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Google's first data center satellite is online and writing poetry
The first TPU in space is a running a Google DeepMind Gemma 4 model and writing cheesy poetry.
UK Sports Network Unveils New Location, Format, and Talent Lineup for Countdown to Tipoff Driven by Jack Burford Chevrolet
UK Sports Network Unveils New Location, Format, and Talent Lineup for Countdown to Tipoff Driven by Jack Burford Chevrolet
Pixel 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL Hit With Massive Price Cuts
You know that we have officially entered the holiday shopping season when Google slashes the prices of its brand new Pixel 11 series with the largest discounts to date. You may not even need a trade-in at this point, thanks to these wild price cuts. The Pixel 11 Pro has been given a $300 discount,...
Is AI cannibalizing Google's search business?
In the Loop, Host Ejaaz Ahamadeen breaks down the market reaction to Alphabet's (GOOGL, GOOG) latest earnings and the growing concerns surrounding its core search business. Ahamadeen examines signs of slowing search revenue growth and how AI-powered search tools could be disrupting Google's traditional advertising model.
Motorola is officially launching its Signature 27 flagship next week
Motorola has officially confirmed that it will spill all of the details on its flagship Signature 27 phone next week....
Android 17 is on 1% of devices after four months, Android 16 on over 25%
Google has updated its Android distribution numbers with the latest update showing that Android 17 is on just 1% of...
Lenovo Googlebook 15 review: Your Android phone's new best friend
Despite Lenovo providing excellent hardware for Google’s new laptop platform, Googlebook OS will only impress Android die-hards.
Google is happy AI is cannibalizing its most profitable business
Google might have a clear point of view on the future of AI monetization, but the market isn't so sure.
Anthropic Is a Revolutionary Business, but Its IPO Is Still an Enormous Gamble
The artificial-intelligence trade is full of competitors like OpenAI, Google, and various open-weight models, which makes backing Anthropic risky.
The latest Google Home update goes way beyond Gemini and fixes your Nest gear too
This is a big update!
The Algorithmic Architecture of Authoritarianism
The modern Big Brother does not need a telescreen in every living room, it is enough to control the interconnected digital infrastructure.
Latest Gemini design comes to all Android devices, app upgrades file generation
A pair of Gemini app updates today brings the latest design to all Android devices, while file generation sees a big upgrade.
Google brings back app lock in Android 17 QPR3 Beta 3
The latest beta release also squashes 26 bugs.
Google parent Alphabet suffers nearly $500B Wall Street wipeout amid AI spending fears
Alphabet suffered one of the largest stock market wipeouts in history after investors questioned the Google parent's massive artificial intelligence spending.
Amazon cloud business accelerates but shares drop on profit miss
Amazon shares fell more than seven percent in after-hours trading Thursday following a quarterly earnings report that missed analyst expectations on profit and total revenue but showed strong growth in the company's AWS cloud business.The miss came as investors were already rattled by Google's own lower-than-expected profits on a slowdown in advertising and big spending on AI. Shares in Google-parent Alphabet dropped more than 10 percent after market close on Wednesday and closed down more than
Here’s everything new in Android 17 QPR3 Beta 3 [Gallery]
Google today rolled out a big Android 17 QPR3 Beta 3 with a number of fixes for Pixel devices.
Android 17 QPR3 Beta 3 rolling out with 26 Pixel fixes
Following last week’s release, Google is rolling out Android 17 QPR3 Beta 3 to Pixel devices today. It’s another big...
Google Home update should make Gemini stop saying ‘Sorry, I didn’t understand’ so much
Google’s latest Gemini for Home update targets a few issues, like one where speakers randomly blurt out “I didn’t understand”...
Chart: Google's employee count soars despite tech industry layoffs
Google's total workforce hit nearly 205,000 employees at the end of September. The hiring surge runs counter to Big Tech layoffs across the industry.
Alphabet's Cloud Business Just Doubled. The Stock Fell 12%. Is it a Buy?
Google Cloud's revenue more than doubled, but investors focused on slower Search growth and a large paper loss.
You can generate and edit Google Docs files directly in Gemini chats now
Editing files you generate with Gemini no longer requires leaving the app.
Google Home and Nest speakers getting seven updates, including for Bluetooth & audio quality
In addition to Chromecast with Google TV and Nest Wifi Pro updates, Google detailed what new firmware for Nest and Home speakers brings.
Google details new firmware for Chromecast with Google TV and Nest Wifi Pro
Today’s Google Home release notes detail what’s new in firmware updates for the Chromecast with Google TV and Nest Wifi Pro.
Google Sends Major Updates to All of Its Google Home, Nest , Streamer Devices
Google is back this week updating all of its Google Home-related products, from the app and Gemini for Home to the hardware it still supports. On the hardware side of things, we’re seeing updates for the Chromecast with Google TV, Nest WiFi and Nest WiFi Pro, and its Nest and Google Home Speakers. These updates...
Samsung just released a new foldable that you probably wouldn’t buy even if you could
Samsung has big plans for its foldable lineup in 2027, but also one more release for 2026. The Galaxy W27...
Samsung’s advanced sleep apnea detection is coming to these Galaxy wearables
Samsung announced a new, advanced version of its AI-powered sleep apnea detection, and which devices it will appear on in...
Motorola has already confirmed its Signature 27 flagship is launching in November
Motorola's initial announcement suggested it was further off, but the Motorola Signature 27 is confirmed for a November 2026 launch date.
