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.
Google experiments with an AI-powered gaming platform
Google Labs is working on a new AI-powered game-creation platform called Playground for users to build browser-based games using simple text prompts.
Mistral says "Le Chonk" can challenge the best AI models
As tensions mount over who gets access to top-end artificial intelligence, French company Mistral has released a new freely available model that it claims can compete with the very best from the US and China. The new 1 trillion-parameter model, Mistral Large 4—nicknamed Le Chonk—can be used and customized by anyone. It’s currently available in preview, with a final version to follow by the end of the month.
Children in improved homes face lower hospitalization risk, analysis finds
Children living in houses improved through the Healthy Homes Initiative were found to be 30% less likely to be hospitalized in the following five years, according to research led by the University of Otago, Wellington—Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, Pōneke.
ER visits from people born outside the U.S. dropped after ICE raids
A new study found that visits by people born outside of the U.S. to three LA emergency rooms dropped precipitously after ICE raids increased last year.
Self-learning AI releases NFL picks, score predictions for every Week 5 game
SportsLine AI evaluated the Week 5 NFL odds and revealed its NFL score predictions and best NFL picks
Every Millennial Remembers These 3 Alternative Rock Hits From 2001
This heavy dose of nostalgia from 2001 is for the Millennials who always had the radio tuned to their local alternative rock station.
The drone delivery business has a ground problem
For more than a decade, the story of drone delivery was about improving the technology and getting federal permission for the drones to take to the airwaves. Could companies get the Federal Aviation Authority to approve flights beyond the operator’s line of sight? Would regulators let one pilot supervise many aircraft? The assumption was that once Washington said yes, the drone business would take off. Washington is edging toward saying yes. What comes next is less predictable, because
40 Phantom of the Opera backstage secrets and ghost stories – including the British rocker who almost played the lead
The Phantom of the Opera is here and here to stay.
Tony Fadell on why the first wave of AI gadgets failed — and what comes next
The “father of the iPod” says the first generation of AI gadgets failed to solve real problems — and the next wave will need to earn consumers’ trust.
The 512GB Samsung Galaxy S26 gets a rare 25% Prime Day discount
Amazon cut $300 off the Galaxy S26 512GB for Prime Day, bringing Samsung's 2026 flagship down before the deal ends tonight.
Halo Mass Function Constraints on Early Galaxy and AGN Populations in the JWST Era
The discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of massive galaxies and luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN) at high redshift provides an increasingly sensitive test of the connection between cosmological structure formation and the astrophysical processes that make dark matter halos observable. We develop a framework connecting the linear matter power spectrum to the mass variance, peak height, halo mass function (HMF), cumulative halo abundance, and observable galaxy and AGN population
Russia keeps tight lid on lab worker's death as global concerns mount
Russian state TV and other national state-controlled media have steered clear of the subject.
Cody Rhodes discloses Kevin Owens' heartfelt gesture for a tribute to late AEW star PAC
Former WWE Champion Cody Rhodes recently shed light on a heartwarming gesture from Kevin Owens in honor of AEW star PAC after his passing last month.
Canada’s Weston family buys Boots for $8.9bn
Former Selfridges owners buys UK high street institution from long-term backer Stefano Pessina
Measuring Gift Card Program Incrementality via Causal Data Fusion
Businesses regularly offer gift card programs to drive customer spending and increase engagement. A central question is how much incremental revenue these programs generate, and which channels drive it most efficiently. Measuring the incremental revenue associated with a gift card program is a challenging problem in causal inference, requiring a firm to infer how much each customer would have spent if they never received a gift card. Observational data on past customer purchasing behavior reveal
Why Fall Is the Best Time to Buy This 25% off Prime Day IPL Deal
Amazon's best beauty tools are discounted for Amazon Prime Day, including this IPL tool that effortlessly removes hair for 25% off.
SPONSORED: When one datacenter is no longer enough
Why training AI across multiple sites is creating a new networking challenge
AI/ML is becoming a performance factor in motorsport
There’s been something of a change in the world of motorsport over the past few years. It has to do with where the money comes from. In the old days, it was tobacco, and to a lesser extent booze. Today such things are mostly banned, and when you look at a racecar covered in sponsor logos, you’re likely to see something crypto-, cyber-, or AI-related. This makes sense—a larger and larger proportion of our GDP is wrapped up in those segments. They’re the ones with all the money, and it takes money to go racing.
