This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Will the real Anthropic please stand up? After weeks of frenzied speculation, Anthropic has filed its IPO prospectus. The 335-page document (100 pages or so are focused on risks) lays out…
Ask Texas NAACP president Gary Bledsoe what it's been like to see data center developers descend upon Austin and its surrounding suburbs and he can rattle off project after project facing opposition from locals. There's the fight in Taylor over plans to build a data center at a site that's supposed to be a park. […]
Meta has launched a "tamagotchi-style" pet game called Waddle World, with virtual creatures that chat with users and create doodles to illustrate conversations. According to its Apple and Play Store listings, the "16-bit pet care game" is not really a game, but "a daily journal disguised as a pet." Users should talk, not type, with […]
On Monday, OpenAI announced impressive breakthroughs in mathematics, computer science, and physics, along with what the company says is an evolving approach to communicating its findings. But despite its apparent course correction, researchers who spoke to The Verge are growing increasingly tired of the company's antics. It has been a turbulent few months between OpenAI […]
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey's budget plans, due to be outlined in the House of Commons at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, are expected to include targeted rebates on heating bills, an increase to the national living wage and a freeze of fuel duty. Bloomberg's Louise Moon has a preview. (Source: Bloomberg)
Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, compared Donald Trump's endorsement of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel's election to his grandmother's chicken soup: 'it sometimes didn't help, but it couldn't hurt.' Miller said that Netanyahu and his opposition challenger Gadi Eisenkot hold differing views on the war with Iran and settler violence, but are close together on issues of national security. (Source: Bloomberg)
Emily Chang hits the streets of New York with Tarek Mansour, who along with Luana Lopes Lara created Kalshi, the biggest prediction market in the world. The co-founders face a host of new competitors, vocal opponents and a very public debate about what the platform really is and its impact on society. (Source: Bloomberg)
Halloween season is a time for scary tricks and sweet treats. But people with heart conditions may need to take extra precautions before participating in fright nights. Baylor College of Medicine cardiologist and electrophysiologist Dr. Mohamed Gabr explains what you need to know to keep your heart healthy during this spooky season.
Cancer-related discrimination arises from long-lasting cultural and institutional misconceptions, with significant impacts on every part of a person's quality of life and health—and Flinders University researchers say it requires coordinated policy, legal, institutional and public education responses for change to occur.
The first U.K.-wide analysis of bowel screening for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has identified opportunities to improve the early detection of cancer. The study—the largest of its kind globally—found that checks performed by professionals with regular experience, more time allowed for the procedure and the use of a special dye to improve visibility were each associated with finding small growths called polyps, which may become cancer.
Psychedelics are a class of compounds that alter people's perceptions, mood and mental processes. Recent clinical studies suggest that some of these compounds, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin, could be promising for the treatment of depression and other psychiatric disorders.
In a new study published in Chemical Science, researchers from the University of Oxford's Department of Chemistry have used machine learning simulations to trace how a common polymer transforms into hard carbon, revealing the atomic-scale processes that give this technologically important material its disordered structure.
A major new study reveals that autistic children’s brains process faces differently, and those differences may begin earlier than scientists previously thought. Researchers found that brain signals associated with recognizing faces become more specialized as neurotypical children grow older, but show much less change in autistic children. The discovery could help explain why some autistic people have difficulty recognizing faces and reading emotions.
As Stan Au's Parkinson's disease symptoms progressed, everyday activities became daily battles. His hands shook so badly that he struggled to hold utensils and couldn't sign his name. He stopped playing pickleball—a sport he once enjoyed—despite taking a widely prescribed medication for managing motor symptoms, such as rigidity or stiffness, slow movement, involuntary muscle movement (dyskinesia) and tremors.
High-speed service reportedly runs into back of another, knocking two carriages off track Spain train crash – latest updates At least 30 people have been killed after two high-speed trains collided in Toledo province in central Spain, on the line between Madrid and Seville. Footage broadcast by the regional channel CMM TV showed a derailed train with at least one carriage remaining on an elevated section of track. Twisted metal, broken panels and wreckage could be seen strewn across an embankment beneath the line. Continue reading...
On budget day chancellor says he will ask Ofgem to remove ‘unfair and outdated’ fixed daily fee in 2027 or soon after Business live – latest updates What to expect from the budget: who wins, who pays? John Healey is abolishing standing charges on gas bills for 23m homes in a move he says will end an “unfair and outdated” practice and save two-thirds of households an average of £45 a year. Ahead of his first budget statement in the Commons later on Wednesday, the chancellor said he would ask Ofgem, the energy regulator for Great Britain, to remove these charges – which are £108 a year for the t
Both blocs fall short of the 61 seats needed to form a government in initial forecasts as support for Palestinian parties surges Full report: Coalition talks loom as Israel exit polls suggest Netanyahu and Eisenkot blocs tied Analysis: Rise of Palestinian parties in Knesset will redraw Israel’s political landscape Israel election: what we know so far With 50% of the vote counted, Israeli media report that Netanyahu’s bloc is ahead, with projections he could take 56 seats under the current vote share. The projections put Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc on 49 seats and the Palestinian parties on
Brand, 51, has been charged with three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of attempted indecent assault Winter moved on to count 5, in which a woman alleged Brand sexually assaulted her when she was in her 20s and working at a radio station in 2004 or 2005. Winter asked Brand whether he “sloppily kissed her”. Continue reading...
