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Tom Izzo Unloads on Trey Kaufman-Renn’s Sixth-Year Ruling
Tom Izzo did not hold back on the court ruling that sent Trey Kaufman-Renn to Kansas. #Spartans
‘Expendable’ Buffalo Bills WR Named NFL’s Top Trade Candidate
"Expendable" $30 million Bills WR called NFL's top trade candidate. The post ‘Expendable’ Buffalo Bills WR Named NFL’s Top Trade Candidate appeared first on HEAVY.
‘It Was a Source of Great Joy’
A short profile of Tufts University faculty member Kristen Wendell
Triad Business Bank renews criticism of M&F Bank deal
Greensboro’s Triad Business Bank launched more criticism of the plan by Durham-based M&F Bancorp, to merge into a larger African-American-owned peer, Optus Financial of Columbia, South Carolina. M&F has rebuffed offers since August from Triad, which hopes to derail M&F’s combination with Optus in a transaction valued at about $105 million. M&F plans a Nov. […]
Science-oriented company promotes field for women
A company that makes laboratory supplies marked the anniversary of its Mebane plant by holding an event honoring the women driving progress in STEM and advanced manufacturing careers across the
Eli Lilly breaks ground on $5B Virginia manufacturing site
Eli Lilly ceremonially broke ground on its $5 billion Goochland County manufacturing facility Thursday, expected to begin production in 2030.
Nearly 100 cases of norovirus reported at Kansas elementary school, officials say
A Kansas elementary school suffered an outbreak of norovirus that impacted nearly 100 people, health officials said.
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory will develop cutting-edge nuclear magnetic resonance facility with $18M in funding
The project supports National Science Foundation priorities in biotechnology, energy, advanced manufacturing and health The National High Magnetic Field
How well have past GOTY winners sold?
We’re less than two months away from 2026’s The Game Awards, and what a year it’s been for fantastic games, including Resident Evil Requiem, Forza Horizon 6, Slay the Spire II, the Blood of Dawnwalker, and Control Resonant – just to name a few. So as we approach the end of the year, we thought we’d look back on our estimates for the GOTY winners of the past four years. In terms of revenue, Elden Ring (2022 winner), Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023), Astro Bot (2024), and Expedition 33 (2025) have generated a combined $3.8B via 73M copies sold: Let’s have a look, then. Elden Ring has generated $2B in revenue Elden Ring is a phenomenon in every sense. It’s sold a whopping 36.4M copies across Steam (50%), PS5 (35%), and Xbox (15% across console and PC). Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Elden Ring also just passed an astronomical milestone: $2B in revenue. While PlayStation and Xbox account for half of Elden Ring’s copies sold across these three platforms, they account for 57.5% of revenue. This – as ever – is due to regional pricing and the higher relative share of PC gamers in lower-priced markets. For example, around 17.4% of Elden Ring’s Steam copies sold were in China, where the game costs about 26% less than the price in the States. There’s an … interesting narrative going around these days that console gamers are only interested in ball-and-gun games and have the patience for little else. Well, Elden Ring’s impressive sales prove that is simply not true, and across all platforms. What’s more, over 9.8M people have played Elden Ring for over 100 hours, with nearly 3.5M people getting all of the achievements and trophies. For reference, 10.9% of Elden Ring’s PlayStation players have the platinum trophy, while 10.5% of players on Steam and 3.9% of Xbox players unlocked all the achievements. Git gud, Xbox players! Of the 1.5M people who played Elden Ring on PlayStation last month, 4% also played Dark Souls 3 last month, 4% played Bloodborne, and 3% played Sekiro. There’s those Soulsborne diehards for you. By many accounts, including my own, Elden Ring is one of the best games of all time. It’s an evergreen seller that will continue to be a cash cow for Bandai and FromSoftware for years to come. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Elden Ring has sold another 2M copies across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox this year, generating almost $110M. This means it’s outperforming many of this year’s high-profile releases. Even Elden Ring’s standalone run-based PvE spinoff, 2025’s Nightreign, has sold 7.8M copies and generated $282M in revenue. Baldur’s Gate 3 is another billion-dollar-plus banger Another cross-platform phenomenon is Baldur’s Gate 3, which has sold 23.2M copies and generated over $1.2B in revenue. About 18.7M of these copies (80.6%) are via Steam, 2.9M via PS5 (12.7%), and 1.6M (6.8%) via Xbox. Around 1.3M folks on Steam bought BG3 before it hit 1.0. The PlayStation version launched about a month after the PC 1.0 release, while the Xbox version came four months later due to technical issues around developing local co-op on the Series S. