SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " imi " 7,451 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
The Indian in Western politics
You can be part of the apparatus that governs the Western powers—a mascot that helps legitimize brutality against dissenters at home or populations living under occupation abroad
Arizona healthcare job growth faces staffing challenges
Health care drives much of Arizona’s job growth, but employers struggle to find workers. Training limits and funding pressures could shape how much the industry can expand.
Supreme Court says New Hampshire can limit use of student IDs for voting
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed New Hampshire officials to limit when voters may use a student ID to receive a ballot, agreeing that a lower court ruling that blocked enforcement of the policy was too close to Election Day.
Emptiness and Politics: America’s Futile Faith in Elections
Though the dissembling “Trump Era” will end with elections, America’s core problems will remain undiminished.
Hamilton County removes $6.5M minimum bid for Business Development Center
Hamilton County is eliminating a $6.5 million minimum bid requirement for the county-owned building at 100 Cherokee Blvd. known as the Business Development Center, which the County Commission voted to declare as surplus in May.
Bengals vs. Ravens Injury Report: Lamar Jackson limited again
Lamar Jackson remains a major question mark for Week 7.
Judge limits election-related immigration stops amid broader legal war ahead of midterms
An unprecedented election war is playing out between the Trump administration and California in federal court, with a slate of cases proceeding at breakneck speed ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
Libertarianism Is Equality of Permission
“Without shared standards of right and wrong, it’s impossible to settle disputes; it’s impossible to maintain social cohesion and trust. Every healthy society rests on some shared conception of the sacred.”
Stony Brook Researchers David Miloschewsky and Supartha Podder Resolve a Decades-Old Puzzle About the Limits of Quantum Computing
Finding a path through a maze is hard, even for quantum algorithms. A quantum computer can find the exit of a certain kind of maze far faster than a classical computer. But can it also give you directions? David Miloschewsky and Supartha Podder of Stony Brook University’s Department of Computer Science have proven that finding
Amazon renames Kindle Unlimited to Kindle Plus and expands access to audiobooks
Kindle Unlimited is now Kindle Plus.
Trump’s shock-jock politics don’t work for everyone. An Ohio attack ad is proof.
Cheered by an online ecosystem, the GOP has rewarded “owning the libs” for a decade. But the blowback to an ad in the governor’s race suggests there are limits.
Small business optimism dips in September NFIB survey
Small business optimism slipped in September as owners grappled with rising costs, higher interest rates and a persistent shortage of qualified workers, according to a monthly survey released by the National Federation of Independent Business. The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index fell 0.8 points to 97.9, just below the survey’s 52-year average of 98.0. The […]
Democratic Virginia state Sen. Lucas accused of leading marijuana criminal conspiracy
U.S Attorney General Todd Blanche says a powerful Democratic Virginia state senator was charged with leading a criminal marijuana enterprise.
Democratic Virginia state Sen. Lucas accused of leading marijuana criminal conspiracy
U.S Attorney General Todd Blanche says a powerful Democratic Virginia state senator was charged with leading a criminal marijuana enterprise.
Baker Mayfield Returns To Practice, Diminishes Jalon Daniels' Fantasy Outlook
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers welcomed star quarterback Baker Mayfield back to practice on Wednesday following a three-game absence due to injury.
Question 3 would create all-party primary
Ballot Question 3 would eliminate political party primaries in Massachusetts and establish a single, all-party primary.
Amazon's Kindle Unlimited is now Kindle+, and the 2 big changes include AI audiobooks
Unlike narrated audiobooks from Audible and other providers, the audiobooks created with Virtual Voice in Kindle+ will instead be narrated by AI.
Witkoff faces backlash for praising Putin as a ‘humanitarian’
The comments were swiftly condemned by U.S. lawmakers who view Russian President Vladimir Putin as responsible for the brutal war in Ukraine.
Sen. Louise Lucas indicted on federal drug charges
Virginia Senate President pro tempore L. Louise Lucas was charged Thursday in connection with an alleged criminal enterprise.
Jenna Ortega on moving beyond her 'Wednesday' image and embracing optimism
If Jenna Ortega ever enthusiastically shows you a stick, there's a meaningful life philosophy behind it.
Apple Will Label Apps 'Made for iPhone Duo' in App Store
In its press release highlighting apps that have been optimized for the iPhone Duo, Apple said the App Store will label apps that are "Made for iPhone Duo". In order for an app to be optimized for the iPhone Duo, the developer needs to build it with the iOS 27.1 SDK or later. Apps optimized for the iPhone Duo fill the entire inner display, and the app's toolbar appears vertically below the status bar.
Federal prosecutors accuse Sen. Louise Lucas of using political power to benefit marijuana enterprise
Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas was indicted Thursday on federal charges accusing her of leading a criminal marijuana enterprise and using her position as one of the state’s most powerful legislators to protect the operation and pursue financial benefits from Virginia’s emerging recreational marijuana industry.
Women who changed science missing from GCSE and A-level courses
Despite social, economic and institutional barriers limiting women’s formal participation in science, they made numerous key breakthroughs.
How Systems Biology Is Adopting an Engineering Framework
Everything from metabolic pathways optimized for efficiency to brain blood vessels designed as protective shock absorbers demonstrates multi-level planning.
Apple Reveals More Than 50 Apps That Will Be Updated for iPhone Duo
Apple today highlighted more than 50 third-party App Store apps that are or will soon be fully optimized for the iPhone Duo and its various layouts and poses.
Meet Mori, a Cute Robot Mushroom That Doesn’t Really Say (or Do) Anything
Step one in convincing people to live with robots with cameras on their faces? Disguise them as cute home decor.
Sasin and Thai Airways Partner to Bridge Business Education and Real-World Experience
Sasin School of Management, Chulalongkorn University, and Thai Airways International Public Company Limited have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to promote cooperation in education and student development, connecting classroom knowledge with practical experience in the business sector.
1Password Surpasses $500 Million in Revenue as AI Agents Drive Growth
As businesses and consumers increasingly adopt artificial intelligence agents, 1Password is aiming to position itself to deliver solutions for growing challenges around security, access and trust.