New AI Can Figure Out What You're Thinking About From a Brain Scan
Researchers have created an AI model can recreate an image you're picturing in your head by analyzing your brain scans.
Merck suffers a setback in Europe over its new Keytruda formulation
In a setback for Merck, a Dutch court ordered a halt to the manufacturing and marketing of a subcutaneous formulation of Keytruda in several European countries.
Madring working on track changes after dull debut race
LONDON, Oct 7 - Spanish Grand Prix organisers are planning to make changes to the Madring after complaints about the absence of overtaking and on-track thrills at this year's debut event, a spokeswoman for Formula One's newest circuit said on Wednesday. Read more at straitstimes.com.
Ex-German spy chief arrested: A history of spooks working for enemy powers
There have been many cases of top spies giving classified information to enemy nations. Here are some of the highlights.
Scalable Nonparametric Demand Estimation in Differentiated Product Markets
The answers to many economic questions depend on the slope and curvature of demand. Estimating demand for differentiated products entails a trade-off between flexibility and scalability. Existing nonparametric approaches face a curse of dimensionality in the number of products. I develop a scalable nonparametric approach using market-level data that overcomes this curse through economically motivated restrictions embedded in many standard models. Simulations and an application to the U.S. beer m
Gavin and Stacey creators Jones and Corden reveal cast of new show
Ruth Jones and James Corden's new show also stars X-Men's James McAvoy and Harry Potter's Jim Broadbent.
Google’s new SynthID website can identify AI-generated media
Google on Tuesday launched a new site that lets anyone verify whether a piece of media, be it an image, a video, or an audio clip, is generated using AI.
Review: Fine, let's talk about Digger
I found the trailer for Digger intriguing, starring a nearly unrecognizable Tom Cruise and giving off strong Doctor Strangelove vibes. Plus, it is four-time Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s (Birdman) first English-language film since 2015’s The Revenant. Those elements quickly moved it near the top of my "must-see" list even if details about the actual plot were lacking. Given Iñárritu’s pedigree, the film seemed poised to be prime Oscar bait. (Major spoilers appear below the gallery.
Small Distortions, Big Polarization: Tetragonal BaTiO3 Nanoparticles for High-Performance Piezoelectric Nanogenerators
Lead-free ferroelectric BaTiO3 (BTO) nanoparticles with stabilized tetragonal distortion were synthesized via a ligand-assisted sol-gel method to serve as the active piezoelectric phase in high-performance hybrid piezoelectric nanogenerators (PENGs) operating with triboelectric synergy. XRD, Raman spectroscopy, and Pair Distribution Function (PDF) analysis confirmed pseudo-cubic tetragonal BTO nanoparticle, annealed at 900°C (BTO-900, ~54nm) and well-defined tetragonal BTO annealed at 1200°C (BT
Baby 'scarred for life' after putting hand into gravy put in front of her at pub
The rest of the gravy spilled onto her leg when she pulled her hand out
Big Ten Power Rankings: The league's old West Division demands respect entering Week 6
Nebraska, Northwestern, Wisconsin and Minnesota are all proving to be real threats as the season's midway point nears
Why Paramount-Warner merger has sparked fears about press freedom
Chairman's family ties to Trump and Israel raise questions over editorial independence at CNN and CBS.
The internet is building an AI cinematic universe out of Sam Altman and Dario Amodei
In the real world, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are industry rivals, often butting heads about philosophical divides and competition. But on X, the tech billionaires dance beside one another in music videos and even star on HBO-like dramas together. In the latest bizarre trend to hit social media, people are using the same technology that Altman and Amodei create to poke fun at the duo and dramatize their differences. In one example, Amodei is sporting a blue ca
Travis Barker Shares Photos From Hospital With Kourtney Kardashian, Alabama Barker by His Side
Travis Barker shared photos of himself in a hospital bed, where he was kept company by wife Kourtney Kardashian as well as his daughter Alabama Barker.
Healthleap raises $38M for its AI that flags hospital patients who may need a closer look
The financing includes an $8M seed round co-led by Sequoia Capital and First Round Capital, and a $30 million Series A led by Hummingbird Ventures.