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Across platforms, Baldur’s Gate 3’s monthly active users have never dropped below 2M, including 2.2M MAUs last month (68.5% on Steam, 21.9% on PS5, and 9.6% on Xbox). And it still regularly brings in 280K to 400K players every day: About 1% of BG3’s Steam player base has played for over 500 hours! That’s a little under 200K people. Astro Bot is also an evergreen seller, albeit a more niche, family one Astro Bot, 2024’s winner, has now sold 4.7M copies and generated $291M in revenue. The budget, including marketing, is almost certainly under $100M, given the small Japan-based core team and three-year dev timeline. You can really see why the tides are changing toward less expensive hubs. Astro Bot is the only first-party winner on this list, but follows other first-party winners of The Last of Us Part II (2020’s winner), God of War (2018), and Breath of the Wild (2017). Around 46.6% of Astro Bot’s copies sold have been physical, which is far higher than the typical game. This makes sense for a couple of reasons: There’s a large family audience for this one, and physical boxes are an item to wrap when giving Astro as a gift. Astro has collector value for the PlayStation core (this is nostalgia-fueled platformer celebrating PlayStation’s history) Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Astro is another one of those games that continues selling over time, regularly selling more than 100K a month. It’s sold around 1M more copies this year ($60M in revenue) and is a popular title with families. We can see this using the Alinea platform’s MAU crossover tool: Astro Bot’s top #2, #3, and #4 games by crossover in any given month this year are Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox – without fail. The #1 title every month, though, is Astro’s Playroom, a pack-in with all PS5 consoles. For every month this year, between 20% and 30% of Astro Bot players also played Astro’s Playroom that month. So the free pack-in is a noice funnel for converting players to a full paid product. Expedition 33 sells 8.7M despite Game Pass cannibalisation Finally, we have last year’s winner – Expedition 33. The turn-based-RPG banger has generated $366M via 8.7M copies sold, with 58.8% on Steam, 35.7% on PS5, and 5.5% on Xbox. Xbox’s share of copies sold is this low due to Expedition 33 launching on Game Pass, where 4.3M people across console and PC accessed the game. A little under 700K Xbox players used their subscription to play Expedition 33 this year. That said, the game’s 1.5-year Game Pass deal ended last week on October 16, and we’re already beginning to see a positive trend on Expedition 33’s copies sold via Xbox (but the jury’s still out!). There’s understandably a lot of French pride behind this one, as France is the game’s #3 market on both Steam and PlayStation. Vive la France! One thing that stood out to me is that the GOTY winners aren’t $300M Hollywood productions made in the US. They’re mostly mid-budget studios outside the traditional AAA cost centres. Lots to think about there. Also, good games sell well; who’d have thunk it!? And there’s a whole load of them this year, with GTA 6 still to come, too. GTA just made the cutoff point for the VGAs this year. What a coincidence! Loading... Cool links and other stuff Our physical games newsletter from Tuesday was picked up by GameSpot, Eurogamer, TweakTown, and a bunch of others. We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up. Next week, we’ve got some exciting news regarding the future of our newsletter, so stay tuned! The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. Want to see why these companies (and many others) are subscribed to Alinea? Get a free platform trial! [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America
The labor union representing workers in auto, aircraft and agricultural implement manufacturing and other industries in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.
Science Lab: Dear Cowboys, run the ball.
Welcome to "The Science Lab", a place where football facts and in-depth analysis always triumph over feelings.
Alexis Levine presents theory for why only women have been voted out of ‘Survivor 51’
Alexis Levine presents her theory for why only women have been voted out of ‘Survivor 51’ and reveals a crazy, bloody scene that did not make it to air.
Grading the Buffalo Bills Special Teams At The Bye Week
Tyler Bass’s perfection and a game-changing blocked kick anchor a dominant unit. From field position battles to return-game sparks, these specialists have earned their elite midseason marks.
Partnership is the key to small business success
Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce highlights how partnerships accelerate small business success and regional economic growth through collaboration and innovation.
NFL might bring massive change to replay review mid-season
Broncos head coach Sean Payton predicted in July that the NFL would mirror the UFL-style officiating transparency within the next two to three years. “And I think every once in a while the benefit of this other league we have, I think quite honestly it’s been helpful for our league,” Payton told Jason La Canfora…
5 Startups to Pitch at UToledo Business Incubator’s Tech419 Oct. 29
Three of this year’s five finalists have UToledo ties, with ventures spanning space research, orthopaedic surgery, manufacturing and facility maintenance.