Introspection required if EU Inc fails, says start-up lobbyist
European start-ups have a new voice in Brussels. Startups for Europe, created from the merger of lobby groups Allied for Startups and the European Startup Network, is hoping to harness the momentum behind EU-Inc, a campaign that united start-ups and investors behind demands for a new pan-European company regime.At a launch event for the new association in Brussels on October 1, the mood was remarkably upbeat compared to a typical Eurobubble gathering, more Silicon Valley than Schuman roundabout.When asked whether this reflects a feeling that Europe is on the right track, chief executive Serena Borbotti-Frison said it’s a “scary” moment as the continent looks to boost its competitiveness amid a new technological arms race.“What is at stake is quite intense, and the way we can answer is by delivering, but also with hope,” she told Science|Business. “It’s what our industry does. It’s not about identifying a pain point and then saying it’s too hard.”For many in the start-up community, that sense of hope is dwindling. In March, the European Commission presented its proposal for EU Inc, naming its initiative after the grassroots campaign.EU Inc was meant to be a gamechanger: the ability to incorporate within 48 hours for less than €100 and scale up across Europe; a harmonised stock option regime enabling start-ups to compete for talent; and simplified insolvency procedures for innovative start-ups to reduce the cost of failure.However, haggling by EU governments has raised concerns that EU Inc will be stripped of the very features, including stock option harmonisation, that are meant to make it attractive for companies.“I fear we are proving to ourselves that the model doesn’t work,” Borbotti-Frison said of the policymaking process. “Everyone agrees we should have EU Inc. Everyone agrees it’s hard to scale and we need to scale to answer the competitiveness [challenge], and still we cannot deliver? [. . .] What does that say about ourselves?”The Commission has made EU Inc a cornerstone of its single market reform, and has agreed with the European Parliament and the Council of the EU to target an agreement by the end of 2026. However, several points are currently holding up an agreement, including national rules around employee participation in management decisions, and the provision that employee stock options always be taxed at the point of sale. Some EU governments have reportedly pushed back on the Commission’s choice of legal basis, contending that anything related to taxation requires unanimity in the Council.Trade unions have also protested against EU Inc, fearing it will be exploited by companies looking to undermine workers’ rights.“If this doesn’t work, it’s introspection time, on the way our institutions work, maybe the way our lobbies work, and maybe the way the cooperation between them works,” Borbotti-Frison said.“Is it in the national interest? Is it a gap between political will and technical ability to operate? Is it speed? I don't know, but something needs to be fixed.”Ahead of last week’s European Council meeting, EU-Inc campaigners tried a new strategy: appealing directly to EU presidents and prime ministers. In an open letter, they urged EU leaders to “step in and give your negotiating teams a clear mandate to change course and reverse their objections to the Commission’s original proposal.”Lessons from EU-IncLike its predecessors, Startups for Europe will represent national start-up associations, but it is also targeting investors. The founding sponsors are venture capital firm Atomico and EQT, the investor selected earlier this year to manage the €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund.It also wants to harness the knowledge and cross-border experience of European success stories. “Take the list of the 100 biggest unicorns in Europe. We are speaking to all of them,” Borbotti-Frison said. The association plans to publish a full list of supporters following the Slush tech conference in Helsinki in November.Andreas Klinger and Simon Schaefer, two key figures in the EU-Inc campaign, are both on the board of the new association, and Startups for Europe wants to take the lessons from their campaign.What was unprecedented about EU-Inc was “how rooted it was, and how strong it was in bringing everyone on board behind one clear pain point and solution to fix it,” Borbotti-Frison said. “This is an inspiration for us, and then we need to turn it into something more systematic, more bridged in Brussels, more connected to the policymaking game, and to scale it.”If it’s possible to unite such a broad coalition, it’s because the European start-up ecosystem is now mature, she said. “Maybe it was not ten years ago. Maybe it was not five years ago. But now, it’s mature to speak with one voice.”Open and liberal EuropeThe association plans to campaign on files related to three “pain points,” Borbotti-Frison said: “start and scale in Europe, fundraise and invest in Europe, and making Europe the most innovative continent.”As well as EU Inc, she cited public procurement, the EU’s simplification push, the Savings and Investments Union, and files related to AI adoption and technological sovereignty as priorities for the coming months.What these files have in common is that they relate not to subsidies but to the framework conditions influencing the availability of mostly private, or in the case of procurement, public, funding.Related articlesEmployee participation disagreement delays MEPs’ vote on EU IncCommission urges EU governments not to water down EU IncEU’s ‘ultra-fast’ €5B scale-up fund is set up to win, says its fund managerThe budget dispute over the next Horizon Europe programme will also impact start-ups, which are supported notably through the European Innovation Council. But EU innovation funding is a drop in the ocean compared to venture capital and public procurement budgets.“If competitiveness and innovation are a priority, then the [EU budget] should reflect it,” Borbotti-Frison said. However, she added that the main question is not how much public money is invested, but “how do we create the right conditions for the market to solve the problem?”The Scaleup Europe Fund mixes both approaches, using €1 billion in EU funding to crowd in private investors and address Europe’s lack of large-scale, late-stage growth funds. “It’s a proof of concept. Ideally, then the market will do it itself,” Borbotti-Frison said.Startups for Europe is also focused on bringing an alternative political narrative. Amid competing visions for open, global markets on the one side and a protectionist Europe on the other, it wants to offer “a third voice, to say we can be proudly European and build a strong continent in a liberal economy, open to the world, and global.”It can be tempting, when thinking about how Europe can better support innovation, to look across the Atlantic. But while it’s important to compare statistics to see where Europe needs to catch up, that’s where the comparison should stop, Borbotti-Frison said. “On everything else, we need to do it our own way. We don't have the same history. We don't have the same political model. We don't have the same way of life.”Many of the key files that could benefit the start-up community, including EU Inc and the Savings and Investments Union, rely on closer integration within Europe, making it easier to operate across borders.While the Commission has made deepening the single market a political priority, support at national level is more precarious. The coming months will see pivotal elections in Spain and France, while the German government has also been coming under pressure domestically. In each country, far-right parties have been gaining ground.When asked if she was concerned the political situation could jeopardise this progress, Borbotti-Frison responded: “Of course. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t.” However, she continues to believe that cooperation is the only way forward. “Doing it alone is not the solution. It’s also not who we are, it’s not the model we are building, and it’s not the scale we need.”
Discrimination Fuels Mental Health Crisis Among LGBTQ+ Youth, National Report Finds
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, Oct. 22, 2026 (HealthDay News) — LGBTQ+ youth continue to face high rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, driven by ongoing discrimination, a new report says. However, acceptance and access to care can reduce the risk of mental health ...
Hugging Face’s New AI Biology Model Lets You Chat With DNA
The new open-source model speaks the language of DNA and can help researchers understand the effects of any changes on gene activity and health.
Xbox reveals pricing for cloud gaming limits, starting at $3.99 for 10 hours
Cloud playtime packs provide ad-free cloud gaming, including shorter wait times and high-quality streaming
AI as the next political divide
We have a guest post today from our friends at Focaldata, with whom we have done polling before. They have been doing a lot of work on attitudes towards AI and how this is affecting politics on both sides of the Atlantic. In this post, they explore exclusive new polling – with a whole set of fascinating charts on how voters’ views are developing and why. In particular, the authors explore why the debate is currently so much more polarised by party in the US than in the UK, to the benefit of the Democrats. Subscribe Focaldata HQ is located in Shoreditch, east London. To access the office from the Shoreditch High Street Overground station, you have to walk under the bridge at Braithwaite Street. We mention this not as a navigational aid, but because the posters above caught our eye over the summer. Since June, the area has been the centre of a fiercely contested debate around the construction of a data centre on the Truman Brewery estate on Brick Lane, less than 200 metres from our office. It was one of the first ‘US-style’ protest movements around AI data centres the country has seen, and may not be the last. These protests served as the catalyst for our forthcoming report, examining whether AI could become the next political divide on both sides of the Atlantic. We wanted to understand what was driving the emerging politics of AI and whether the dynamics at play in the US offer clues as to how the British debate will evolve. Over the last month, we polled 3,851 people across the UK and US about their views on AI. Our research found striking similarities between the two countries: for instance, both electorates are evenly split on their views towards AI development, with just over a third in favour (37% in each country), a similar number opposed, and the remainder somewhere in the middle or unsure. Statistically speaking, there is no difference in overall sentiment towards AI between the UK and US. Under the hood, demographic patterns also look largely the same in the two countries, with millennials, degree holders, full-time workers and those who describe themselves as financially comfortable more pro-AI than the rest of the country. Despite this convergence in overall attitudes, there is a striking divergence in how much of a politicised issue AI has become. In the US, attitudes are increasingly split by political affiliation and the issue has become the latest front in the seemingly interminable culture war, playing a role in the upcoming midterms. This stark political polarisation of AI has not happened in the UK – at least not yet. In what follows, we test several hypotheses for why the two countries are so far apart on a political basis. Understanding which hypothesis is correct will give us an indication of where the British dynamics go next.