A golden age of science is coming
It’s almost hard to remember, but just a few years ago, a lot of very smart people thought that science was in terminal decline. Respected researchers were writing papers with titles like “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?”, “Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time”, and “Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science”. In 1996, science writer John Horgan even published a book called The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. The fundamental idea was that the Universe only has so many insights to discover, and that we’ve picked the low-hanging fruit. It was the idea that Joseph-Louis Lagrange expressed when he said that “we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.” As the big ideas and the simple ideas get mined out, we’re forced to throw ever more brains at the mysteries of nature just to keep scientific progress going at a fraction of its old pace: It looked like science was hitting a wall. Then along came AI. It’s far too early to tell how much AI will eventually speed up the growth of total factor productivity. But already we can see signs of a speedup in science. Anthropic Founder Jack Clark assembled some of the hopeful data points in a recent lecture: [ Dror Poleg@drorpoleg "If you pick different parts of science, you see the same pattern show up: Progress is accelerating, and it has started to accelerate in the last two years." Jack Clark @jackclarkSF I’m speaking at the IMF in an hour about the singularity and why I believe it has begun and the choices we'll need to make. Watch live here: https://t.co/Hj9HzcXx5h 6:08 PM · Oct 18, 2026 · 21.2K Views 2 Replies · 10 Reposts · 123 Likes ](https://x.com/drorpoleg/status/2111882070376980529) Anthropic is accelerating its investment into drug discovery, and is already announcing some impressive preliminary results: [ BioTender@Junioryu136689 BREAKING: Anthropic unveils early results from six Claude-powered drug development collaborations. • 70% shorter CAR-T signaling domain • ~35,000 antibody designs • >10× tighter antibody binding • 89% less batch-record review time Still largely preclinical. Anthropic @AnthropicAI Over the past few months, Anthropic scientists have engaged in deep research partnerships with six organizations developing new medicines. We've also begun drug discovery efforts of our own. In doing so, we’ve learned much more about how Claude can support the many stages of 9:43 PM · Oct 27, 2026 · 11.2K Views 3 Replies · 24 Reposts · 205 Likes ](https://x.com/Junioryu136689/status/2115197821150495150) Claude also appears to be enabling rapid progress toward a treatment for food allergies. OpenAI, meanwhile, announced a possible breakthrough treatment for neurodegenerative disease. Meanwhile, Google Cloud Chief Scientist Pushmeet Kohli has a list of recent scientific advances that have been enabled by its new Gemini model, including breakthroughs in nuclear fusion reactor design, rare disease research, and quantum computing: [ Pushmeet Kohli@pushmeet Gemini 4 Argon is a step change in model performance. In recent weeks, it has had a transformative impact on the Science projects in our team at @GoogleDeepMind and our external collaborators, and helped make a number of remarkable advances across scientific disciplines. 🧵👇 4:47 PM · Oct 13, 2026 · 36.5K Views 8 Replies · 41 Reposts · 497 Likes ](https://x.com/pushmeet/status/2110049807385702623) But as cool as these stories sound, they’re just very minor, preliminary efforts. There are a number of reasons to think that AI is going to propel us into a golden age of scientific discovery. That age might not last forever — AI might still run into diminishing returns eventually. But the next few decades are probably going to be an absolutely amazing time for human science. The number of “effective researchers” is no longer limited The most important input into science is scientists themselves. Until this year, that meant human brains — talented, highly trained human brains. The number of trained human brains could be increased by sending more people to grad school, but only to a point — the smartest people tend to be sent into the hardest research fields first, and if you 10x the number of researchers, the average quality will go down. This constraint was already starting to bite, as Ekerdt and Wu argued in 2024: We argue that a substantial portion of the downward historical trend in U.S. research productivity is a composition effect resulting from self-selection in researcher ability and the dramatic expansion of the research sector…[W]e find that this composition effect has lowered average researcher ability by between 37% and 53%[.] And of course, low fertility was making the problem worse, because fewer children meant fewer people who were able to become future scientists. AI just blows up this constraint completely. If an AI agent can function as an autonomous researcher, there’s no constraint on the number of researchers in the world — you can just build more of them, by building more computer chips and data centers that enable the running of more AI agents. Whether or not massive hordes of agents can collaborate to solve individual problems much faster, increasing the number of agents allows them to tackle many different research questions in parallel. What’s more, these AI “researchers” can be trained incredibly quickly compared to human beings. A human scientist takes decades to train, and more years to reach the frontier of their research field by diligent reading and conversation. This is the “burden of knowledge”, and it’s commonly believed to be one reason ideas have been getting harder to find — by the time human scientists can get up to speed, they’re often so old that their ideas are no longer novel. AI just annihilates this constraint — it can assimilate the entire literature and reach the frontier of research extremely quickly, and it can also tell human scientists where the frontier lies without forcing them to discover that for themselves. It can also pivot to new research directions more easily than humans can. And there’s also a self-reinforcing economic cycle here. Because scientific advances enable higher GDP, they enable more resources to be invested into the creation of yet more electronic “scientists”. Now that doesn’t mean the amount of scientific research goes to infinity — there may still be some essential bottleneck task that human researchers are still needed to perform. There are some indications that AI’s progress on open-ended conceptual research tasks is slower than in other dimensions, and it may be that humans are still needed to provide some of this long-term conceptual thinking. I’d bet against this being true for much longer, but it might be true for a long time. Even in this most “pessimistic” case, though, the amount of effective capital that scientists can use to leverage their work just went up by a lot. AI eliminates the theory bottleneck Science proceeds by an iterative process of theory and experiment. The theory part of that cycle is typically short, but non-trivial — it took a couple of years after the blackbody radiation spectrum was observed for Max Planck to come up with the quantum hypothesis to explain it, and decades longer before quantum theory as we now know it was created. It took about a year for Watson and Crick to figure out the shape of DNA after the requisite data was gathered. AI will basically eliminate the theory bottleneck entirely — or at least shorten the turnaround time between experiment and theory by an order of magnitude. AI is an absolute beast at math. Recently, an OpenAI model solved some of the most important open problems in computer science, math, and theoretical physics, and no one even batted an eyebrow because that sort of triumph is becoming