Tootfinder

METR: Claude Opus 4.5 has a 50% task completion time horizon of about 4 hours and 49 minutes, more than double that of Claude Opus 4 released earlier this year (@metr_evals)
https://x.com/metr_evals/status/2002203627377574113

METR (@METR_Evals) on X
We estimate that, on our tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 has a 50%-time horizon of around 4 hrs 49 mins (95% confidence interval of 1 hr 49 mins to 20 hrs 25 mins). While we're still working through evaluations for other recent models, this is our highest published time horizon to date.

Folgen der Hochrüstung https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10165

Rewe testet Lieferungen mit autonomem Fahrzeug
Die Supermarktkette Rewe bietet an, Einkäufe nach Hause zu liefern. In Bochum startet ein Pilotprojekt, in dem ein autonomes Fahrzeug die Lebensmittel ausfährt.
https://www.

Here’s how I see it: we need the world but the world does not need Google. https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/115589890042809437

Ars Technica (@arstechnica@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand Google's AI infrastructure chief tells staff it needs thousandfold capacity increase in 5 years. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/11/google-tells-employees-it-must-double-capacity-every-6-months-to-meet-ai-demand/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Cowboys would put a lantern on their saddle at night so they could find the trail when they were far from home. This was early Saddle Light Navigation.

Unfortunately for Creative, from there it evolved to people not using sound cards, modems or optical drives anymore.

Nobody should be allowed to get out of fifth grade without demonstrating their mastery of reply-all.

did you know bash has builtin gettext support? i sure didn't https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Locale-Translation.html

@… I’ll add that later after I raise a seed round for this first

My thread was about how to understand that 3.5% figure. Here’s a great writeup of the rallies themselves and the important role they play in the larger anti-authoritarian movement:
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/no-kings-protest-october-2025-trump

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@metacurity/115584342649529214
A district court judge dismissed most of the SEC’s claims in July 2024. SolarWinds and the SEC recently reached a settlement on the remaining charges.
The SEC's lawsuit was flimsy, …

A century of glaciers melting, condensed into a few seconds. Impressive video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQWfDRejcPw/?igsh=Zm51d2Qzb2xtNHM4

Michel Galati on Instagram: "A century of change condensed into a few seconds. In collaboration with @glacionaut I transformed historical and contemporary photographs of Swiss and Austrian glaciers into short AI-animated sequences (Dream Machine by @lumalabsai ). Each clip shows the passage from past to present. The climate has always changed, true, but never this fast. In the past two years alone, Swiss glaciers have lost more than 10% of their total volume (source: Swiss Academy of Sciences). What once took centuries now happens in decades. And yes, the music is The Four Seasons by Vivaldi. An homage to nature, and perhaps a reminder of what we stand to lose. 📍 Photos: @glacionaut 🎥 AI Animation: @flashologo 🗓️ Period: ca. 1875–2024 • 🇮🇹 Un secolo di cambiamento racchiuso in pochi secondi. In collaborazione con @glacionaut, ho trasformato fotografie storiche e contemporanee di alcuni ghiacciai svizzeri e austriaci in brevi sequenze animate con l’intelligenza artificiale (Dream Machine di @lumalabsai). Ogni clip mostra il passaggio dal passato al presente. Il clima è sempre cambiato, è vero, ma mai così rapidamente. Negli ultimi due anni i ghiacciai svizzeri hanno perso oltre il 10% del loro volume (fonte: Swiss Academy of Sciences). Ciò che un tempo accadeva in secoli, oggi avviene in decenni. E sì, la musica è Le Quattro Stagioni di Vivaldi. Un omaggio alla natura e, forse, un promemoria di ciò che rischiamo di perdere. 📍 Foto: @glacionaut 🎥 Animazioni AI: @flashologo 🗓️ Periodo: ca. 1875–2024 • • #ai #dreammachine #ray3 #imagetovideo #glaciers #switzerland #austria #climatchange #history"
44K likes, 814 comments - flashologo on October 28, 2025: "A century of change condensed into a few seconds. In collaboration with @glacionaut I transformed historical and contemporary photographs of Swiss and Austrian glaciers into short AI-animated sequences (Dream Machine by @lumalabsai ). Each clip shows the passage from past to present. The climate has always changed, true, but never this fast. In the past two years alone, Swiss glaciers have lost more than 10% of their total volume (sou…