Crimson Desert Proves Listening to Players' Feedback Is the Key to Success, as the Game Reportedly Generated $427M Revenue
Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert hits $426.7M in revenue, beating major games like 007 First Light and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced
As AI Closed In on ‘Unique Games’ Proof, Researchers Raced to Beat the Machines | Quanta Magazine
In the shadow of a rumored AI proof of one of the biggest problems in their field, three computer scientists rushed to publish their own milestone result.
Neural Petri flows for chemical reactions
Petri nets have been used to describe chemical processes such as reactions.They map well to chemistry: Places are the bonds between atoms and the free valence of each atom, a token is a unit of bond order, a transition forms or breaks a bond, the conserved quantities are the valence budgets of the atoms, and the enabling rule is the valence rule. These semantics are not guaranteed by learned models of reactions or neural networks that are built on Petri nets that use the net as a scaffold for me
College football score predictions for Week 6, 2026: Model backs Kentucky (+8.5) against LSU
SportsLine's model has revealed its 2026 Week 6 college football score predictions for Alabama vs. Georgia, Oregon vs. UCLA and more
Henri Kagan, Kenso Soai win chemistry Nobel for ‘mirror image’ breakthrough
Scientists honoured for solving mystery of asymmetric molecules that has helped in manufacture of pharmaceuticals.
Inflation fears on the rise as one-year outlook in Fed survey hits highest level since May 2023
The Survey of Consumer Expectations indicated that the median outlook for inflation over the next 12 months rose to 3.9%.
The Set Up To Adapt Lisa Wilkinson's 'The Titanic Story Of Evelyn'
Australian bestseller The 'Titanic Story of Evelyn' is setting sail on a TV adaptation at The Set Up.
Get hands-on: The full lineup of interactive roundtables at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
From Nvidia and Chime to Obvious Ventures and Anthropic, explore the entire roundtable agenda at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Register now to save up to $100 on your pass and get a second pass at 50% off.
If you're looking, here's a "good deal" for NASA and the European Space Agency
It's no surprise that NASA's new tack toward foreign partnerships—good deals only, please—is challenging preconceived notions of international cooperation in space. Without a massive budget hike, the US space agency's emphasis on building a Moon Base and winning a competition for lunar real estate and resources with China will inevitably leave lesser priorities behind. Gone is the Lunar Gateway, a space station that was to be assembled in orbit around the Moon.
Mitigating prior-volume effects in galaxy clustering by adopting Mpc over Mpc/h units
We investigate prior-volume effects in Bayesian analyses of galaxy clustering based on state-of-the-art models, such as the EFT and the VDG$_\infty$ model. We show that these effects are largely driven by imposing priors on the model parameters defined in ${\rm Mpc}/h$ units, thereby introducing a spurious correlation with the Hubble parameter $h$, and that they can be strongly mitigated by adopting a more physically motivated formulation in ${\rm Mpc}$ units. We test this approach using a set o
Language-model ratings of depression reflect the rater more than the patient
Depression has no diagnostic blood test. Language models promise tireless, consistent assessment, but can accurate raters disagree about individuals? We pre-registered 880 language-model raters, crossing 11 open models with prompting and scoring choices, and applied them to 189 interviews against the eight-item Patient Health Questionnaire. Model choice explained 30.0% of summed-symptom score variance, stable participant differences 10.5%. Two randomly drawn raters with area under the receiver o
Fantasy football Week 5 Start 'Em & Sit 'Em quarterbacks: Stafford is a must-start, Hurts hits the bench
Matthew Stafford headlines the Week 5 starts, while Jalen Hurts and Justin Herbert are among notable quarterbacks to avoid
South Korea signals military exemption cuts for athletes after Asian Games
South Korea signals cuts to military exemptions for gold medallists after backlash over athletes' Asian Games comments.
The AI gender gap is about more than women. It’s about a broken system
When I was designing the cover of my book, Ambitious Mother, I tried to get a little help from artificial intelligence. We had worked hard on the visuals with the design team, and after many drafts I just wanted to see what a different color font would look like, without asking them for more changes. I put the photo into AI and prompted it to show me the exact same cover, but with green text instead of red. Imagine my surprise when the image that came back was the same cover, in the new color
Dhurandhar 2 TV Premiere: When And Where To Watch Ranveer Singh’s Spy Thriller?