Fortnite returns to iOS in Australia after court rules Apple violated competition law
Federal Court of Australia found Apple to have restricted alternative app stores and payment methods to limit competition
Vipul Bandekar Joins Zee Entertainment To Lead Marketing For Z Sports
Bandekar moves to Zee Entertainment Enterprises after more than four years at JioStar, bringing experience across sports marketing, television networks and advertisingZee Entertainment Enterprises Limited has appointed Vipul Bandekar as Director – Marketing for Z Sports, marking his move to the com…
Abortion, ICE and socialism spark fireworks in swing state governor debate: 5 top moments
Republican Tom Tiffany pointed to a 20-week abortion limit while Democrat David Crowley declined to name a gestational cutoff in their debate.
Rashid Shaheed limited Wednesday
Seattle Seahawks WR Rashid Shaheed dealing with hip injury
Zach Charbonnet logs full practice Wednesday
Seattle Seahawks RB Zach Charbonnet not limited by knee on Wednesday
Airbnb cracks down on checkout chore lists as hosts face new limits
Airbnb's new checkout rules bar hosts from asking guests to strip beds, wash dishes or do laundry, but some reasonable requests are still allowed.
KC Concepcion limited during Wednesday's practice
Cleveland Browns WR KC Concepcion dealing with multiple injuries
Girls Can Be Left Out of Elementary-Age Sports
TRURO — Seven girls in third and fourth grade from across the Outer Cape signed up to play soccer this fall, but none of them took the field when games […]
Josh Jacobs returns to Packers practice
Jacobs spoke to the media for the first time Wednesday since an altercation with his then-girlfriend in the spring. He was charged with battery and criminal damage to property after domestic abuse allegations.
Brian Robinson Jr. listed as limited
Falcons RB Brian Robinson Jr. limited with hamstring injury in first practice of week
Fort Lauderdale votes to eliminate Himmarshee's entertainment status
By eliminating the special entertainment district status, bars would have to close an hour earlier, at 2 a.m. during the week and 3 a.m. on weekends. NBC6’s Ari Odzer reports
Justin Jefferson limited at practice Wednesday
Vikings WR Justin Jefferson starts off week with a limited practice
Rico Dowdle limited because of knee issue
Steelers RB Rico Dowdle dealing with new injury and was listed as limited
Amazon employee files explosive lawsuit claiming senior executive raped her on NYC business trip
Christian Watson a limited participant at practice
Packers WR Christian Watson start week off with a limited practice
Fort Lauderdale cracks down on Himmarshee entertainment area
By eliminating the special entertainment district status, bars would have to close an hour earlier, at 2 a.m. during the week and 3 a.m. on weekends.
Trump will speak at South Carolina midterm rally for Sen. Darline Graham as early voting begins
President Donald Trump will visit South Carolina on Wednesday to boost Graham, whose stumbles in her first campaign since replacing her late brother have Democratic voters hopeful — but not necessarily optimistic — that their candidate can break Republicans' grip on the state.
Limited practice for Caleb Douglas
Dolphins WR Caleb Douglas have have chance to play after limited practice
Bose Is Buying Skullcandy. It’s Not as Weird as It Sounds
By keeping Skullcandy in Park City, Utah, Bose is betting that skate cred and budget pricing will reach listeners it’s been missing.
Xbox Is Previewing Paid Cloud Gaming For Players Without Game Pass
Here come new rate limits.
Families are no longer off-limits in political attacks
Some of the most audacious familial attacks have come from Republicans in tough 2026 races.
Darren Waller listed as limited
Panthers TE Darren Waller starts week with a limited practice
Video: How Title IX Became a Political Tool
After a Cornell student’s lawsuit alleging the school failed her when she reported sexual assault, there’s a new focus on Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in federally funded education. Our Washington correspondent Michael C. Bender traces how interpretations of the law shifted between the Obama and Trump administrations.
Movie review: 'Clayface' a doomed romance with body horror trappings
In order to find the best comparison to “Clayface” — the new Warner Bros. DC Universe installment — we have to go back to 1990, to Sam Raimi’s “Darkman,” starring
Kings’ Murray ‘Happy’ To Start the Season Healthy
After enduring a surgical recovery and a career-low 23 games last year, Sacramento’s vital X-factor returns to the hardwood aiming to reclaim his elite two-way form.
Study shows link between Alzheimer’s disease and gut health
Researchers found that people with higher levels of imidazole propionate (ImP), a compound produced by certain gut microbes, were more likely to show signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
Breast Cancer Awareness: Empowering Better Breast Health
Doctors encourage every women, no matter if they’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer or not, to practice better breast health to limit any complications and risk factors associated with breast cancer.
Ilhan Omar finally emerges after DC raid with video pleading for cash to fight Trump
Ilhan Omar's campaign video breaks her silence after the DHS raid on her D.C. home, accusing Trump of trying to intimidate political enemies.
Special Olympics Chief Health Officer Dr. Dimitri Christakis Elected into the National Academy of Medicine
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) announced the election of 90 regular members and 10 international members during its annual meeting on 19 October 2026. Among them was Special Olympics Chief Health Officer, Dr. Dimitri Christakis. One of the highest honors in the field, Dr. Christakis's election reflects both his work advancing health for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities at Special Olympics and his expertise in child development, particularly related to digital media and its effects on children’s social, emotional, and cognitive health.
Apple Stores Will Have 'Limited' Availability of iPhone Duo for Walk-In Customers
In a statement shared with MacRumors today, an Apple spokesperson said there will be "limited" availability of the iPhone Duo for walk-in customers at Apple Stores when the device launches this Friday, October 23. Apple's full statement: On Friday morning, our teams look forward to welcoming customers at Apple Stores to experience iPhone Duo and the incredible iPhone line-up for themselves.
Calinos Entertainment Celebrates New Season with 21 New Series
The new slate includes the dramas Love in the Ashes and Salted Love; the limited series Between the World and Us, Runaway, and The Choice; daily drama
Donte DiVincenzo Says What Timberwolves Fans Need to Hear About Injury Recovery
DiVincenzo's return is still some ways away, but he is optimistic about playing this season.
Abbott plans to spin off nutrition unit that generates $8.5 billion in annual sales
The separation of the maker of Similac and Ensure is expected by the end of 2027 and will leave 2026 guidance unchanged
10X Health Launches Metabolism Genetic Test
A saliva-based test provides genetic insights to help inform personalized nutrition and weight-management plansSCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Oct. 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 10X Health, a leader in personalized health optimization and performance-driven wellness solutions, today announced the launch of its Metabolism Genetic Test. For individuals looking to optimize their wellness routines, 10X Health’s Metabolism Genetic Test gets at the root of why and how your body responds to food, exercise and appeti
Abbott Laboratories Plans to Spin Off Similac and Pedialyte Business
Abbott Laboratories plans to separate its nutrition business into an independent company with about $8.5 billion in annual sales.
Trump's crackdown on immigrant voting in California is a ploy to influence election
President Donald Trump wants California to segregate 20,000 ballots, claiming they may come from noncitizens. Federal officers charged 28 suspects with voter fraud this week.