Pro-Tipp: Wenn ihr irgendwo lest, dass Cookies kleine Textdateien sind, dann müsst ihr eigentlich nicht mehr weiterlesen. Alles weitere ist dann meistens auch falsch.
"Cookies sind kleine Textdateien, die Websites speichern, um Informationen über ihre Nutzerinnen und Nutzer zu sammeln. Dafür ist häufig die Einwilligung der Nutzer erforderlich. Bestimmte Aktivitäten, die harmlos und für die Verwaltung einer Website einfach nötig seien, sollten künftig keine Zustimmung der Nutzer e…

For the first time, Russia reportedly sends oil shipment to Georgia's new refinery: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/21/for-the-first-time-russia.html

As I said previously, I do, do ❤️ ridges... This was six days ago, on almost the last day of autumn (meanwhile it's all white)...
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #Hiking

@… it’s also National Absurdity Day. Pretty sure the two might be related.

Guidelines for the design of #fileformats by @…
https://lukas-pro…

Many digital accessibility practitioners are used to searching for stuff about NVDA and getting results for Nvidia instead, but today I see Nvidia’s earnings tending and I glance at it and think, “Whoah, when did NV Access get such a big donation?”

The U.S. Secret Service on Thursday discovered a suspicious hunting stand near Palm Beach International Airport
with a direct sight line to where Donald Trump exits Air Force One.
The FBI is now leading an investigation into the discovery, Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, said in a statement

Secret Service discovers hunting stand with direct sight line to Trump's Air Force One exit in Florida
The U.S. Secret Service on Thursday discovered a suspicious hunting stand near Palm Beach International Airport with a direct sight line to where President Donald Trump exits Air Force One, the agency confirmed to NBC News on Sunday

'Accept that quality matters more than velocity.
Measure actual resource usage, not features shipped.
Make efficiency a promotion criterion. Reward engineers who reduce resource usage. Penalize those who increase it without a corresponding value.
Stop hiding behind abstractions.
Teach fundamental engineering principles again.'
From: @…

Listening to #InOurTime on the Time Machine, I am asking myself whether #AI #LLM users are choosing to become Eloi, are choosing to let their intellects atrophy, by delegating their creative and critical faculties t…

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Time Machine (Archive Episode)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science and ideas in HG Wells' story of time travel.

Anybody familiar with the details of how thread local storage on aarch64 is implemented abi wise?
Like if I'm working on a bare metal embedded platform with two cores and i want some data to be private per core using gcc thread local attributes how do i actually make that work so accesses to that data get a pointer to a per core context object and look it up as an offset into it etc?

Diese "Lag/Fiel früher mehr Schnee" kommen jetzt auch jedes Jahr, oder?
#Schnee #Winter #Weihnachten

Aligned, Multiple-transient Events in the First #PalomarSkySurvey / Transients in the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-I) may be associated with nuclear testing and reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/ae0afe / https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21620-3 -> Unexpected patterns in historical astronomical observations: https://www.su.se/english/news/unexpected-patterns-in-historical-astronomical-observations-1.855042 -> summary of why these papers are doubtful: https://x.com/MickWest/status/1980690132543107204 - links to deep discussions.

"America Must Reject Trump’s Corrupt Foreign Policy.
A call to action as Trump pressures Ukraine to capitulate to Russia"
https://www.avindman.com/p/america-must-reject-trumps-corrupt?utm_campaign=post&showWelcomeO…

Gott so: „Ich glaub, sie brauchen noch ein Zeichen.“

Dorts! I assume he's still over there on Twitter threatening to spill the beans about all the sordid back stage goings-on at #TOTP but never actually spilling any beans at all.