Australian treasurer says opponents want higher inflation for political gain
In a Canberra Playbook Podcast interview Jim Chalmers accused Liberals of wanting Australians to suffer, as their path back to power.
Iowa businesses recognized as top 100 US small businesses
Three Iowa businesses were named to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 2026 CO—100: America’s Top 100 Small Businesses list. The CO—100 recognizes small businesses for their growth, innovation and commitment to their customers, according to a news release. Original Group Holdings, a woodworking equipment manufacturer in Britt, was recognized as a community champion. The company…
Truffle business to host grand opening in Pittsfield
Truffles by Tarah, a Berkshire County based truffle business will be opening its first storefront in Pittsfield on Oct. 31. A grand opening celebration and ribbon cutting will take place at noon.
See what businesses are new and coming soon to the Georgetown area
Several new businesses have opened or announced plans to open in the Georgetown area, including Project LeanNation, Crunch Fitness and The Junction.
Zach Charbonnet Injury Update: Seahawks RB’s Week 7 Status Revealed
Zach Charbonnet was supposed to be the leader of the Seattle Seahawks backfield in 2026, but the veteran running back has yet to suit up thanks to an ACL injury he suffered during the team's Super Bowl run last season. Originally selected in the second round of the 2023 NFL Draft, the UCLA product spent …
Abbott to separate nutrition business after $385 million settlement tied to formula recall
Abbott, a local medical device and baby formula manufacturer, is planning to separate its nutrition business.
From Animal Camouflage to AI: The Evolving Science of Staying Unseen
Nature’s game of hide and seek is entering the age of intelligent machines. A new article in National Science Review traces how animal camouflage, advanced materials and artificial intelligence are converging to reshape the contest between detecting an object and keeping it concealed.
Lamar Jackson Injury Update: Ravens QB’s Week 7 Status Revealed
Lamar Jackson suffered an ankle injury in Week 4, and the two-time NFL MVP left the game in a walking boot. While this was originally reported to be a minor injury, the two-time MVP missed Weeks 5 and 6 and is in danger of missing Week 7 as well. Originally entering the league as a …
Catholic association launches online courses to equip faithful for mental health ministry
The International Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers launched two online courses to help the faithful recognize mental health struggles and learn how to support those who are suffering.
Political communications expert discusses Vivek Ramaswamy's controversial ad
NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with political communications expert Jacob Neiheisel from the University of Buffalo about Vivek Ramaswamy's controversial ad.
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.
Inside Amer Sports: Making and moving the product
Follow Amer Sports products from manufacturing in Romania to distribution in Germany, powered by skilled people, precise processes, and technology.
The subtle ways a lack of vitamin D affects you
As winter approaches in the northern hemisphere and the days get darker, our bodies are suffering more than we realise. We need sunlight on our skin to produce the vital vitamin D, which is important for bone and muscle health and immune function, but there’s just not enough strength in the sun at this time of year to do it.
In New Mexico governor’s race, Deb Haaland’s historic bid tests Democrats' political hold
If Deb Haaland wins New Mexico’s race for governor, she’ll make history as the first Native American woman to lead a state.
In New Mexico governor’s race, Deb Haaland’s historic bid tests Democrats' political hold
If Deb Haaland wins New Mexico’s race for governor, she’ll make history as the first Native American woman to lead a state.
The New Rules of Global Brand Growth
Last week, BoF, ESW and Shopify gathered senior fashion and retail executives from Thom Browne, Reebok, Alo Yoga, Harvey Nichols, Bang & Olufsen and more in London to discuss how brands can win back consumer spend, protect margins and localise in a climate where global growth requires more consideration than ever.
Junior nets game winning goal for Utica Academy of Science boys soccer in Class B 1st round
The Atoms get their first sectional victory since the 2023 season.
Prisma Health offers walk-in mammograms in October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Prisma Health is offering walk-in mammograms to make breast cancer detection easier.
NFL Legend Tom Brady Makes Clear Choice Between Patriots, Bills
Tom Brady ranked the 4-2 New England Patriots higher than the 5-1 Buffalo Bills in his latest NFL power rankings.
Defense contractor cuts ribbon as first in Omaha Airport Business Park
A defense contractor and manufacturing company cut the ribbon Wednesday on a second North Omaha location. It's the first in the Omaha Airport Business Park.
Bills Defender Sounds Off on Early Defensive Troubles
Christian Benford addresses Buffalo’s bottom-tier statistical ranking, citing scheme adjustments and roster turnover as the secondary works to mirror Josh Allen’s elite offensive production during a 5-1 start.