Vladimir Kara-Murza memoir 'One Day Free' to be released May 18
Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza has written a memoir he's calling “One Day Free.” | WBBM Newsradio 780 AM & 105.9 FM
Trump to tout crackdown on overseas crypto scams
By Courtney Rozen WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will highlight his administration’s efforts on Wednesday to crack down on foreign criminal networks that lure Americans into
Austin Public Health report examines HIV stigma in Central Texas
A new report from Austin Public Health examined how stigma and discrimination affect people living with HIV in Central Texas, including their experiences with family, relationships, health care and…
Christian Horner reveals Red Bull talks with Lewis Hamilton management before telling Mercedes' Niki Lauda to sign British driver
Christian Horner joins Simon Lazenby on the latest episode of Sky Sports The F1 Show Podcast to reveal all on Red Bull talks with Lewis Hamilton before the latter joined Mercedes and his thoughts on Kimi Antonelli, who could become world champion this Sunday at the United States GP
LeBron optimistic after launching Sixers era with win
LeBron James said the Philadelphia 76ers still had plenty of room for improvement after launching their NBA season with an impressive opening night victory over the New York Knicks on Tuesday.James, 41, launched his quest for a fifth NBA championship with 14 points and seven assists in a 106-100 defeat of the reigning NBA champions at Madison Square Garden.
Montana voters to decide limits on corporate political spending under I-194
Montana voters will be asked to weigh in on several ballot measures this November, including Initiative 194.The proposal would restrict how corporations and oth
Leica and Formula 1 Shift Into Gear With Limited Edition Q3 43
The Leica Q3 is the company's most popular model.
Powder mailed to Arizona officials reflects surge in political threats
Suspicious letters containing white powder have targeted Arizona lawmakers and the state’s elections chief, as experts warn that threats and intimidation against public officials are rising.
Officials Work to Improve Boardman River Health
The Traverse City Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and City of TC are working on multiple fronts to improve the Lower Boardman River – including habitat and shoreline improvements, repairs to a deteriorating retaining wall, and public placemaking projects. However, one of the main challenges to the urban river’s health – its proximity to so many …
New Richland Lab Could Transform How Scientists Study Microbes and Boost Regional Jobs
The BriefGroundbreaking held Tuesday: PNNL officially began construction on the M2PC lab, a 30,800-square-foot facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science that will study soil microbes to improve crop productivity and develop new biotechnology applications. The facility will be open to researchers from around the nation and the world.Research timelines could shrink dramatically: The facility's automation and AI capabilities could reduce experiments that currently take six months to just 72 hours, allowing scientists to explore more possibilities faster than ever before.New jobs coming to the Tri-Cities: The project is expected to create positions for automation engineers, AI experts, roboticists, technicians, and skilled craftspeople, with the facility opening in 2029.RICHLAND, Wash. — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory broke ground Tuesday on a first-of-its-kind facility that could accelerate scientific discoveries about the microscopic organisms living in soil—organisms that may hold the key to growing more food and developing new energy technologies.The Microbial Molecular Phenotyping Capability, or M2PC, represents a significant investment in automation and artificial intelligence to speed up research that traditionally takes years to complete. The 30,800-square-foot facility will house more than 100 connected automated instruments designed to study microbes at a pace and scale never before possible.Reshaping Agriculture's FutureThe M2PC facility will not put a new tool directly into a farmer's hands tomorrow morning, but it is actively reshaping the commercial pipeline to solve agriculture's biggest headache with biologicals: inconsistent field performance. For years, PNNL researchers have explored how microbes work and how they might help produce useful materials, advance energy technologies, and address challenges involving critical materials and minerals. But those experiments have been limited by what researchers could accomplish by hand."They can be used to provide nutrients to a plant so that the plant would grow more. So, like increasing your crop productivity, for example," said Douglas Mans, PNNL's Associate Laboratory Director for Integrated Discovery Sciences.PNNL's own research shows soil microbes can help plants access nutrients and withstand drought—benefits that could prove crucial as farmers face growing environmental pressures. The M2PC facility will allow scientists to identify and optimize useful microbes faster than ever before, accelerating the development of biological solutions that actually work consistently in the field.What Makes M2PC UniqueThe Microbial Molecular Phenotyping Capability differs from traditional research labs because it operates as a first-of-its-kind, AI-enabled autonomous laboratory designed to shrink experimental timelines from years down to months or weeks. The M2PC lab will connect more than 100 automated instruments to grow microbes, prepare samples, measure their behavior, and link observations to the molecular processes behind them. Artificial intelligence will help analyze results and guide the next experiments, allowing scientists to explore more questions faster.Deb Gracio, PNNL Director, emphasized the transformative potential during Tuesday's groundbreaking ceremony: "Research that has taken years will become possible in months and hopefully in weeks."That acceleration is already being demonstrated. PNNL's smaller automated lab, called the Anaerobic Microbial Phenotyping Platform or AMP2, completed three experimental cycles in just 72 hours—a process that normally would have taken about six months."That normally would have taken us about six months … and we were able to do that in 72 hours," Mans said.The AMP2 laboratory is not being closed or replaced. Instead, the current 1,800-square-foot laboratory serves as an active prototype and precursor for the much larger M2PC facility. AMP2 will continue operating as a separate lab designed to run anaerobic experiments—those conducted in the absence of oxygen—while M2PC will focus on aerobic research.Broader Applications Beyond AgricultureWhile improving crop productivity is one important application, the M2PC facility is designed to support research into multiple areas critical to national priorities. The lab will advance research into biofuels, manufacturing materials, and energy technologies. It will also help researchers understand how microbes respond to environmental changes and how to design biological systems for biotechnology applications.As a flagship component of the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, M2PC represents a significant investment in using artificial intelligence and automation to accelerate U.S. scientific discovery. Dorothy Koch, Associate Director of the DOE Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research program, highlighted the facility's importance during the groundbreaking."M2PC will accelerate biological discovery and design," Koch said, noting that the facility is expected to conduct a minimum of 500 strain experiments per week, 100 microbiome experiments per week, and take a million measurements per month.Economic Opportunity for the RegionBeyond the scientific breakthroughs, the M2PC project represents significant economic opportunity for the Tri-Cities region. The facility will require hiring automation engineers, AI experts, technicians skilled in operating robotics, and specialized craftspeople to build and maintain the sophisticated equipment."We're anticipating that type of hiring," Mans said when asked about job creation.PNNL has already begun recruiting talent nationally and internationally for positions related to the smaller AMP2 lab, bringing automation engineers from cities like Boston and San Francisco to work in the region. The M2PC facility is expected to accelerate that trend."This capability won't really exist anywhere else in the world," Mans said, suggesting the facility could become a draw for scientific talent seeking to work on cutting-edge biotechnology research.Timeline and Next StepsThe M2PC facility is expected to open in 2029. Between now and then, construction crews will level and prepare the ground, while the building takes shape. Simultaneously, Ginkgo Bio Works, the automation contractor, will build the facility's automation components off-site so they can be installed as the building is completed.In the interim, PNNL researchers and the broader scientific community will begin planning the first experiments to be conducted in the facility, ensuring research is lined up and ready to begin as soon as the doors open.The groundbreaking ceremony included representatives from the Department of Energy, PNNL leadership, and elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels, underscoring the project's significance to the region and the nation's biotechnology future. News The U.S. Department of Energy Secretary tours Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Dan Hanson, Apple Valley News Now News Beyond DNA: Scientists Explore New Frontiers in Biology Research Dan Hanson, Apple Valley News Now News TRIDEC optimistic that Hanford, PNNL will see funding in national budget Robert Desaulniers News Big picture science: monitoring the Yakima River Basin News PNNL research could shape the future of fighting fentanyl COPYRIGHT 2026 BY APPLE VALLEY NEWS NOW. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
Woodside Health adds Phoenix-area medical office building to its portfolio
Healthcare real estate firm purchases Grand Professional Plaza in Surprise, Arizona
Rule breaking by just a few people can be contagious
People are more likely to mimic — or even surpass — rule breakers than rule followers, a study finds. But real-world consequences may keep people in line.