Kicking off EuroSky Live #EuroSkyLive

« Des ponctions sur les richesses » https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10164

Heute auf dem Heimweg zum ersten Mal den Anti-Paparazzi-Loop-Schal (https://urban-privacy.com/products/anti-paparazzi-loopschal-i-bio-premium-unisex-schlauchschal-mit-reflektierenden-print-gegen-blitzlic…

Thought I'd briefly do a list of my favorite EPs of 2025, maybe 10 or 20. How tough could that be to narrow down? (Famous last words). During the year, I keep a list of all the EPs, demos and singles I listen to and like. Over 300 total of those this year, wow. Okay, I cut out the demos and singles. That left around 200 EPs. So I was like, okay, I'll focus on JUST the ones I mentioned here on Mastodon. 90 of those. FUCK! 🤣

#Tropenwälder erholen sich nur langsam. Eine neue Studie kommt zu dem Schluss, dass es mindestens 20 Jahre dauert, bis abgeholzte Flächen wieder funktionierende #Ökosysteme bilden.
Entscheidend ist die Rückkehr fruchtfressender Tiere, die Samen verbreiten. Doch viele Wälder w…

Natürliche Erholung tropischer Wälder braucht Jahrzehnte
Weltweit schrumpfen die Tropenwälder - mit verheerenden Folgen für den Klimawandel. Eine neue Studie zeigt: Sind die Flächen erst mal abgeholzt, dauert es mindestens 20 Jahre, bis sie sich wieder erholen.

The Mighty Nien show is fine. I don't think we are getting much value spending so much time on how all the characters meet. I know they got two seasons but they are still so short.
#criticalRole

Disabling One Bridge Could Shatter Russia’s War Machine (and It’s Not the Kerch) | Hudson Institute
https://www.hudson.org/disabling-one-bridge-could-shatter-russias-war-machine-its-not-kerch-luke-coffey-can-kasapoglu

@… :-(
Good to see that NetShield works, but yeah, it sucks.
I can send you a PDF if it helps…

@… :-(
Good to see that NetShield works, but yeah, it sucks.
I can send you a PDF if it helps…

Russland begründet Wahl von Budapest als Ort für Gipfeltreffen
Die russische Regierung begründet die in der EU umstrittene Auswahl von Budapest als Ort des geplanten Treffens zwischen Staatschef Wladimir Putin und US-Präsident Donald Trump. Der ungarische Ministerpräsident Viktor Orban habe ein gutes Verhältnis zu beiden Seiten, sagt Kreml-Sprecher Dmitri Peskow. Orban pflege "recht herzliche Beziehungen zu Präsident Trump un…
📑

Ukraine-Liveblog: ++ Außenminister bereiten Trump-Putin-Treffen vor ++
US-Außenminister Rubio und sein russischer Amtskollege Lawrow haben zur Vorbereitung eines möglichen Präsidententreffens telefoniert. Die Bundesregierung erwartet vom EU-Gipfel ein "klares Signal der Unterstützung" für die Ukraine.

IAB moves its annual NewFronts up to March from late April/early May and adds a creator upfront called CreatorFronts, scheduled for September 15 (Bill Bradley/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/iab-shifts-newfronts-calendar-adds-creator-upfr…

IAB Shifts NewFronts Calendar, Adds Creator Upfront
The NewFronts are moving to earlier in the year.

Trump's plan for Ukraine probably sounded better in the original Russian.

Ein Epochenbruch in umgekehrter Richtung: Gorbatschow suchte Anschluss an den Westen, Trump sucht ihn bei Putin. Europas „zivilisatorische Auslöschung“ wird ausgerufen, der „Widerstand“ gegen Europa soll wachsen. Eine Allianz der Autokraten – mit Ansage. #Trump #EU

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music
The Grubby Mitts:
🎵 The Dogs
#TheGrubbyMitts
https://grubbymittsband.bandcamp.com/track/the-dogs
https://open.spotify.com/track/4X2qS6h61wNpEu762kjF08

The @… is down, and nobody knows why
#archive #archiveorgdown

"South Korea sets 3.5 million heat pump target in national decarbonization push"
#SouthKorea #Energy #HeatPumps

South Korea sets 3.5 million heat pump target in national decarbonization push
The South Korean government says it will deploy incentives, legal changes and industry backing to scale heat pump adoption nationwide, aiming to cut emissions from fossil fuel–dependent heating by the mid-2030s.