increasingly commonplace. One of those solutions was a proof that the Standard Model of Particle Physics could be mathematically well-defined — a problem that human theorists had so far been unable to tackle. Not all research relies equally on theory, but understanding novel experimental results almost always involves some important component of either mathematical or spatial reasoning. That part of the task has now been made much, much faster. And on top of that, science is now open to a greater number of humans who aren’t naturally good at theorizing. AI can read the whole literature Much of the work of human scientists involves reading and understanding endless amounts of papers and going to endless conferences and seminars. The purpose of that work is to understand the existing scientific literature. Understanding the literature allows scientists to do the following things: Come up with new ideas for hypotheses to test Avoid doing research that someone else has already done Synthesize approaches from different areas or fields AI can reduce this effort to almost zero. Consider this excerpt from OpenAI’s blog post about their new research into neurodegenerative disease: The team divided the analysis among thousands of AI agents powered by GPT‑Rosalind, an approach we call distributed biological reasoning. The agents examined a whole-brain CRISPR atlas…a dataset showing how gene disruptions affect different types of cells across the mouse brain. Each agent investigated a gene disruption, analyzed cellular responses, searched scientific literature, and proposed explanations for the results. Their reports were combined into a reasoning atlas linking genes, cellular effects, relevant publications, and possible biological mechanisms. The research team estimated that comparable human analysis and literature review, conducted one perturbation at a time, would take months to a year. The agents reproduced findings from human analyses while uncovering additional leads. Their assessments of novelty and scientific value also aligned with judgments from blinded human experts. These findings help prioritize further experiments needed to test the proposed biological mechanisms. Some of these insights point to new leads for understanding brain disease. [emphasis mine] This is one case in which parallel work by a large number of agents really does make a huge difference: [ Haider.@haider1 this is actually insane openai deployed thousands of GPT-Rosalind agents to analyze millions of mouse brain cells in 32 minutes, work that could take human researchers months to a year also the agents uncovered new leads for brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's OpenAI @OpenAI GPT-Rosalind surfaced a new lead for drug discovery: could restoring cholesterol transport protect neurons from degeneration? DCTN1 is a gene linked to Perry syndrome, a rare neurodegenerative disorder. In mouse-brain data, disrupting it increased expression of genes involved in 2:41 PM · Oct 21, 2026 · 51.5K Views 26 Replies · 95 Reposts · 1.26K Likes ](https://x.com/haider1/status/2112917197903540516) Not only does instantaneous literature review vastly speed up the research process, but it allows AI to make novel conceptual leaps from combining approaches from wildly different fields of research. AI regularly does this in math research, combining results, approaches, and theorems from far-flung places that no human mathematician would have thought to combine. It can do it in science, too. Much of scientific innovation, historically, has been “recombinant” innovation — scientists applying insights from one field to another. With AI, essentially all research is now cross-disciplinary — AI can read not just the literature on a particular subject, but the literature on a million other subjects that might have produced useful techniques or insights for the problem at hand. Superscience So far, all of the factors I’ve listed are ways that AI can speed up science as it’s already done. I’ve basically described how AI can send gigantic hordes of superhumanly fast, superhumanly well-read, superhumanly mathematically gifted researchers to re-accelerate scientific discovery. But it’s also possible that AI will enable types of discovery — and ways of understanding the natural world — that no network of humans, no matter how large or how brilliant it was or how long it had to work, would ever be able to discover. In a post back in July, I wrote about how that might work: What if there are lots of…aspects of the Universe that [are] too complex to understand in terms of simple laws, but not so complex that they just dissolve into unknowable chaos? It’s possible that we can reliably control these complex phenomena with AI, even if we never reduce them to the kind of principles that we can teach a grad student in a textbook… Another way of saying this is that there may be laws of the universe that humans can’t understand but AI can. I call these “cloud laws” — causal regularities that can be exploited by technology, but which are too diffuse and complex for an individual human being to either intuit or communicate… Perhaps social sciences like economics, sociology, and political science obey similarly complex regularities, and AI can help us find them. Perhaps there are physical processes — plasma, or topological materials, or aerial turbulence, etc. — that obey cloud laws instead of chaos?… [H]uman collaboration is bottlenecked — it’s limited by our ability to intuit patterns at an individual level, and to communicate these patterns from one individual to another. AI, being a computer, just doesn’t have this sort of limitation; it can work with vast, diffuse patterns without having to break them into pieces or simplify them in order to compress them into the tiny pipelines of person-to-person explanation… If much of the Universe turns out to be ruled by cloud laws, we could be on the precipice of a scientific renaissance. In order to discover cloud laws, AI will need huge amounts of data about the natural world. AI figured out human speech by assimilating essentially all of the text humans have ever written. If it’s going to figure out hidden patterns in biology, neuroscience, materials science, etc., it’s going to need similarly massive amounts of data from physical instruments. That data will be far, far more than humans — individually or collectively — would be able to parse, label, characterize, or model. But AI was built to do this. If scientists simply build huge arrays of sensors to measure complex phenomena like the brain, the cell, the economy, etc., they may be able to feed this flood of data to AI directly and bypass human cognitive intermediation entirely. AI would then learn about the world directly, and it might learn things that humans never could. This “superscience”, if you want to call it that, would actually go beyond the kind of science humans have done heretofore. Many of the technologies it yielded would be beyond human comprehension — indistinguishable from magic. But to the AIs, they would make perfect scientific sense. In any case, it seems clear that the scientific slowdown that threatened human progress will now be delayed — at least for a while. Unless humans have somehow found most of the actual exploitable regularities in our Universe, we’re about to enter a new golden age of science. Subscribe Share
Like 'The Matrix,' but real: Google's Genie 4 brings science fiction to life
Google DeepMind unveils AI capable of generating photorealistic, interactive 3D worlds with sound, dialogue and realistic physics, as Israeli rival Decart draws attention amid reports of a potential $7 billion Amazon acquisition
Samsung is killing another key Galaxy service
Samsung will discontinue Samsung News on December 21, 2026, ending widget updates and likely making Google Discover the default feed.