Toy Story 5, Backrooms and The Breadwinner Vie to Become the Second Biggest Film This Year...
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Often, people blame “data” for ruining Hollywood, when I’d argue that hype (which can often be debunked by data) is often worse, as you can see in these two headlines. To use a common meme, here’s how it started: and how it’s going: Earlier this year, I read countless (and I mean countless) articles (in almost every mainstream media outlet) about how Heated Rivalry was a huge hit and that it “heated” interest in hockey. But Heated Rivalry wasn’t a huge viewership hit compared to the hype: [ ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/you-cant-eat-buzzdid-heated-rivalrys) [ You Can’t Eat Buzz…Did Heated Rivalry’s Buzz Translate into Actual Viewership? ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/you-cant-eat-buzzdid-heated-rivalrys) Entertainment Strategy Guy · Jan 22 [ Read full story ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/you-cant-eat-buzzdid-heated-rivalrys) In this case, the hype (Heated Rivalry is really popular) belied the data (It didn’t make the top ten charts, meaning it wasn’t a huge hit.1) Even worse, every time I write about this, I get a lot of negative feedback, hence why I only sparingly mention the show these days or add lots of caveats when I write about it, but this just further cements the hype. But companies, and the executives leading them, have to determine strategy based on reality, not media coverage. The NHL committed real marketing dollars to a campaign that didn’t work. Sure enough, the latest NHL season opened to under a million viewers. At some point, you have to focus on what the data says, because real dollars are at stake. And that’s why we have the Streaming Ratings Report! To provide and analyze cold, hard data. Luckily, this week, I can be positive and take a look at a huge opening on streaming, along with a very buzzy horror film that customers kind of like, but don’t really love. And a comedy that tried to rebound on streaming. Today, I’m covering two weeks—21-Sep and 28-Sep—so we have a lot to discuss (nearly 5,000 words worth), including a series of film misses for Netflix, another argument for weekly-released TV shows on streaming, another sitcom tries to avoid the comedy curse, Netflix has two new game shows (one powered by AI), Reacher falling off the charts after a huge run, Prime Video tries its hands at the romcom game**,** a look at the WNBA’s big season, a big night for the VMAs on CBS and MTV, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of September 14th to October 4th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - Two Hits and a Miss Come to Streaming… Three very interesting films came to streaming in one week, and I like comparing them since they show the range of theatrical films. One was a huge blockbuster, one was popular, and one was neither. One is a horror film, a buzzy genre; one is a comedy, a struggling genre; and one is an animated family film, the king of the box office. One went to a tiny streamer (HBO Max), one went to a second-tier streamer (Disney+), and one went to the biggest (Netflix). So… If you just went by box office, you’d expect Backrooms—the $197 million grosser, and partner of Obsession for “YouTube Horror Summer”—to dominate on streaming. If you read this report, though, you know that horror films don’t do great on streaming, and that’s the case again. Backrooms opened at 3.8 million hours according to Nielsen, and had 3.9 million hours in its second week. Here’s how that stacks up to other HBO Max films: We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… ...why I don’t buy Backrooms budget… …two new games shows arrive on streaming… …another sitcom struggles… ...another argument for putting out shows weekly on Netflix... ...and a whole lot more, nearly 5,000 words more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you want an idea of just how much content you’d get in a full issue, check out this older issue. Coming Soon! Next week, I’ll be taking a look at the eighth season of Hulu’s The Kardashians, answering the question: will this show ever make the charts? If Mormon wives can make it, surely one of social media’s most popular families can as well. Also, Prime Video has a new horror show based on popular IP, Carrie, Netflix has a horror show starring Josh Hartnett, Below, and Apple TV has a UK import, Small Prophets. Plus a bunch of movies like Disclosure Day heading to Peacock, The Housemaid coming to HBO Max, Ben Affleck’s latest on Apple TV, Animals, and Matchbox the Movie on Apple TV, a John Cena action comedy inspired by Hasbro’s toy cars. The week after is even busier! I’ll look at another IP-based horror show, Crystal Lake, a new MCU show on Disney+, VisionQuest, season two of The Lowdown on FX/Hulu, the fourth seasons of The Diplomat on Netflix and Tulsa King on Paramount+, another season of Love is Blind, and four straight-to-streaming films: Netflix’s Sacrifice (starring Chris Evens, Anya-Taylor-Joy, Vincent Cassel, John Malkovich, Salma Hayek. Charlie XCX), Apple TV’s Tenzing (starring Tom Hiddleston and Willem Defoe), Prime Video’s Love of Your Life (Margaret Qualley) and Masterplan (Stanley Tucci) and a whole lot more, somehow. Long term, here’s some huge IP news: a Game of Thrones movie is coming to theaters, Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest in 2029, while Jon Watts (who helmed three of the most recent Spider-Man movies) is directing the next Star Wars trilogy, to be written by Simon Kinberg. I’m cautiously optimistic for both. It feels obvious to say that making good movies matters, but for bets this big (Star Wars is on a swoon, Game of Thrones hasn’t been to theaters yet), the quality has to be there.
Could Our Universe Be a Simulation? ‘Glitches’ at the Limits of Reality Could Offer Clues, Physicists Suggest
A simulated universe implies that the cosmos has an intentional design—or does it?
Cattle futures higher ahead of direct cash business
At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, live and feeder cattle were higher, optimistic about the week’s direct business and looking ahead to Friday’s On Feed report from the USDA. December live cattle closed $2.15 higher at $230.17 and February live cattle closed $2.17 higher at $233.10. November feeder cattle closed $2.37 higher at $346.30 and January […]
Supermicro Provides First Quarter of Fiscal Year 2027 Preliminary Business Update
SAN JOSE, Calif., October 20, 2026--Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI) ("Supermicro" or the "Company"), an AI, Enterprise, Storage, and 5G/Edge IT Total Solution Provider, featuring Data Center Building Block Solutions® (DCBBS), today is providing a preliminary business update for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 (Q1’27), ended September 30, 2026, and schedules earnings call for November 3rd at 5pm EST.
How ‘You Can See Everything’ can get an Oscar acting nomination for [SPOILER]
‘You Can See Everything’ is aiming for historic Oscar nominations, including in Best Picture and acting.
How Is Imanol Alguacil Improving Olympiacos
Imanol Alguacil has revitalised Olympiacos through tactical ball retention and defensive stability, securing vital victories while maximising squad depth to narrow the gap at the summit.
Nonpartisan coalition of religious leaders plans to counter voter intimidation on Election Day
The diverse, multifaith group is training all the way through the end of October online and in person learning de-escalation techniques and equipping themselves with knowledge of local laws and resources.
How to watch Vanderpump Rules Lisa Las Vegas limited series live with Sling
Lisa Vanderpump is bringing the glamour to Las Vegas with a new three-episode Bravo series. Here's how to watch live with Sling.