Here's a radical transport idea...
For every two lane road, turn one lane into a segregated two lane cycle route, and make the other one a contraflow motor vehicle lane.
Watch many car drivers switch to cycling, and RTAs drop. Short distance travel times will be reduced for many.
And I say all this as both a car driver and a cycle rider.
#Transport #Cars #Bikes

If A Door Opens, Do Not Worship The Door

More framework added. Dresser shelf/draws and the closet taking some shape.
The varnish/paint arrived and a test shows it way too dark. Almost black to my eyes in that dark room. So some other sample tins ordered. Hopefully one of them will be closer.

phpc.social is now running on Mastodon 4.5.2, released around 15 hours ago.
#mastoadmin

Ser der lige så fint ud hos jer? 🥰

La « Russie se prépare Š une confrontation avec nos pays d’ici 2030 » - Rah Merde, fait chier !!!!
#guerre

Another one of those days on which I spend an hour trying to get screen recording to work in OBS, and it just won't.
Screen sharing in Chromium just works...
So no live streams for the time being, sorry.

#pastpuzzle 175
🟩🟩🟥🟩 (-20)
🟩🟩🟥🟩 (-10)
🟩🟩🟩🟩 (0)
▪️▪️▪️▪️
3/4 🥉
https://www.pastpuzzle.de

Un train stationne Š Pont de Sèvres vers Mairie de Montreuil en raison d'une manoeuvre de train retardée .
🤖 21/11 23:49

🥱¼🥱
mrrrgnnn tootles 🖖 fedizens
☕☕(☕)

🗳️🇺🇸 Hey, Maine! 2 weeks from tomorrow (Nov 4) you’ve got a referendum that could shape elections for years. It may be an off-year but the outcome will sway every election from now on.
Bipartisan info at https://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Sample_Ballot…

Evakuierung am Hauptbahnhof #Stuttgart - ein verdächtiger Gegenstand ist laut Polizei der Grund.
https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/h…

Hauptbahnhof Stuttgart wird evakuiert
Der Stuttgarter Hauptbahnhof wird in diesen Minuten evakuiert. Das bestätigte die Polizei dem SWR am Samstagabend. Ein verdächtiger Gegenstand sei gefunden worden. Mehr dazu in Kürze.

Schade. Auch der aktuelle Kernel hat noch Probleme, wenn man #Firefox mit #IntelArc nutzen möchte (#LunarLake). Am Anfang läuft alles OK, aber mit der Zeit reagiert alles immer langsam…

Scoop: Ted Cruz's phone records targeted by Jack Smith (Stef W. Kight/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/21/trump-investigation-smith-cruz-phone-records-subpoena
http://www.memeorandum.com/251020/p145#a251020p145

EuGH: Polizei darf DNA- und Biometriedaten Verdächtiger unterschiedslos erheben
Ermittler dürfen laut einem EuGH-Urteil auf Basis interner Vorschriften entscheiden, ob sie die biometrischen und genetischen Daten aufgabenbezogen speichern.

Die Tribute von Big Agro https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10162

I have no cuddle buddy atm :(
Simulated snuggling it is...
(pillows shoves against me)

@… *me, 1000 years later, hooked up to a life-extension machine, still responding to GitHub issues opened in 2020*

Bret Taylor says his AI agent startup Sierra has hit $100M in ARR, after launching in February 2024, up from about $20M this time last year (Alex Heath/Sources)
https://sources.news/p/sierras-revenue-flex

Sierra's revenue flex
ARR is the new AI startup recruiting pitch. Also: Harvey's Winston Weinberg this week on ACCESS.