Your Google Messages chats are getting a ChatGPT upgrade
OpenAI now lets you text your ChatGPT Dot via RCS, with proactive updates and seamless conversations. Here's how it works and who can use it.
Google's plan to keep ads alive even when AI agents do the shopping
Google said that AI agents can automate shopping, but users will still want choices.
Alphabet, Microsoft earnings reveal surging AI demand as spending soars
Alphabet and Microsoft reported strong earnings fueled by growing AI demand, even as the tech giants continue investing billions in data centers and cloud infrastructure.
Google Earned More Than $100 Billion In Ad Revenue Last Quarter, But Is It Even An Ad Business?
What Google advertising business? To be fair, Google did earn $127.6 billion in Q3 this year, up a staggering 25% from a year before. And that’s practically all from advertising. YouTube Ads cleared $11.2 billion, up almost 10% year over year, while Google Search advertising grew from $56.6 billion last Q3 to $63.4 billion. But […]
The Key: Politics in Research a Danger to Innovation
Since the Bayh-Dole Act passed in 1980, the commercialization of federally funded research has contributed trillions of dollars to the American economy and made possible the launch of tens of thousands of start-ups, according to the Bayh-Dole Coalition. Inventions like Google’s search engine, tests for cervical cancer, lithium car battery recycling and high-definition video and audio are all products of the Bayh-Dole system. U.S.
Microsoft beats expectations fueled by Azure cloud business
Microsoft shares popped more than five percent Wednesday afternoon after it reported better than expected revenue and profit, fueled by its Azure cloud computing division which grew by 48 percent in the September quarter.However, Google on Wednesday reported that revenue from its cloud division doubled to $30.7 billion during the quarter, bringing it closer to Microsoft's Azure revenue, which reached $33.2 billion in the same period.
Google shares drop 7% as search business falls short and AI spending surges
Search giant boosted spending on AI investments to more than $50bn in the quarter
Surprise: The Google Xreal glasses debut at a Meta-beating $1,099
A price drop before launch? In this economy?
As AI agents reshape the web, Google opens Gemini and Search to more apps
A new developer platform will let businesses bring their services to Google's AI experiences, potentially changing how consumers discover and use apps.
XREAL Aura is coming in November with a special $200-off launch discount
Xreal Aura is set to redefine XR headsets with the full Android XR capabilities, apps, and games, plus a launch discount for early buyers.
Google adding more Connected Apps to Gemini & Search with new dev platform
Google announced the Connected Apps Platform as a “unified way for more app developers to bring their capabilities directly into Gemini and Search.”
UK’s Healey raises business rates threshold for small firms
LONDON, Oct 28 (Reuters) - British finance minister John Healey said on Wednesday he would raise the threshold at which small companies start paying business rates. "I'm increasing the threshold for Small Business Rate Relief for retail hospitality...
Critical 16-Year-Old UEFI Flaw Can Run Code Before Secure Boot on Network-Booting Servers
A critical 16-year-old EDK II flaw allows crafted ICMP messages to crash PXE boots or enable pre-boot code execution on specific firmware builds.
South Korea Google Apple
In this photo provided by the Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC), KMCC chairperson Kim Jong-cheol, center, speaks during a meeting at the government complex in Gwacheon, South Korea, Wednesday,
Further Thoughts on the Googlebook, in Comparison to the MacBook Air
I’ve had the Googlebook now for a couple of weeks, and I have gotten a chance to both use it on a regular basis, and compare it with the MacBook Air I have (it sports an M4 processor). One of…
Discord public server messages may be soon searchable on Google, but you can opt out
The platform’s Discoverable Servers are about to get a lot more discoverable.
Animals Starves while the Kardashians Miss the Charts Again
(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.) Before we get going, I’d like to offer congratulations to Jonathan Funke, whose suggestion “midflicks” won the poll for what I should call straight-to-streaming films which aren’t big or cinematic enough to go to theaters but seem too expensive for a TV movie. It’s so useful a term, I just used it last week! Now I just need to add this term to my data dictionary! Okay, on to this week’s issue. We’re starting out looking at Netflix/Ben Affleck’s latest crime thriller, Animals. I’ll also look at Disclosure Day heading to Peacock (it did better than you’d remember in theaters...) and a new movie based on toys. Plus, a long-time streaming flop returns for its eighth season...will it finally chart? (No.) Will anyone at Disney care? Probably not. All that, plus another look at new shows landing on streaming on 1-Oct from Reelgood, what streamer hasn’t had a film make the Luminate charts since August, Reacher’s long run on the charts, M_onster: The Lizzie Borden Story’s_ short run, the top shows in 2026 according to Samba TV, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. And I mean that last part: putting this week’s issue together, I assembled OVER 25 images, most of which are bespoke looks I made just for this report. Really, publishing articles like this takes the work of writing two articles: one is the narrative and the other is making charts/graphs. Let’s dive right in! (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 week of October 5th to October 11th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - Netflix’s Latest Star-Studded Thriller Goes For Glory The tempting angle for anyone writing about streaming film this month, like yours truly, is to ask, “Is this why Dan Lin lost his job at Netflix?” Take Animals, the Ben Affleck-starring-and-directing, Artists Equity-produced crime thriller that opened on 9-Oct. (Kerry Washington and Gillian Anderson are also in it.) If it did really well, then one could argue that Lin has another success on his resume. If it underperformed, then it’s another example of a Netflix underperformance this year. So where did Animals fall? Kinda in the middle, but that means it’s more “not a hit” than “big hit”. On Nielsen, it opened to 12.0 million hours, and here’s how that stacks up for 2026 films so far this year: Obviously, that’s not great. It’s both under my 15 million opening bar for “fine” for a Netflix film and 20 million bar for “great” opening. It did a bit better on Samba TV, getting to first place. That’s very, very good, though again, looking at the Nielsen data, it probably means that it was a light week overall. Luminate’s data is a bit closer to Samba TV’s, tied for 17th all time for single weeks since May of 2024: To top it off, no one seemed to like it. It has a 33 on Metacritic and only a 5.7 on IMDb. Both of these numbers could have been impacted by the stories about Affleck’s comments about using AI to make the film. Given the controversy, the film might not have been as bad as the ratings suggest, but it’s also not a bullish sign. All to say…yeah, on net this film isn’t a point in Dan Lin’s favor. At this point, Netflix’s slide has been long enough—going on since February—that I’m almost tempted to lower the bar for what a “hit” is on streaming. Post-February of 2026 or so, it seems