How to watch Vanderpump Rules Lisa Las Vegas limited series live with Sling
Lisa Vanderpump is bringing the glamour to Las Vegas with a new three-episode Bravo series. Here's how to watch live with Sling.
Senate Democrats launch first ad in Mississippi as their midterm optimism spreads in the South
Senate Democrats' campaign spending group is wading into Mississippi's Senate race for the first time this cycle.
Spurred by Pulitzer Prize-winner's visit, business leaders grapple with state's housing crisis
The capital of Georgia — a city of more than 500,000 people nearly 1,200 miles away, where African-Americans outnumber their white counterparts — bears a striking similarity to New Hampshire’s capital. In Atlanta, like in Concord and countless municipalities across the country, housing costs have far eclipsed what working people can afford. Brian Goldstone, journalist […]
Sundar Pichai: Google’s Frontier Imperative, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future AI Products and Businesses
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has little patience for doubts about Google’s willingness or capacity to compete at the frontier of AI. His company’s latest Gemini 4 Argon model — long-promised and recently delivered — beats OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest public models on coding, math, science, and knowledge-work benchmarks and has placed Google’s AI back among the world’s best. Amid chatter that Google was fine with good-enough lightweight ‘Flash’ models, Pichai pushed back hard against any suggestion that company is limiting its research ambitions. “We won’t do it any other way,” he told me in a Big Technology Podcast interview recorded this week at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. Pursuing cutting-edge research is costly for Google, requiring compute and chips that otherwise could be sold at a high markup by its cloud business. But Pichai said allocating resources to frontier AI development is “ground zero” for Google. “Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development,” Pichai told me. In our conversation, we discussed Argon (which Pichai says processed three times as many tokens as Gemini 3 in the 72 hours after launch), AI’s role in developing better models, the AI interface of the future, competition with OpenAI, Google’s partnerships with Anthropic and Apple, data centers in space, and the nature of his optimism. You can read the full conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, below, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice. Alex Kantrowitz: Google is back at the frontier with Gemini 4 Argon, which beats OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s public models on benchmarks spanning coding, math, science, and knowledge work. The conventional wisdom was that Google had given up on the frontier to focus on fast, good-enough models for its products. That was wrong? Sundar Pichai: Very wrong. Look, we are so committed to being at the frontier. It’s in our DNA. We won’t do it any other way. We’ve been thinking about the AI frontier for well over a decade now. The frontier is very dynamic. It’s very competitive. It’s very exciting. I couldn’t be more pleased with how Argon has come together. We took our time with it. We made sure we tested it safely and deployed it carefully. We took a bit longer than our other models, given its capabilities. Across the board, be it for agentic work, knowledge work, coding, creative tasks, Argon is one of the really good frontier models. The first 72 hours since we launched, it’s almost up to 25 trillion tokens used, which is about three times what Gemini 3.0 had in the first 72 hours. And we are capacity constrained as we are serving it. Excited, but there are always areas….. You know, the frontier is very dynamic, and you have to keep evolving the models. There are areas which we can see we need to improve as well. We’ll be at work on all of that as well. Which areas? On any given model, Argon would be across the board better at everything if you just look even two months back. But the space is so evolving. Even on coding, for example, there are pockets where we know we need to do better, and there’s clear feedback. We’ll make it better. The argument for standard models is that they’re already good enough to build great products, with the frontier valuable only for certain tasks. Meta built Muse with good models rather than the best, and Google could put standard models into Maps, Gmail, and Search. Why isn’t that sufficient? It’s definitely not how I have thought about it at all. We are deeply committed to driving the state of the art and actually pushing where this technology can go, all the way from transformers. That’s a journey we’ve been on. You will see us continue to do that. When you’re at the frontier, you get an earlier look into the emerging capabilities, earlier than others, which helps you better prepare for the future. We are fortunate to have a wide set of opportunities across consumer and enterprise. Some of our cloud customers, for sure, want the model at the frontier. The frontier models will be better at developing the next set of models in an era of recursive self-improvement. I would argue it matters there. Internally, we have definitely seen a steep point of inflection by deploying Argon to our developers. It definitely tackles problems which our previous models could not do. Being at the frontier puts you at the innovation frontier and helps you drive that as well. There is room for models of all sizes and capabilities. That’s why we did Flash, Flash-Lite, etc. I agree with you that you can develop very good product experiences with not necessarily the most frontier model, because they tend to be slower and more expensive too. But we care about the Pareto frontier, and we’re committed to doing all of that. You said developing frontier models gives you a look at what’s coming. What do you see on the horizon? What makes this moment so exciting is you build something which you think is a culmination of months of work, and you put it out. You already see clear headroom ahead. We’ve all been working on these agentic, long-horizon capabilities, but clearly the frontier is going to have multiple of these agents working together to do things. That’s an example of an exciting paradigm underway. It’s also clear to me that users, both in consumer and enterprise, will have access to some multi-agent framework for them, working all the time doing things. It feels like a moment of infinite possibilities. Sergey Brin said one of Argon’s core innovations was relying more on the model to help develop the model. Yet incidents involving OpenAI’s bots breaking containment and Google’s bots accessing a site they shouldn’t have suggest these systems still aren’t perfectly aligned. Isn’t there reasonable cause for concern about accelerating toward recursive self-improvement? There are three parts to your question. Let’s first talk about RSI itself. You’re right, Sergey mentioned RSI being a critical contributor as we are developing Argon. But to be very clear, today, in a continuum, we are pretty far from the end state of RSI or something like that. The right way to describe it is you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development. You almost have agents helping AI researchers in some automated way work together to build these models. It’s good to at least understand where we are today, and it’s super exciting. I expect that continuum to keep making progress as we go into next year. The second question is around safety. Security comes from defense in depth. You’re talking about alignment, obviously. We all are doing a lot of work to make sure the models are as aligned as possible. But it’s an active area of research, and there are clear gaps. That’s not the only thing we rely on. You have the work you do on alignment, but beyond that, we put a lot of effort into real-time monitoring as these models are working. Making sure you have good telemetry into what’s happening so that you can intervene in real time if you see unexpected behaviors. How you do that, the architecture with which you do that, how you make sure it’s all sandboxed and isolated in a way that it can continue doing its job during real-time monitoring — these are all areas of investment. Obviously, when we deploy these models, giving customers, enterprises, control, both with real-time monitoring, but their ability to decide where they deploy, what type of data which models ever have access to, etc. All that work is very, very important, and we are doing a lot of that. As an industry, we need to constantly up our game and take the time to do all this stuff, including dedicating the compute required to make sure you can safely deploy these models. The third part is: Is it all enough? This is why there are a lot of conversations in the industry, and I think it’s reasonable to be worried. The right way to approach something you worry about is early on thinking about what more we can do. As an industry, you’re definitely seeing increased levels of work on alignment, testing for safety, etc., as we deploy these models. The next step would be developing better standards so there are cross-industry standards of how we do these things, including the ability to evaluate using independent evaluators. If you look at areas like financial controls, we have accounting standards, we have independent auditors. Those are all the next natural steps for us as an industry to work toward, and regulation will end up playing a role as we go through all of that as well. Google pursues both language models and world models, while some other AI companies like OpenAI have focused more heavily on LLMs as the path to AGI. Why is world-model research important to you? As humans, you obviously perceive the world around you, and you’re taking all those inputs. Making sure these models are able to understand the laws of physics, simulate the world in high fidelity. All that, I think, are key enabling blocks for intelligence. We are working