Transportation Secretary Addresses NBAA-BACE, Announces Major AAM Milestone
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy addressed NBAA-BACE in Las Vegas and announced a major AAM milestone: the first manufacturer approved to operate eVTOL aircraft with passengers aboard for market research.
Paul George Makes Celtics History With Record Breaking Debut
Paul George wasted little time making history with the Boston Celtics, delivering a spectacular performance in his first game with the franchise. Despite Boston suffering a 121-113 loss to the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday night, George gave Celtics fans plenty of reasons to be excited about what he could bring to the team this season.…
Pacific Engineering opens facility in North Omaha Business Park, lands Navy contract
Pacific Engineering cut the ribbon to open its brand new manufacturing facility along Abbott Drive.
Buffalo Council Considers Offers on Properties at Business Park
Buffalo’s City Council considered two offers on properties in the Buffalo Business Park. The first was for Block 1, Lot 1 with a counter-offer with minor changes recommended to the agreement. The council approved the counter offer. The second offer was for Block 2, Lot 2 in the Business Park. Councilwoman Myra Camino made a […]
James Webb telescope discovers surprising trove of metals around the Milky Way's supermassive black hole
New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope reveal a concentration of heavy metals near the Milky Way's central black hole. The discovery deepens a mystery about why our black hole behaves the way it does.
Memorial Health breaks ground on $18 million emergency department in Pooler
Memorial Health broke ground Wednesday on a new $18 million free-standing emergency department in Pooler.
Forge Nano to Trade on NASDAQ as NANO After Completing Business Combination with Archimedes Tech SPAC Partners II Co.
Forge Nano common stock and warrants expected to begin trading on NASDAQ on October 22, 2026 under the symbols “NANO” and “NANOW,” respectivelyPublic listing positions Forge Nano to accelerate growth across semiconductor manufacturing equipment and advanced battery technologies DENVER, Oct. 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Forge Nano, Inc., a leading U.S.-based semiconductor equipment and advanced materials company pioneering Atomic Layer Deposition (“ALD”) technology for artificial intelligence (“A
How GSN Doctoral Residents are Approaching Care for Military Women’s Health
A Navy nurse and GSN doctoral resident redesigned an Okinawa maternity unit, cutting off-guideline staffing from 18% to below 12%.
LIVE: Heavy police presence at Academy Sports + Outdoors in Humble as crime scene investigated
Humble police are investigating a crime scene at an Academy Sports and Outdoors on Wednesday, according to the Police Department.
Critical GitLab Flaw (CVSS 10.0) Could Allow Unauthenticated RCE Across 12 Years of Releases
GitLab fixes CVE-2026-110264, a critical flaw that could allow unauthenticated code execution on self-managed versions dating back to 7.0.
UFL owner explores St. Louis stadium alternatives due to Dome schedule conflicts
League owner says UFL is not leaving the "BattleDome" but is exploring other options for better scheduling flexibility
Brookshire Brothers opening new location with premier outdoor entertainment venue Nov. 11
Brookshire Brothers will open the doors to its newest Lufkin location at 6 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11, bringing an enhanced grocery shopping experience, expanded services and a premier outdoor entertainment
Electronic Arts Closing BioWare, Laying Off Hundreds
Around 400 people are expected to be laid off across Electronic Arts
Trump shuffles key federal panel ahead of vote on his arch
Four Trump political appointees were added to the National Capital Planning Commission, which could approve the president’s project on Nov. 5.
Former Lakers Guard Gets Another Shot With Western Conference Squad
Former Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bufkin, who spent 2025-26 with the team, joined the Utah Jazz just before the start of the season. The post Former Lakers Guard Gets Another Shot With Western Conference Squad appeared first on LA Sports Report.
After 75 years serving Monticello and Buffalo, Stellis Health plans to join CentraCare
Stellis Health says its commitment to the communities it serves "isn't changing" as it plans to become part of CentraCare. Shareholders have voted to move forward.
Supreme Court rebuffs Trump administration restrictions on medical care for transgender inmates
The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to allow the Trump administration to immediately enforce new medical restrictions for transgender people in prison. The decision leaves in place a lower-court block on the policy.
United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America
The labor union representing workers in auto, aircraft and agricultural implement manufacturing and other industries in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.