like straight-to-streaming films just haven’t hit the same heights as they did from 2022 to 2025. Before we head onto the “Quick Hits” for film, I want to shout out a fellow newsletter whose articles I’ve been loving this year, LA Material, a new LA-based news outlet. For just a highlight of my favorite articles since July... I loved this article on Ghost Town, a group on Venice that clears homeless encampments. As a Los Angeleno, obviously I adore their articles on LA parking issues. Their article on illegal parking tickets got the City Council to address the issue! Also check out their article on people parking in medians. Check out their deep dive on what went wrong with the LA Jazz Festival and how it fell apart, or what’s wrong with USC’s finances. Finally, they wrote up a voter guide on voter guides for the LA General Election. So meta! In search of a city? L.A. Material is an independent news outlet covering the people, politics, culture and glorious chaos shaping Los Angeles. L.A. Material brings you intel on the city you can’t get anywhere else. From exploring how Reddit short stories became Hollywood’s hottest commodity to reporting on the survival jobs keeping entertainment workers afloat. And answering, once and for all, why the AMC Burbank escalator is always broken. Through their newsletters, podcast, videos, events, and member community, L.A. Material is designed to help Angelenos connect to Los Angeles and each other. Sign up now for the free weekday newsletter. Quick Notes on Film Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Disclosure Day, came to Peacock on 9-Oct, and I’ll admit that, after pulling its stats, I did a pinch of a double take. As I wrote throughout my deep, deep, deep dive on summer box office/Obsession/Backrooms/IP/superheroes, oftentimes the film media discusses films as “flops” or “misses” or “hits” without clarifying what they specifically mean. Since Disclosure Day didn’t make $250 million in the US or $500 million globally, it was definitely a disappointment by Spielbergian standards, who is the highest-grossing director of all time, and arguably even more ahead in adjusted grosses. But it did make $245 million globally on a $115 million budget, so it isn’t as big of a miss as I remember. That’s still probably not enough to break even in the theatrical window, when you factor in marketing costs…but it’s close. And it grossed a lot more even in the US than some titles with about ten times more coverage. Anyways, lots of preamble to say this one only did 4.5 million hours according to Nielsen, so it did make the charts, but on the low end. Here’s how it stacks up to other Peacock titles: Apple TV (née +) followed up their “success for them” Mayday with Matchbox The Movie. This one doesn’t look like a success even for them, but at least it’s not a miss. Apple/Skydance clearly tried to take advantage of the success of Barbie at the box office—let’s greenlight all the toy properties!!!—but of course, this didn’t make it to theaters. And it stars John Cena, who, as I argued earlier this summer, NEEDS to get his movies back in theaters. Anyways, this one has mixed-to-bad numbers. It missed the Samba TV and Nielsen charts in its first week, but did make Luminate with 7.1 million hours. That’s just enough to not be an outright miss, and about half what Mayday did earlier this summer. Speaking of Apple Studio’s Mayday, it ended up lasting five weeks on Luminate, which isn’t bad for Apple TV. On Nielsen, it had a three-week run, racking up 13.5 million hours total. Again, like Matchbox, the issue is the budget; I doubt that this viewership earned enough to justify that budget. Also, to be clear, neither of these films are “midflicks”; both should have gone to theaters. Toy Story 5 is not hanging around on the streaming charts on Disney+, so it’s not as leggy as either Zootopia 2 or Moana 2, and definitely not in the same class as Encanto. (It did make all the money at the box office, so Disney is going to be fine…) The Breadwinner on Netflix (from Sony) is down to 3.9 million hours in its third week. It only lasted for one week on the Samba TV charts. Netflix’s Doing Life had a smaller-than-normal binge release curve bounce, only going to 7.1 million hours from 6.0 to start, but it made Samba TV at fifth place in its second week. The Netflix documentary, The Widower: Til’ Death Do Us Part, also had a small binge release curve bounce to 6.5 million hours, but did make a second week on Samba TV. Meanwhile, Netflix’s Unabomber fell off after two weeks on Nielsen—which is not great at all—and Demon Slayer fell off after just one week. Over on Luminate, the two smaller titles The Swan: Behind the Mirror and Kill. Bury. Print both fell out of the Luminate top ten charts. The story of library film at the first of the month is the arrival of the Ice Age films on Netflix. Now, here’s a small example of optimizing your library that even Netflix could do better. Say you want to rent/license a new film series from Disney**.** A streamer could pay a big paycheck and then drop each Ice Age film on the exact same day of the month, the fourth of October. That’s one choice. In contrast, the streamer could have released each film one week apart, and make each one a mini-event for folks watching Ice Age films. Or even roll them out monthly. Netflix opted for the former strategy, and as a result, only three of the films made the Nielsen charts this week. The “Miss of the Week” goes to Tubi’s YA-ish horror film_, R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead 2_, which didn’t even make the Luminate charts like Tubi films usually do, or, should I say, “used to”? Tubi films, most of which are straight-to-streaming, used to reliably make the Luminate film charts (which only covers straight-to-streaming films), but a Tubi film hasn’t made it since August. The first Pumpkinhead got 1.4 million hours last year according to Luminate. As I wrote about this film before, it seems to be a bit muddled in terms of age: too scary for young kids but probably not scary enough for older kids. Speaking of Luminate, Netflix’s latest doc about a comic (expect more docs about comedians all month), Who Is Martin Mull?, flopped, getting just 200K and 700K hours according to Luminate. Three other film/special misses belonged to Hulu, including a standup special, Jamie Foxx: Take Care of Yourself, Neon’s latest horror film, Hokum, which made $17 million in the US, and a Family Guy Halloween special. (That last one was only 22 minutes, so it’s not a surprise it missed.) Finally, another Netflix standup special missed the charts, Mojo Brookzz: I Know You Lying missed too. I can confirm last week’s misses, most notably Paramount+’s Jackass: Best and Last, MUBI’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and HBO Max’s Evil Dead Burn. Television - I Can’t Visualize Nothing: The Kardashians Story Normally, in the mini-dive essays that open the Streaming Ratings Report, I focus on shows that do well or, at the very least, make the charts. Why? Because as I’ve said time and again, I can’t visualize nothing like, say, the Kardashians’ TV shows. Here’s the TV debuts chart for this week with a missing spot for The Kardashians, whose eighth season just landed on Hulu:
Texas Border Business and Mega Doctor News Record 1.29 Million Page Views in Three Months
Texas Border Business and Mega Doctor News are thanking their readers after Google Analytics data showed strong digital traffic for both publications in July, August, and September 2026.
