehenge and It Reveals How People Tracked Time 4,000 Years Ago

This type of sanctuary may have been more common than we thought.

FDA adcomm members' ties to industry under scrutiny
Health

FDA adcomm members' ties to industry under scrutiny

New research found that nearly 40% of FDA advisory meetings held over a recent 20-year period included either a patient or consumer rep with active ties to an advocacy group funded by pharma companies. Learn more:

Astros move on from Joe Espada: Is a rebuild next in Houston? Plus more pressing questions
Sports

Astros move on from Joe Espada: Is a rebuild next in Houston? Plus more pressing questions

Houston has gotten worse every year since its 2022 World Series and may finally be staring down a rebuild -- if Jim Crane allows it

Nine ways the Trump administration could interfere with the midterms
World

Nine ways the Trump administration could interfere with the midterms

Assessments point to a range of scenarios in which the administration could test the boundaries of federal authority.

Business

Risk Measures for the Climate Transition Age: Why Symmetric Risk Budgets are unlikely to mitigate two-dimensionally asymmetric Climate Change risks

The most widely used investment risk measures - variance, standard deviation, and tracking error - treat upside deviations as equally undesirable as downside losses. In stable markets with assumed symmetric return distributions, this simplification is potentially harmless. In the climate transition age, it is not. Climate risk is two-dimensionally asymmetric, across assets and over time. Both dimensions are negatively skewed against investors. Hence, climate transition investment strategies deli

Hudson Williams treated the internet to an updated skin care routine video: ‘Glass skin mogged’
Culture

Hudson Williams treated the internet to an updated skin care routine video: ‘Glass skin mogged’

“See my attention span is fine,” one fan commented on the 14-minute clip.

AI

Zenzap raises $44M for its AI chat app that aims to replace WhatsApp in the workplace

Zenzap is used by organizations including Starbucks and Taco Bell.

Anthropic warns small AI models could self-replicate through IoT devices
Technology

Anthropic warns small AI models could self-replicate through IoT devices

AI company Anthropic is warning that advances in small AI models could soon usher in a new era of self-replicating malware that’s capable of infecting smart fridges, vacuum cleaners, and a wide range of other Internet-of-things devices and is more resistant to takedown. By next year, smaller AI models may be able to autonomously self-replicate on all kinds of IoT devices, the company said. Eventually, the capability could enable computer worms, which propagate without requiring human interaction and are capable of infecting unfamiliar IoT devices.

Science

Testing the 4-Point Correlation Function as a Probe of Parity Violation with the Quijote-Odd Simulations

We investigate parity violation searches with the 4-Point Correlation Function (4PCF) using the Quijote and Quijote-Odd halo catalogs. Specifically, we explore the auto- and cross-correlation searching methodologies that have been previously used in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) searches. Although the Quijote-Odd simulations are initialized with a parity-violating primordial trispectrum, we find no statistically detectable

Health

Greenville County deputies search for missing man with medical conditions - WYFF

The Greenville County Sheriff's Office is asking for help finding a missing man with medical conditions. ... Deputies say 20-year-old Kamaurion Craig ...

Rays vs. Guardians ALCS Game 3 start time moved up to 1 p.m. due to inclement weather
Sports

Rays vs. Guardians ALCS Game 3 start time moved up to 1 p.m. due to inclement weather

The league is being proactive in light of weather reports for Thursday's Game 3

Russia is winning technological race in Ukraine — The Daily Telegraph
World

Russia is winning technological race in Ukraine — The Daily Telegraph

As an example, the newspaper mentioned Russia’s Geran jet-powered drones that can "carry heavier payloads" and "reach top speeds of 600 km per hour"

Square launches AI-powered ordering kiosks for fast-food restaurants
Business

Square launches AI-powered ordering kiosks for fast-food restaurants

While kiosks have become fixtures in many restaurants, most people still prefer ordering from a human being, industry data shows. But that soon may change, if all goes according to plan for Square. The point-of-sale company is launching the Square Kiosk, a new take on restaurant kiosks that employs a sleeker design and agentic AI. The kiosk—which features a distinct oval shape, separating it from other square, flat-screen-shaped kiosks—is designed to smooth out ordering issues for cust

The Rockstar and IWGB employment tribunal will now conclude near Grand Theft Auto 6's release date in November, after legal debates have run long
Culture

The Rockstar and IWGB employment tribunal will now conclude near Grand Theft Auto 6's release date in November, after legal debates have run long

The ongoing legal case between Rockstar Games and laid-off employees will stretch on into November, with two new dates added and closing remarks rescheduled.

AI

Save 50% on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket and join the last two days in San Francisco’s Moscone West

Get a 50% discount on the last two days of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, October 14-15, in San Francisco. Register now and join the rest of the startup ecosystem. Today, it's all about physical and software AI.

Destiny 1 Remaster rumoured for PC and consoles - KitGuru
Technology

Destiny 1 Remaster rumoured for PC and consoles - KitGuru

Rumours about Bungie revisiting Destiny 1 have been circulating for months, fuelled in part by a sur

NASA’s Space X CRS-35 Launch Jellyfish
Science

NASA’s Space X CRS-35 Launch Jellyfish

NASA/John Kraus Sunlight illuminates the exhaust plumes of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft on Oct. 13, 2026. This visual phenomenon is known as a “jellyfish”; it happens near sunrise or sunset when the exhaust plume from the rocket becomes brightly illuminated, creating a glowing shape resembling a jellyfish. The mission lifted off at 6:33 a.m.

Health

Two Routes to Interoceptive Prioritisation: Dissociating Likelihood Precision and Preference Reweighting in Active Inference

An embodied agent must prioritise among competing bodily needs. In active inference, it can respond to an urgent need by increasing the precision of information about that need or by increasing its preference for outcomes that relieve it. We compare these two interventions, separately and together, in a foraging gridworld with three lethal needs, and ask how each changes survival, perception and the body model the agent learns. Precision sharpens interoceptive posteriors and improves survival. P

'Thursday Night Football' prediction, odds, time: Seahawks vs. Broncos picks by expert who's on 28-15 roll
Sports

'Thursday Night Football' prediction, odds, time: Seahawks vs. Broncos picks by expert who's on 28-15 roll

Emory Hunt reveals his picks for Seattle Seahawks vs. Denver Broncos in the 2026 Week 6 'Thursday Night Football' matchup

World

UN official warns of looming food crisis as Hormuz fertiliser plan stalls

Without a quick deal to move fertiliser through the strait, agricultural productivity would 'significantly drop'.

Business

Former ARPA-H director Renee Wegrzyn wants to solve science’s ‘magic hands’ problem

Renee Wegrzyn spent her career building the future of American science—including the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, the White House agency created to accelerate health breakthroughs. Then the Trump administration showed her the door. Wegrzyn cofounded Transfyr to tackle what she calls one of the most overlooked issues in science: the magic hands problem. She explains why fixing this unglamorous bottleneck is the prerequisite for everything AI promises to deliver in

Alexander Skarsgård raises eyebrows with ‘Lick My Worm’ T-shirt at ‘Wicker’ screening
Culture

Alexander Skarsgård raises eyebrows with ‘Lick My Worm’ T-shirt at ‘Wicker’ screening

“Make sure they see the worm,” the “True Blood” alum joked as he posed with his castmates in New York.

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