across all possible applications of this. Take an area like robotics. It’s not an accident: If you look at embodied reasoning benchmarks, Argon is state of the art. That all comes from our experience building world models. Inherently, I would expect there will be architectures which will converge all of this in the future. But for us, we view this as, today, this jagged frontier that is intelligence. We want to be at the frontier of all the possible approaches, and that will help us both drive better research, better insights, and develop a much better AGI model, is how we think about it. Some people argue Google should focus on selling its computing resources rather than using them for AI research. Cloud wants to sell compute at a high markup, while researchers need a very big computer to build the best models. How do you balance those demands? Ground zero for us is making sure we are investing in the compute that’s needed to be at the AI frontier. In 2015, I set the company to be AI-first. AI is that key horizontal ingredient across everything we do, all the way from Search to Cloud to Waymo. That is ground zero for us, making sure both for research and developing the models that we have enough compute needed. Beyond that, we have these independent businesses which each have their own long-range plans. They’re using those long-range plans to project forward, and we plan for compute for all of them. The cloud team, they have a business and they have a projection and they have demand signals. They have committed contracts. With that help, we can plan on a long-term compute trajectory for them. We’re fortunate to have this wide set of opportunities. There’s no company in the world which isn’t making trade-offs at any given moment in time. But the first principles we operate on is making sure we have enough compute to invest in the frontier, and that’s non-negotiable, and everything else works on top. Remember, we are building our own compute, our own data centers. There are long lead times. The compute we have today is a function of decisions I made in 2024. Even if you think back to a year from today, last year the agentic coding takeoff hadn’t happened. Today, obviously, when you sit and look at anything, everyone is short—not just us, other companies—and everyone wishes you had two times what you had planned for. That comes with the territory. At any given moment in time, we are planning for what we would need two to three years out in the future. You’re going to find some decisions you make may look suboptimal two years out, depending on where the state of the art is. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. The way I think about compute allocation is making sure Google DeepMind, both for research and frontier model development, is cutting edge in terms of compute access. After that, we plan for all our businesses. It’s great we can provide our compute to other people too, like we have done. It allows us to scale that up, get real tests for it in the widest application set possible, test it in the real world, and make sure we are at the cutting edge of technology at every layer of our AI stack as well. Ben Horowitz relayed on a podcast that Andy Jassy had said compute was sold out until 2028. Are you seeing the same thing? If today a customer is coming out and asking us for compute in ’27, that is incredibly difficult to do. Even last year we went out and leased some short-term compute to accommodate some customers and help them out. But yes, we are all dealing with similar timelines. Every major technology shift seems to involve overbuilding, from railroads to fiber. Do you think that’s happening here? It depends on the time frames you’re looking at. This level of build, if I take a long enough time frame, it makes complete sense to me. We are at early stages of the most consequential technology ever, and this is not like fiber. It’s not dark. We are using it. We are capacity constrained on a daily basis. The applications, the underlying technology is improving rapidly. But running a company, the way I work through the moment is you look at your demand signals. You look at your committed revenue opportunities that you’re getting in the form of contracts. You balance that with the underlying technical capability, or internally you balance how we are using it internally, the model trajectories. Based on all that, you take a disciplined approach—a confident, aggressive, but disciplined approach—to plan out compute. But when you talk about the broader economy as a whole, you’re having people operate with various levels of risk. I focus on what I can control as a company and plan through it. If your question is, can there be an overbuild? Yes, because you can have some constrained components. Remember, what matters is a set of everything you need to build out that compute. Memory, electricity, electricians…. Land. Like 2,000 components or more. You could get constrained at some point. There could be things which cause bottlenecks, and then you could have overbuilds. There could be external shocks to the economy. There are macro risks. All that is possible at any given time. But am I confident that the compute we are planning for, we will have uses for it given enough time? Absolutely, yes. I was in the room when you said AI would be as profound as fire and electricity. If you believe that, shouldn’t you give researchers the biggest possible computer, even at the expense of today’s cloud profits? We’re all doing some form of that. Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development. What you’re seeing is true already. But you want to be thoughtful. Even our AI researchers have some constraints, which are also good. That’s what inspires creativity. That’s what helps you come up with a more efficient algorithmic breakthrough, maybe to use less memory. What we are committed to is to invest what’s needed to stay at the frontier. OpenAI President Greg Brockman told me a few months ago that the ideal AI product might have no interface at all—just as natural as conversation. What do you think the interface looks like in the age of AI? Computing historically has been humans adapting to computing. With AI, it’ll be the other way around. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day life. You want to be able to speak to that AI when you want to. It has context. It can be persistently running somewhere, give you continuity. You’re not dealing with a lot of complexity. It’s natural. All that makes sense to me. That doesn’t mean it won’t have any interface, however. Nowadays, even on my phone, Gemini voice models are so good. I can just press the microphone button. I can just ramble. That’s why we call it Rambler. I can ramble. It intelligently corrects with my personal context. Even my friends’ names, weird names, it gets it right, even if it first guesses it wrong. It’s amazing. I’m not going in, backspacing, editing once I finish saying it. It’s remarkable how good it’s gotten. But there are going to be moments you will need an interface. You may want to entertain yourself. You may want to watch a video. You may ask your AI to create something, and you want to watch it, consume it. The way I think about it is, you want it to be as seamless and as natural as possible, and that you are not doing the hard work adapting to whatever the interface is. The technology is adapting to how you’re working at any given moment in time. When I asked Sam Altman about competition from Google, he argued that OpenAI was building AI-native products and implied Google was bolting AI onto existing ones. Do you accept that framing, and can a “bolt-on” compete with an AI-native product? First of all, it’s a very dynamic moment. We are all pushing each other. OpenAI has pushed us as a company too. This is not just we are doing something to them. Far from it. Yes, Google went into its own version of a code red too. In the AI moment, all of us have to respond with varying levels of urgency at any given moment in time. We are constantly building new products as well. Gemini was built from the ground up as a product—the Gemini app I’m talking about. Or tomorrow, as all of us are adapting to agents, are you bolting agents onto ChatGPT, or are they building it natively? How would you think about that? You can always put these questions back. I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as you want to build world-class product experiences that are AI-native and they are winning. Some of it is adapting products, some of it is rethinking new experiences. They will all be part of how you approach this moment. How do you expect to make money from these AI interfaces? If an agent recommends a product and I buy it, should it take a cut of the sale, even if that’s disclosed? I’m going to put enterprise aside. Consumers are going to increasingly value this technology. Take software developers today. Developers are willing to pay for these coding models because it really helps make them more productive. Nobody would want to code the way they were coding three years ago, or even the same time last year. When you’re delivering value, there’s value to be had. I’ve never seen examples where consumer products really scale to billions of users, where people are using it intensely, and haven’t had monetization to go along with it. If you’re providing value to people, there is inherent value to be had. The nature of it may change. You’re asking a scenario in which agents are doing stuff for you. At the end of the day, you will have commercial needs. The agents need to fulfill those commercial needs. The providers on the other side are going to see value in that. There’s going to be some mechanism by which it gets fleshed out. That’s what an efficient system does. But what matters is that you’re building those world-class consumer experiences. I promised myself one product feature request: Can you make Gemini-powered search in Gmail as good as searching Gmail through ChatGPT? What’s going on here? One of the exciting things we announced recently is the unified Gemini