Discord will let public server messages be discoverable in Google Search
Here's what you need to do if you want to opt out...
Discord Messages in Discoverable Servers Will Soon Be Searchable on Google
Over the last decade, Discord has become the de facto community space for gaming, and there are a lot of huge servers out there that you can find by scrolling through its public servers page. But starting on November 16, some messages in these huge servers will be viewable from Google.
Google's Android Registered App Stores program launches Dec. 1, applications now open
Easier app installs are coming to third-party stores, pending Google's stamp of approval.
Discord Is Making Public Server Messages Searchable on Google
Discord public server messages become Google-searchable in mid-December 2026. Adjust your privacy settings now to control what gets indexed.
Top 5 Research Questions Emerge at NorCal Health Symposium
Featuring cutting-edge scientific presentations from physicians and investigators as well as leaders from Google Health and Epic Systems, Sutter Health’s fourth annual Research Symposium highlighted the breadth of research underway across Sutter that can unlock new clues for disease prevention, earlier detection of illness and better treatment. Could Coordinated Care Help Catch Lung Cancers Earlier? […]
Here are the latest Samsung Galaxy phones getting Android 17 updates
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Google’s Genie 4 world model adds audio, more realistic worlds, and real-time steering
Google DeepMind released Genie 4, a world model with real-time audio, more realistic simulations, and mid-simulation text prompts, in research preview for trusted testers.
Googlebook should have been framed as the Chromebook successor, not a MacBook rival
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DeepMind's Genie 4 world model adds audio and more realistic people to simulations
Genie 4 will roll out to developers and Google AI Ultra subscribers soon.
Google’s next Genie AI model generates more realistic experiences
Do you want to explore a realistic AI-generated world?
CISA Offers Two Free Tools to Detect Security Misconfigurations in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) offers two free tools to help organizations find security misconfigurations in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
Android Find Hub app reveals how ‘Left Behind’ and ‘Ring your phone’ alerts work on Pixel Tag
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Donald Trump wants to rename the Atlantic despite Google's pushback
President Donald Trump spoke about renaming the Atlantic Ocean to the "American Ocean" at a rally in Mississippi on Monday.
Here's why data center campaign contributions to Nevada politics are rising
Political contributions from companies with a data center footprint in Nevada are on the rise ahead of a legislative session where the industry is likely to face unprecedented scrutiny.
Google Photos rolls out customizable redesign of your ‘Collections’ tab
Following the floating navigation bar, Google Photos for Android is rolling out a big redesign that lets you customize the Collections tab.
iPhone AI Images and Edits Now Have a Hidden Watermark
Images generated with Image Playground and some photos edited with Apple Intelligence will now include a SynthID watermark. Apple announced plans to add SynthID support back in June, and the feature is live in iOS 27.2. SynthID is a Google-created tool that identifies AI-generated content. It watermarks images and videos at the pixel level instead of adding metadata. Google says it does not affect image quality and is meant to survive cropping, filters, and compression.
Chrome 156 for Googlebook rolling out with 14 updates across sites, shortcuts, more
Google is rolling out Chrome 156 for Googlebooks with a slew of improvements and bug fixes. This follows the last browser update...
Gemini Live redesign makes it easier to add context to chats
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Microsoft releases emergency .NET security fixes for Google Brotli bug
Redmond joins growing list of software maintainers scrambling to patch compression flaw
PHP Issues Second Windows Security Update in Five Days to Fix Brotli Code Execution Flaw
PHP updates Windows builds 8.2 through 8.5 to fix a Brotli flaw that could enable code execution through automatic cURL decompression.
Fitbit Air finally gets 'Health Guardian' in a huge Google Health update in October
Google's a little later than expected, but the update is here.