The cyber news machine never stops cranking away, so check out today's Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you should know, including
--The US, UK, and Australia sanction Russian bulletproof hosting providers,
--Alice Guo sentenced to life for running scam compound,
--Samourai Wallet operator sentenced to four years,
--SK Telecom rejects breach mediation proposal,
--USBP is massively surveilling Americans,
--Trump to preempt state AI …

The US, UK, and Australia sanction Russian bulletproof hosting providers
Alice Guo sentenced to life for running scam compound, Samourai Wallet operator sentenced to four years, SK Telecom rejects breach mediation proposal, USBP is massively surveilling Americans, Trump to preempt state AI safety laws, Eternidade Stealer gets more aggressive in Brazil, much more

Only in the Netherlands?
Car driver gets 31st fine for holding a phone in his hand while driving. Police: "Yeah, that's why we had a serious conversation with him; next time, he may get obligatory education".
That's it. Just the regular fine. See you next time. Who cares?
https://nos.nl/l/2591244

Hardleerse weggebruiker krijgt meer dan 30 boetes voor vasthouden telefoon
De politie hield gisteren een controle in de provincie Utrecht, onder meer met een touringcar. Tachtig mensen werden betrapt met een telefoon in de hand.

Russian drone attacks kill 4, injure 16 in Sumy and Chernihiv oblasts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/21/russian-drone-attacks-kill-injure.html

On Wednesday night, Nvidia released its highly anticipated/dreaded quarterly earnings report
— and Wall Street let out a sigh of relief,
— at least initially.
The multitrillion dollar chipmaker at the center of the AI boom reported
a ludicrous $57 billion in quarterly revenue,
netting it nearly $32 billion in profit.
Compared to the same quarter from the year before,
it amounted to a 62 percent surge in sales,
and a further 65 percent increase …

Oops! Nvidia’s Stock Is Falling Again After Its “Blowout” Earnings Report
After dazzling Wall Street with a "blowout" earnings report which saw its stock rise, Nvidia's stock is already declining.

Updated 10 posts on my site, largely linking to these:
• Joe’s underlines: https://www.joedolson.com/2025/10/why-wordpress-themes-require-underlines-on-links/
• Alice’s treatise:

Why WordPress Themes Require Underlines on Links - Joe Dolson Web Accessibility
Jeff Chandler posted a link in the Post Status Slack yesterday leading to an article complaining about the underlined link requirement for WordPress

Was kann man in #Nürnberg machen, wenn man zwei bis drei Stunden Zeit hat? Habt ihr Hinweise?

DOSBox Pure Unleashed is out for Windows, Mac, and Linux after five years in development — enhanced standalone release no longer restricted to being a RetroArch core https://www.

DOSBox Pure Unleashed is ready for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers after five years in development — enhanced standalone release no longer restricted to being a RetroArch core
Standalone app includes experimental support for Windows 9X gaming.

#Artikelupdate
Die "rätselhafte" #Meereserwärmung des Pazifischen Ozeans habe ich als Lesestoff mit aufgenommen. Wir hatten ähnliches bereits 2023 beim Atlantik. Letzteres wurde allerdings bereits in Studien untersucht.

Kipppunkte im Klimasystem: Die ersten sind erreicht - vor 25 Jahren
Wie nah sind wir am Klimakollaps? Kipppunkte im Klimasystem – welche wurden bereits überschritten?

Over 500 pages in Epstein files were entirely blacked out, CBS News finds - CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epstein-files-redaction-over-500-pages-entirely-blacked-out/

The NYT announces the addition of a TikTok-like Watch tab to its app, featuring a mix of short-form, scrollable, vertical news videos, available October 22 (Sara Fischer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/21/new-york-times-watch-tab-tiktok-nyt-app

NYT to debut new TikTok-like "Watch" tab in its app
It's part of a broader effort to bring all of its journalism across mediums into a single destination.