agent for enterprise, and we’re bringing that to consumers. These are persistent agents which run 24/7 in the cloud. We’re spinning up a micro VM effectively for every query, and from the runtime, the harness, the model—it’s all a headless service. It’ll work everywhere, and it has your context with you. You can address this agent whether you’re in Workspace, in Search, in Gemini. Agents are going to drive this unification from a customer experience, which people are looking for. When you have a broad product portfolio and you’re moving forward fast, there are always areas where you’re moving forward faster than some other areas. That’s valid feedback. But we are putting a lot of time and effort into making sure, as we build out our agentic experience, that unification and that capability works well across all these services. People have asked where Google’s equivalent of Muse or Dots is. Do you anticipate creating a new product to compete with them? Our goal with Gemini is to be a personal, proactive, and powerful assistant. That’s what we are working toward. You saw us describe the early versions of it at Google I/O this year with Spark. Effectively, already, if you open the Gemini app as a Pro or an Ultra user, you see Chat and Task, and they start giving you that agentic experience. With Argon now, that capability is dramatically accelerated. What we announced recently in our enterprise event, we are bringing that to consumers as well. Soon in Gemini, you will be able to ask something, and it’s a continuum. You don’t need to think about whether you’re asking a chat or an agentic task. It’ll just automatically do the right thing, and it can work persistently in the background securely and get things done for you. Already, empirically, when I look at what’s coming into Gemini in our app, last year you would have tagged them and most of them would have been chats. But a steadily growing percentage is already agentic tasks in Gemini. Yes, we are going to bring personal agents to our consumers. It’ll work in the Gemini app. It’ll work in Google Search. It’ll work in Gmail. You can address it, call it, etc. We want to make sure we’re getting it right. It’ll be powered by Argon, and we are very excited to bring it to our users. Google has invested and committed tens of billions of dollars to Anthropic. What do you see in Dario Amodei that makes you want such a deep investment and partnership? Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us this was a world-class team which was involved in some of the earliest GPT models. We were quickly able to assess that they would be at the frontier. We’ve always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We’ve done that with SpaceX. We’ve done that with Anthropic. That’s what we saw, and we had a chance to partner. Is your partnership with Apple to license Gemini for Siri expanding, contracting, or standing still? For both us and Apple, that partnership was about translating the capabilities of AI into better experiences for users. I thought Apple has done a phenomenal job of incorporating—they customize these models and build it into Siri—and it’s been great to see the reception. We are committed to doing more. You’re going to do more with them? There’s nothing specific to comment, but it’s a partnership. It’s working well. What have you learned so far about the feasibility of data centers in space? It’s a very exciting project. Projects like this remind me—I still recall that moment in the desert for the DARPA Grand Challenge, watching the Stanley car compete in it, which ended up being the basis for Waymo. With all these technologies, you’re at a moment in time where it looks a bit like sci-fi, but 10 to 20 years down the line, it’s actually working in a meaningful way. I feel the same in space. We’ve always believed in betting big on these technologies. Quantum has been a great example of it. We’re probably 10 years into the journey. Waymo, we are almost 20 years into the journey. Space, we are two to three years into the journey. It’s clear to me that it’s an approach which will make a lot of sense in the future. Being in sub-synchronous orbits with 24/7 access to the most abundant form of energy we have access to will make a lot of sense for this exponential increase in compute that we are going to need. Having said that, this is a challenging project. The team has disciplined milestones. It was a super exciting milestone to send the TPUs up to space. Sometime, as we are speaking, we are expecting a “hello world” moment from them. I look forward to seeing that happen, and we’ll continue investing here too. You previously said 25% of the code written within Google was written by AI. What’s the number today? That number in our world today is meaningless in the sense that every part of what we now touch is influenced by AI deeply. What we are tracking with Argon, for example, it’s been a point of inflection. People are using Argon to really go tackle complex projects, including projects which affect millions of lines of code. In the four weeks since we have launched Argon, we have seen a 30% increase in CLs, and more importantly, almost a similar increase—a one-third decrease in rollbacks. People are writing code more productively and better code with it. We are tracking it with newer metrics now. How are you dealing with opposition to data centers? If you can’t build in the U.S. the way you want to, where else do you go? We’re very committed to building our data centers very responsibly. When I look at our largest data centers in some of the communities where we have been the longest, I visit them, I talk to people. There are people who come and tell us their kids have gone to college because of our investments in these communities, and we’ve grown in those communities. To me, this is about doing it right. Engaging with the communities early, doing it transparently. We are committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power, and we cover 100% of the cost of our power needs for these projects. It’s understanding the impact on neighborhoods and making sure you’re working thoroughly to address them. Done rightly, you can continue making progress. But we are constantly taking feedback into account. I do worry not everyone operates the same way. People have been surprised by data centers showing up in their backyard. Those are all important. As an industry, we should continue to do better. But part of the reason, in a 20-year time frame, we are thinking about things like data centers in space is making sure we are able to put these data centers where maybe the trade-offs will be different. What unproven area of AI is Google working hardest to crack? Is it continual learning—getting models to keep updating after release—or something else? There are multiple parallel paths. You saw with Argon we have a million output tokens. With our Gemini models early on, we had a one-million context window on the input side. These are all examples of breakthroughs we are constantly working on. How do you think about synthetic data? How do you think about continual learning? How do you think about more efficient architectures? We do dedicate a meaningful percentage of our compute to these research bets too. It always goes hand in hand, including our world models. Those are all bets we are placing. Sometimes, as part of these bets, there are ideas that emerge which just make their way into the mainline models. Maybe we don’t fully talk about it, but we have multiple steps in these areas. Working in technology requires optimism that building something will improve the world, but those bets can leave real consequences when they fail. I recently returned to a town in El Salvador where enthusiasm for Bitcoin had given way to unfinished construction and something resembling a ghost town. How do you maintain the optimism you spoke about in your Stanford commencement address while accounting for those risks? I genuinely have a deep conviction that improving technology and improving access to technology makes people’s lives better. It’s been my personal experience in my life, out of which comes that deep conviction, optimism. But with that, I’ve always felt humanity’s journey is always about working hard to harness that technology to make it work well for society. The optimism is not an optimism that you just build whatever you want, whenever. You work hard to make sure you’re building technology in the service of humanity, to make the human condition better. That’s got to be the defining goal as we are approaching it. With that framework, I’m very, very optimistic. We are in very early stages of the kind of progress that we are going to see on many areas. We’re all talking about areas like healthcare. A lot of the progress is ahead. The ability to make things in a fundamentally cheaper way on many things where things have been getting expensive for a long, long time, discovering new materials, etc., which really bend the curve—it’s tough to step today and understand the impact of all that, but they’re going to be very profound. I’m very optimistic, but we have to be rightfully concerned about all the ways this technology can go wrong. Sundar, I know you don’t do many of these. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.
Almost iconic? Political violence and the making of symbolic figures in Brazil’s 2018 elections by Katherine Jensen
Ethnic and Racial Studies ABSTRACT Confederate memorialization is not limited to the United States. After the Civil War, thousands of former Confederates emigrated to Brazil where slavery continued. Santa Bárbara d’Oeste and Americana, in São Paulo State, long celebrated this Confederate heritage. Local memory politics, however, have become unsettled. This article examines local Black movement …
Senate Democrats launch first ad in Mississippi as their midterm optimism spreads to the South
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats' top campaign spending group is wading into Mississippi's U.S. Senate race for the first time this year, an aggressive move i