Google Brotli flaw exposes cloud environments at scale
90% of cloud environments have resources exposed by the Google Brotli flaw as patches roll out unevenly across key platforms. See what risks remain
📈 Monday data: The bottleneck isn’t intelligence
In the AI Investment Brief today: CapEx updates and lease commitment breakdowns Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark recently said in a speech at the IMF that the singularity has begun: For many years, researchers and science fiction authors have forecast a future in which AI systems drastically increase the pace of overall scientific and technical progress, making things move so quickly that it is hard for humans to keep up. They call this the singularity. I believe that this year we have gained convincing evidence that it has now begun. This follows Anthropic’s claim that in August, 26% of its AI R&D was led by Claude, with a human supervising its work. In October, OpenAI posted 719 math manuscripts1 made by its internal model. Math and coding are two fields where a research loop can close without leaving the desk. But can the loop close in the rest of science? Subscribe The loop is real The idea is not new. Mathematician Irving John Good, who had worked with Alan Turing at Bletchley Park, argued that a machine smarter than us “could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind.” The Gödel machine, a self-improving computer that can rewrite its own code better than its prior, was first proposed in 2003. In 2025, researchers at Sakana AI and the University of British Columbia set out to show that this was possible. Their agents iteratively improved their own code through a feedback loop, resulting in gains of 30 pp on SWE-bench and more than 15 pp on Polyglot, testing coding skills beyond Python. The idea has since been tested in other labs. A Gemini-powered agent called AlphaEvolve found a faster matrix multiplication kernel used for training Gemini, speeding up the kernel by 23% and cutting Gemini’s training time by 1%. In China, MiniMax reported that its M2.7 model worked on improving its own agent’s harness, skills, sampling and memory. Over 100 rounds of rewriting led to a 30% gain, per its internal evaluations. In each case, what was being rewritten was not the model itself but everything around it. Is it better than human work? In September this year, in what seemed like a milestone, an AI-built agent proved as good at improving other AI agents as a human-built one. It did that in what appeared to be half the steps. But the result was inconclusive: the differences between runs were greater than the difference between the AI- and human-built agent results. Nonetheless, this is increasing the chatter around recursive self-improvement (RSI) in AI. Google’s Sundar Pichai said that “you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development.” Sakana AI published a paper on RSI through multi-agent collaboration, finding that after two cycles its system scored 1.2–1.6x better per output token than the base model across four research benchmarks. Ramez Naam challenges that view. He splits AI self-improvement into five overlapping types. The first four describe how autonomous the AI is; so far, only types 1 and 2 have been observed. The fifth type describes accelerating returns, and he notes that greater autonomy doesn’t guarantee a takeoff scenario. Instead, each round of self-improvement would need to deliver at least as much as the last. The results from Sakana, AlphaEvolve and MiniMax above might look like type 3 or type 4 autonomy. But in each case, the AI wasn’t updating its own weights directly, only the ancillary parts — the harness, the memory. And where Claude leads its own R&D, for now a human still supervises.
Google Beam Is Being Deployed At 20 USO Locations
This is the company's impressive 3D video conferencing tech.
CleanYourTV 3.0 Lets You Remove Ads And Bloatware From Android And Google TVs, Now Supports 300 Models
CleanYourTV 3.0 enhances smart TV experience with ad-blocking, compatibility for 300 models, and an easy phone setup, gaining 37,000+ GitHub stars.
Ebola scientists to probe Nigeria case origin, Africa CDC says
By Jennifer Rigby LONDON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - A team of leading Ebola scientists will travel to Nigeria to help investigate how the country’s first patient in more than a decade got infected, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said. Their task will...
How to Manage Symptoms of Heart Failure
(Feature Impact) Americans are facing a growing health challenge, with 1 in 4 adults at risk of heart failure, according to the Heart Failure Society of America. Additionally, approximately 6.7 million U.S. adults who are 20 years old or older are currently living with heart failure, and that number is projected to reach 8.7 million by 2030. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('JGFI_Article_300x250'); }); Managing heart failure is a significant expense to the U.S. healthcare system, costing the nation approximately $40 billion in 2020 and expected to increase to approximately $142 billion a year by 2050.If you (or a loved one) are living with the condition, consider these tips to help manage it.Adhere to the Treatment and Follow-Up PlanOngoing outpatient care is important when managing heart failure. Understand the treatment plan provided by your healthcare team, make diet and lifestyle changes, take medications as directed and keep recommended follow-up appointments.Pay attention to changes in symptoms and communicate with your healthcare provider if treatment does not seem to be working as expected. If their conditions are left unmanaged, patients can experience a range of heart-failure-related symptoms such as shortness of breath, fatigue, buildup of fluid and more.Understand Challenges with Diuretic TreatmentDiuretics help the body remove excess fluid and are commonly used to treat swelling, or edema, associated with heart failure. Your provider may try different diuretics, sometimes referred to as “water pills,” to manage your heart failure symptoms. However, intravenous (IV) diuretic therapy may be required for some patients if symptoms continue.Ask About Treatment Options Before IV Care Is NeededFor some adults, a healthcare provider may consider recommending an at-home, non-oral diuretic option prior to escalating to IV therapy.For example, ENBUMYST™ (bumetanide nasal spray) is a prescription diuretic used in adults to treat edema associated with congestive heart failure. It’s administered as a nasal spray for short-term use to manage excess fluid with the goal of transitioning to oral diuretic therapy when appropriate.Talk with your healthcare provider to learn more and visit enbumyst.com. Read the full Prescribing Information and Patient Information.Photo courtesy of Shutterstock googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('JGFI_Article2_300x250'); }); Important Safety InformationWhat is ENBUMYST?ENBUMYST is a prescription medicine used in adults to treat swelling caused by excess fluid in the body (edema) from congestive heart failure, liver disease, and kidney disease.What is the most important information I should know about ENBUMYST?ENBUMYST is a diuretic that helps your body remove fluid. Losing too much fluid can cause dehydration, low blood volume, and increase the risk of blood clots. Blood abnormalities may include decreased salts (electrolytes), and increased nitrogen, glucose and uric acid. The risk of these abnormalities is higher in elderly people, those using higher doses, or those who do not get enough electrolytes by mouth.You should not use ENBUMYST if you have severe electrolyte loss. Tell your healthcare provider if you experience unusual thirst; dizziness or lightheadedness; weakness or tiredness; fast heart rate; dry mouth or tongue; sudden pain; redness or swelling in your joints; pain, swelling, redness, or warmth in your leg; shortness of breath or fast breathing; high blood sugar; dark urine; pale, tight, cool or clammy skin; muscle cramps; confusion.Do not use ENBUMYST if you have low or no urine production or are allergic to bumetanide or to any of the ingredients in ENBUMYST.Before using ENBUMYST, tell your healthcare provider if you have low electrolytes, are on a low-salt diet, have diarrhea, diabetes, nasal problems such as a runny or stuffy nose or polyps, a history of nasal injury or surgery, are or plan to become pregnant, are or plan to breastfeed.Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescriptions, over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements.ENBUMYST may cause serious side effects, such as worsening kidney function and ringing in the ears or hearing loss.The most common side effects of ENBUMYST include dehydration, headache, muscle cramps, dizziness, low blood pressure, nausea, and abnormal brain functioning with certain liver problems.These are not all the possible side effects of ENBUMYST. Talk to your healthcare provider for more information.Call your healthcare provider for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.US-ENBU-2600110 googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('JGFI_Article3_300x250'); });
LLMs Recommend Far More Care Than Doctors
Sometimes a serendipitous study is just what the doctor ordered, especially when you need evidence to support your case on AI alignment.