0 Punkte. 0 Tore. Gladbach: Was war das in Dortmund? ❌
Die Fohlenelf verabschiedet sich mit einer 2:0-Pleite in die Winterpause. War die Leistung wirklich besser oder reden wir uns das schön? Von Spielern wie Neuhaus und Reyna muss jetzt mehr kommen! ❄️
#Gladbach #BMG

Secretary Noem Highlights Worst of the Worst Arrested in Florida Including Murderers, Child Rapists, and Abusers (Department of Homeland Security)
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/10/20/secretary-noem-highlights-worst-worst-arrested-florida-including-murderers-child
http://www.memeorandum.com/251020/p147#a251020p147

OpenAI expands group chats in ChatGPT globally to all logged-in users on Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans, after piloting the feature in select regions (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/20/chatgpt-launches-group-chats-globally/

ChatGPT launches group chats globally | TechCrunch
The company sees group chats in ChatGPT as a way for people to coordinate trips, co-write documents, settle debates, or work through research together, while ChatGPT helps search, summarize, and compare options.

@… next Halloween I will go as Date.parse, which is very scary

Veteran from TEXAS IN UKRAINE: From farming to fighting Russia: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/20/veteran-from-texas-in-ukraine.html

A Chinese immigrant was found dead in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention,
with his hands and feet tied behind him, an attorney has alleged.
Chaofeng Ge died four days after entering ICE custody in Pennsylvania on August 5,
with an agency report
stating he was found by agents with “a cloth ligature around his neck”.

Man Detained by ICE Found Dead, Hanging With Hands and Feet Tied—Attorney
The Chinese national died in Pennsylvania in August, but his family's requests for answers from DHS have gone unmet.

2023 gab es aufgeregte Berichte über eine rätselhafte Erwärmung des #Atlantik.
Nun erlebt der #Nordpazifik eine ungewöhnlich starke #MeeresHitzewelle.
Zwischen Juli und Septemb…

Mysterious 'warm blob' breaks records in the North Pacific Ocean
Temperatures have surged across a large area of the north Pacific - and scientists don't know exactly why.

House Repeals Provision That Allows Senators to Sue Over Phone Record Seizures | Associated Press
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/arctic-frost-senate-lawsuits/2025/11/19/id/1235293/

Profluent, which wants to use AI for protein design in drug discovery, raised $106M led by Bezos Expeditions and Altimeter, bringing its total funding to $150M (Amy Feldman/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/20

Jeff Bezos Is Backing An AI Startup Aiming To Make Proteins Programmable
Profluent has raised $106 million to scale up use of its AI models for biology in drug development and agriculture.

Chip Roy Moves To Impeach Judge Over 'Absurd' Sentence For Attempted Kavanaugh Assassin (The Daily Wire)
https://www.dailywire.com/news/chip-roy-impeach-judge-over-absurd-sentence-for-kavanaughs-attempted-assassin
http://www.memeorandum.com/251021/p14#a251021p14

I have elevated to a new plane of open source existence

The law runs against one of the hallmarks of modern public health:
that a person’s full participation in society depends on their willingness to follow certain rules.
The new Idaho law flips that on its head.
It not only removes the obligation to follow such rules,
it makes the rules themselves illegal.
The new law sets Idaho apart from even conservative-leaning South Carolina,
where two schools recently quarantined more than 150 unvaccinated children a…

Vom Drohnen- zum Weltraumkrieg https://www.german-foreign-policy.com/news/detail/10160

Sources: Kalshi told investors that its trading volume grew six times in the last six months and it is on an annualized pace for $600M to $700M in net revenue (Cory Weinberg/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/las-vegas-kalshi-king

In Las Vegas, Kalshi Is King
For 15 years, Goldman Sachs’ private tech conference in Las Vegas has been the event for taking the pulse of startup dealmaking. Years ago, it was possible to run into founders such as Uber’s Travis Kalanick and Instagram’s Kevin Systrom raising money for their then-small startups. The ...

Muslim civil rights group sues Texas governor after terrorist accusation
https://religionnews.com/2025/11/20/muslim-civil-rights-group-sues-texas-governor-after-terrorist-accusation/

Donald Trump Has Lost Touch With Reality (Paul Krugman)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/donald-trump-has-lost-touch-with
http://www.memeorandum.com/251021/p12#a251021p12

Expect deep cuts in PhD admissions throughout the US, including biomedical programs.
The current model of PhD training and the current financial climate are simply not compatible.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/21/fas-phd-admissions-cuts/…

Harvard FAS Cuts Ph.D. Seats By More Than Half Across Next Two Admissions Cycles | News | The Harvard Crimson
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years.