Dhurandhar: The Revenge is making its much-anticipated debut on television.
6 days to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Save on your pass before doors open
In 6 days, 10,000+ people from across the global startup and tech ecosystem will come together at San Francisco’s Moscone West for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. If you’re planning to be one of them, don’t wait to register your ticket before prices increase at the door. Save up to $100 on your pass, plus 50% on a second of the same type.
QF3: Fast Flow RL with Filtered Q-Gradients
Flow policies have become a standard policy class for learning robot behaviors from demonstrations, but reinforcement learning is still critical for improving pre-trained flow policies or learning them from scratch through interaction. We introduce QF3 (Fast Flow RL with Filtered Q-Gradients), an online off-policy RL algorithm that trains a flow policy with flow matching plus the critic's action gradient, backpropagated through a one-step prediction of the flow's output. To keep updates where th
Gut microbes followed migrating humans across continents, new study suggests
New research looks at the surprising similarities in the gut microbiomes of hunter-gathers in Tanzania and horticulturalists in Bolivia, and asks: What role do these bacteria play in human health?
Sliding-scale Insulin Does Not Control Steroid-induced Hyperglycemia in a Non-diabetic Patient, No Matter How You Tune It
Sliding-scale correction insulin is the standard hospital response to high blood glucose. Its constants were derived in people who secrete no insulin, yet it is routinely ordered for patients whose own secretion is intact. We represent the correction rule as a proportional controller with a deadband, sampled four-hourly, acting on a glucose model built from published physiology, including pancreatic feedback. We derive the sensitivity of glucose to exogenous insulin, evaluate it in 4,995 virtual
Week 5 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 5 NFL schedule
Millions of Pakistanis get government fuel relief but some miss out
Pakistan has subsidised petrol for millions, but some economists caution that those most needing help are left out.
'Winter is coming': IMF chief sounds alarm over world economy
The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned 'winter is coming' for the global economy - as bond market turmoil sent UK borrowing costs to a fresh 28-year high.
5 Years Ago Today: CBS Premiered One Of Its Biggest Comedies - TVLine
American remakes of British sitcoms don't always go down well, but the CBS version of "Ghosts" became an instant hit when it debuted back in October 2021.
OpenAI’s Alexander Embiricos is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 — days after the launch of Dots
OpenAI’s Alexander Embiricos is coming to the AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, just days after the launch of Dots. Join this conversation by registering for your pass. Get you pass now to save up to $100 and get a second at 50% off.
Google rolls out improved SynthID AI content detector, now available globally
Every piece of AI content from Google's Gemini models has a hidden SynthID label, which makes it very difficult to pass the content off as authentic. SynthID has also gotten buy-in from other major AI players, but actually checking for those invisible watermarks has been a convoluted process. It's going to be a little easier going forward, though.
Scientists Dismissed a Theory of Consciousness for 40 Years. New Evidence Suggests They Spoke Too Soon.
The quantum theory of consciousness long seemed like a radical idea, but growing evidence is making some neuroscientists take a second look.
Map reveals smoking hotspots where cigarette users refuse to quit
The Government has been accused of 'deepening the North-South divide' with its tobacco policy, after official figures reveal men in the north are now smoking more than ever.
New Mexico State vs. FIU prediction, odds, time: Week 6 college football Wednesday picks by proven model
The SportsLine Projection Model has revealed its best bets for the Wednesday Conference USA matchup between the New Mexico State Aggies vs. FIU Panthers
Christa Pike’s lawyers hold press conference after she regains consciousness in hospital – latest updates
Tennessee prisoner awake and speaking after surviving state’s attempt to execute her last Wednesday
US: Short- and Medium-Term Inflation Expectations Increase; Labor Market Expectations Improve
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data today released the September 2026 Survey of Consumer Expectations, which shows that households’ inflation expectations increased at the short- and medium-term horizons and remained unchanged at the longer-term horizon. Labor market
Xbox bets on Gears of War in battle of gaming giants
Unlike other flagship titles, E-Day will only be available on Xbox at a time of rising console costs.