“A Huge Relief”: Stand Up for Science Celebrates Stopping Controversial Hep-B Vaccine Study in Guinea-Bissau
Following the news that the controversial Hepatitis B vaccine safety study in Guinea-Bissau newborns has been canceled permanently, Stand Up for Science is
“A Huge Relief”: Stand Up for Science Celebrates Stopping Controversial Hep-B Vaccine Study in Guinea-Bissau
Following the news that the controversial Hepatitis B vaccine safety study in Guinea-Bissau newborns has been canceled permanently, Stand Up for Science is
Guns, Taxes and Traffic Cameras: The Midterm Ballot Measures to Watch
Not every closely watched contest in this year’s midterms is about candidates. Some will ask voters directly about the issues. In 39 states, voters will weigh ballot measures, including questions placed by legislators and others lodged by members of the public who gathered a sufficient number of ...
RayNeo Announces Canadian Retail Rollout for Its Next-Generation AR Entertainment and AI Glasses
GT MAX brings a virtual screen of up to 307 inches, while RayNeo iO Smart Glasses puts everyday AI in view, as part of a full Canadian lineup with glasses starting at $429 RayNeo GT MAX RayNeo GT MAX AR glasses pair a 59° field of view with virtual screens of up to 307 inches. Built-in audio is co-tuned by Bang & Olufsen, and Dolby Vision is supported when paired with the separately sold Pocket TV Pro.* MSRP $629 CAD. Screen image simulated. Photo: RayNeo RayNeo iO RayNeo iO AI glasses put live
Scrap exports deepen Europe's aluminum shortage
Aluminium is becoming scarcer and more expensive in Europe as growing volumes of scrap are exported abroad. Manufacturers are urging the EU to impose export restrictions.
Winnebago health system breaks ground on 90,000-sq-ft expansion
WCHS states that the new additions will include 90,000 square feet of new additions and renovations.
Franciscan Health receives stuffed animals for pediatric patients across Northwest Indiana
Pediatric patients in Franciscan Health emergency rooms, pediatric inpatient units and outpatient surgery centers in Michigan City, Chesterton, LaPorte, Dyer and Munster will now have stuffed animals to help make their hospital experience a little more comfortable, thanks to a donation by The Eva Martin Project. Representatives from The Eva Martin Project recently donated more … Continued
How governments around the world are shaping what AI can say about politics
I’m a researcher at a nonpartisan think tank at Vanderbilt University, where I study free speech policy.
Stand Up for Science Endorses Dan Barrios for Congress in Texas’ 32nd Congressional District
SUFS endorsements promote candidates who will protect science and democracy, replace anti-science members of Congress in 2027
Why Coco Gauff’s appearance in Gunna’s ‘Pop It’ music video is much more than a serve
Her role in rapper Gunna's “Pop It” video emphasizes her celebrity across music and fashion as much as tennis.
Can we really live forever? The tech, science and ethics behind chasing immortality
From gene editing to cryonics to uploading our brains to the cloud, here are the ways we might one day live forever
Tennessee Titans re-sign Erick Hallett to the practice squad
The Tennessee Titans released veteran Jordan Elliott and shuffled their practice squad roster ahead of the Cleveland Browns game.
Illini Bluffs star commits to Missouri Valley Conference volleyball program
Illini Bluffs junior Emerson Eeten helped her team to a Class 1A regional title match as a sophomore. Now, she's headed to the Missouri Valley Conference.
Computer science student takes engineering skills to Neuralink
A challenging classroom project helped Mateo McKee land an internship developing software that supports the manufacturing and testing of Neuralink’s brain implants.
Suspects wanted for string of business burglaries in Fairfax County
Police are searching for suspects accused in a string of Fairfax County business burglaries.
Alyson Hannigan uses real ‘Buffy’ set pieces as Halloween decorations, including iconic Spike prop
‘Buffy’ star Alyson Hannigan decorates her house for Halloween with set pieces from the show, including iconic Spike prop.
Bills Have Made Their Feelings on Rookie Davison Igbinosun Clear
Jim Leonhard says Bills rookie Davison Igbinosun has earned a bigger role at cornerback, but penalties and technique remain areas to improve.
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.
Case of mysterious medieval skeleton buried in Roman-era sarcophagus at Westminster Abbey finally solved
A sarcophagus in Westminster Abbey with Roman and Anglo-Saxon decorations baffled archaeologists, but now a 150-year-old mystery has finally been solved.
State Volleyball Photo Gallery – Summit vs. Science Hill, Class AAA First Round
The Summit High School volleyball team suffered a 20-25, 25-27, 25-19, 25-21, 16-14 loss against Science Hill in the first round of the Class AAA state tournament on Tuesday, Oct.
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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.
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