Google appoints Anne Claire Grammer to Gemini mental health role | ETIH EdTech News
Google has appointed clinical psychologist Anne Claire Grammer as Senior Clinical Specialist, Mental Health, working on the accuracy and safety of Gemini's mental health responses. ETIH edtech news covers her appointment, including previous AI product safety work at BetterHelp and her academic role
Why Google chrome is always using so much RAM
Chrome has built-in features that should make your browser run smoothly. If it's not, it's more likely to be the fault of a particular site or extension.
Teddy Roosevelt Erred on Neanderthals
Just recently, paleontologists have found Neanderthal wooden tools (62-40 kya) preserved in stone.
Unpatched Tailscale SSH Flaws Could Let a Hacked Device Reach Root on Other Servers
Unpatched Tailscale SSH flaws could let attackers gain root on permitted servers from a compromised device when port forwarding is enabled.
Google's privacy policy now has a loophole for using your Gmail and Photos data in ads
The change sits in Google's updated privacy policy, which took effect on October 16 and was first spotted by Android Authority. The policy has long said, "We...
Googlebook is getting AAC Bluetooth audio and key fixes for Cast My Apps
As we talked about earlier this week, every brand-new platform goes through growing pains right out of the gate, and Googlebook OS is no exception. While we've already seen Google step up to...
Google's next TV gadget may do much more than stream
A reported hardware overhaul could bring Gemini further into the living room.
Science Snapshots: October 25, 2026
Three key science updates in one minute: Starry Night’s dawn matched to Jul 22, 1889; cold boosts lifespan via BH2/BH4; cluster similar-buildings cools cities.
Google’s AI search changes upended online publishing
Some publishers are preparing for a future without Google.
Unfair Links Launches a Link Building Service for Local Backlinks and Google Business Profile Matched Links
Unfair Links Launches a Link Building Service for Local Backlinks and Google Business Profile Matched Links Unfair Links Launches a Link Building Service for Local Backlinks and Google Business Profile Matched Links New York City, USA, Oct. 25, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Founded by Rollo Unden and Oliver Fish, Unfair Links builds local backlinks matched to a business's Google Business Profile, country and language, and is now taking sign-ups for its beta waitlist. Unfair Links, a new link building
Google DeepMind exec shares skills that can make graduates stand out
Extra-curricular activities on a CV show if someone has a preset for "lifelong learning," said Google DeepMind exec, Lila Ibrahim.
4 Android phone features you should never disable when using Android Auto
Some settings are better left untouched
Google gives Fitbit a major health upgrade with one catch
Some of its most advanced insights require a $9.99 subscription.
If you see this new Google Chrome pop-up, close the tab immediately
Google has updated the protection mechanisms in Chrome and is rolling out two new popup warnings on desktop and mobile.
I spent two weeks using Googlebooks, and I have 5 big concerns
Google should've billed Googlebooks as Android-powered laptops. Instead, it oversold them — and it's seeing the consequences.
I didn't believe this Claude wizardry could actually speed up my Google TV until I tried it
One prompt, less bloat, and barely any effort
Google Says Gmail and Photos Data Shared With AI Search Could Be Used for Targeted Ads
Google's updated privacy policy says data shared from Gmail, Drive, or Photos with AI-powered Search features may be used to personalize ads.
PSG – Barcelona breaks historic French record
PSG and Barcelona broke records for French viewing figures in their game on Tuesday night.If you enjoy PSG Talk coverage and want to see more of it, add us as a preferred source on Google to make us a...
Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown - Delta Chronicles 2 DLC launches October 28!
The Delta Chronicles 2 DLC contains 5 new missions, 2 recruitable heroes, 2 new technologies, 3 NPC ships & adds the Q Logs as a voiced bonus feature.
Google Health 5.11 rolling out with Fitbit Air Health Guardian, improved sleep tracking, & more
Google Health 5.11 is rolling out this week as a rather big update for Fitbit trackers and the Pixel Watch.
Google Messages rolling out Enhanced Protection mode against spam and scams
Following the announcement, Google Messages for Android is rolling out an Enhanced Protection mode to counter spam and scams.
Google Health Update to 5.11 Brings Several Huge Upgrades
A new version of Google Health is rolling out as version 5.11 on both Android and iOS. This fresh build brings numerous changes, like Health Guardian features for the Fitbit Air. It also greatly improves automatic activity tracking, gives more options for glucose tracking, and has improved sleep tracking. Even though we are only jumping...
Updated Google privacy policy says your Gmail might be used for advertising
Turning on Personal Intelligence gives the company more data for ad targeting.
Google Health 5.11 rolling out expanded 100+ activity detection to Fitbit Air, Pixel Watch
Google Health previewed improved automatic activity tracking, and it’s now beginning to roll out with version 5.11 of the app.