Cornell researchers: xAI's Grokipedia cites neo-Nazi website Stormfront 42 times, Infowars 34 times, and white nationalist website VDare 107 times (David Ingram/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/elon-musk-groki…

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia cites neo-Nazi website 42 times: study
Elon Musk’s online encyclopedia, Grokipedia, cites the neo-Nazi website Stormfront as a source 42 times and relies on other websites that experts have shunned.

The US DOE accelerates its approach to equipping national labs with AI supercomputers by working with Nvidia, AMD, and Oracle, which will pay some of the costs (Don Clark/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/technology/national-laborat…

To Meld A.I. With Supercomputers, National Labs Are Picking Up the Pace
A.I. has added urgency to the U.S. national laboratories that have been sites of cutting-edge scientific research, leading to deals with tech giants like Nvidia to speed up.

Trump refugee plan seeks 7,000 Afrikaners — and virtually no one else
If the administration succeeds, almost all people admitted to the U.S. as refugees — as many as 7,000 from a maximum potential pool of 7,500 — could be Afrikaners,
a group not traditionally eligible for the program but one that Donald Trump says has been tyrannized by South Africa’s Black majority.
The remainder may be chosen because of their ability to speak English or their views on “free speech,” peo…

Trump refugee plan seeks 7,000 Afrikaners — and virtually no one else
The Trump administration’s rush to process thousands of White South Africans as refugees coincides with plans for overall admissions set as low as 7,500.

Paradromics says it received FDA approval for a human trial of its Connexus brain implant, aimed at restoring speech to those with severe motor impairments (Emily Mullin/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/paradromics-gets-fda-approval-to-trial-…

Paradromics Gets FDA Approval to Trial Its Brain Implant in People
The Austin-based startup will test its high-bandwidth device to help restore speech in people with extremely limited movement.

There are no plans for Donald Trump to meet with Vladmir Putin “in the immediate future”, a White House official told the Guardian.
The official added that the recent call between secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was “productive”, and therefore an additional-in-person meeting between the envoys is “not necessary”.
This comes after Trump announced a yet-to-be determined bilateral summit with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, after his conversati…

Circana: EA's Battlefield 6 became 2025's best-selling US game less than a month after its October 10 debut; Pokémon is 2025's fastest-selling physical game (Vlad Savov/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

A look at Amazon's Sparrow, Cardinal, Proteus, and other warehouse robots, taking over roles like selecting and picking items, carrying shipping carts, and more (Karen Weise/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/technology/amazon-robotics-automa…

The Robots Fueling Amazon’s Automation
Meet Sparrow, Cardinal and Proteus. They’re the robots that, step by step, are replacing human workers in the company’s warehouses.

Threat intel company Dataminr plans to acquire cybersecurity threat intel provider ThreatConnect for $290M; Dataminr raised $85M in convertible funding in March (Greg Otto/CyberScoop)
https://cyberscoop.com/dataminr-threatconnect-acquisition/

Dataminr to acquire cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect for $290 million
Dataminr, a New York-based company specializing in real-time threat intelligence, announced plans Tuesday to acquire ThreatConnect, a cybersecurity threat intelligence provider, for $290 million. The acquisition will combine Dataminr’s AI-powered analysis of public data with ThreatConnect’s internal threat management capabilities, creating what the companies describe as “Client-Tailored intelligence” that adapts to individual customer needs. The […]

Meta forms a JV with Blue Owl to fund the $27B, 2GW Hyperion data center in Louisiana, its largest ever private capital deal; Meta will retain a ~20% equity (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-forms-joint-ventu…

Google launches new features for its Google AI Studio developer platform, including a revamped "Build" tab to vibe code AI apps (Alexey Shabanov/TestingCatalog)
https://www.testingcatalog.com/google-revamps-ai-studio-with-new-features-for-…

Google revamps AI Studio with new features for vibe coding
Google debuts a revamped AI Studio "Build" interface that cuts technical barriers for AI app prototyping with one-click Cloud Run publishing.