Chair of membership council says legal advice obtained at own expense suggests offences could have been committed Bafta trustees may have breached charity and company law by accepting free tickets for guests at the organisation’s awards ceremonies, the chair of its membership council has claimed. Michael Pritchett told members at Bafta’s annual general meeting that legal advice obtained at his own expense suggested offences could have been committed by trustees who approved the charity’s accounts, which stated that no trustees had received remuneration or benefits. Continue reading...
President of Castilla-La Mancha region says numbers likely to rise after crash in Toledo Full report from Spain At least 30 people are believed to have died after two high-speed trains collided in the province of Toledo in Spain, with concerns the death toll could be much higher. The number of people affected is expected to rise ( 10:46 ) , local authorities said, with growing concerns about a “major tragedy” ( 11:03 ). The affected trains are understood to be Iryo 7076 with 146 passengers plus one baby on board, and AVE 2080 with 397 passengers on board, making it 544 people in total on board
When two objects touch and then separate, they can swap tiny amounts of electric charge, even if they are made from exactly the same material. This 'triboelectric effect' is the source of everyday static electricity, but it is still poorly understood in large samples of powder, where vast numbers of particles are constantly colliding with each other.
Technology that transforms organic waste into animal feed could help ease an overreliance on fishmeal in aquaculture. University of Queensland researchers have developed a production process that converts organic waste into biogas to grow a high-protein alternative to fish feed.
Protein-based medicines have transformed the treatment of many diseases, but they often come with a limitation: they must be injected, sometimes repeatedly, because they are rapidly cleared from the bloodstream. For patients who depend on long-term or lifelong treatment, frequent injections place a considerable burden on everyday life.
The Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW)—a vast layer of fresh water spanning much of the Southern Hemisphere's ocean—has rapidly reversed its long-term trends in salinity and density, according to new research. The AAIW helps store carbon, supply oxygen and drive global ocean currents.
Beneath the forest floor extends a vast ecosystem where a diverse array of microorganisms inhabit soil and root systems. Here, fungi and bacteria play pivotal roles in processes such as nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration. Within these microbial communities may exist a keystone species, which exerts a disproportionately large influence on the entire structure and function of such an ecosystem.
Cars are a big reason city air is so grimy, and not just because of what comes out of the tailpipe. Researchers in South Korea now want to turn them into massive Roombas for city air, with a grille that scrubs roadside air as the car drives and a catcher that grabs brake dust where it's made. Continue Reading Category: Automotive , Transport Tags: Automotive , Air pollution , Microplastic , Eco-Friendly , Electric Vehicles
Earth’s persistently frozen poles mean the last ice age never really came to an end. What we think of as the mammoth-romping, Neanderthal-stomping chapter of geological history was technically a glacial maximum, one our planet would now be returning to if not for our love of burning coal, according to a recently published study. Continue Reading Category: Environment , Science Tags: glacier , Columbia University , Global Warming , ice age
arXiv:2610.35942v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: I consider what it means for AI assistance to save time. I contrast a stopwatch view, on which time saved is whatever the clock records, with a ledger view, on which it is a counterfactual that has to be read next to the errors the work lets through, and I argue for the latter. The argument has four parts. I define a model-free pair of quantities, time saved and excess escaped defects, and one decision number built from them: the break-even defect cost. I give a baseline model of checking in which, until the model is good enough not to check, a c
arXiv:2610.35984v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Deep learning models are highly effective in a wide range of domains, particu larly in plant disease diagnosis. However, their performance is often limited by challenges such as insufficient data and class imbalance. In our work, we propose a comprehensive data generation strategy to overcome these limitations. First, we apply various data generation techniques, including traditional augmentation methods, CutMix, MixUp, and synthetic image generation using Deep Convolu tional Generative Adversarial Networks (DCGANs), to create new data samples. S
Amazon is giving its premium smart speaker a camera. The new Echo Studio with Home Camera, announced today as part of Amazon's big blast of announcements, has a built-in camera for monitoring a room while you're away, showing things to Alexa, and, soon, to use with video calls on Fire TV devices. It's an iteration […]
Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac . 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app , Stitcher , TuneIn , Google Play , or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Sponsored by Backblaze : Backup you can rely on. Save 20% with code 9to5daily . more…
Elon Musk claims Ukraine violated Starlink's terms of service before the recent slowdown, as reported earlier by Ars Technica. According to Musk, "Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," however Ukrainian officials have denied that happened, or that it […]
We’re just hours away now from Apple unveiling the latest MacBook Pro with OLED and touchscreen. We’re expecting the display to replace the notch with a Dynamic Island, and a leaker has now found elements in macOS 27 that appear to confirm this. We’re also expecting the same droplet-like design for Siri AI, expanding from the Dynamic Island just as it does on iPhone … more…