Tootfinder

Former Alibaba star researcher Junyang Lin launches Shanghai-based Pragmatik Labs to build digital and physical AI agents; Pragmatik hit a $2B valuation in June (Juro Osawa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/f

Former Alibaba Researcher Announces New Startup on Digital and Physical AI Agents
Former Alibaba star researcher Junyang Lin announced that he had started a new AI company, confirming The Information’s earlier reports. Lin, who left Alibaba in March, said in a post on X that his Shanghai-based startup, Pragmatik Labs, is focusing on “next-generation agents across digital and physical worlds.” Lin also said Chinese venture capital firms Gaorong Ventures and HongShan led

Prometheus,
the physical AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj, the former co-founder of Verily, Google’s life sciences unit,
announced it raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation.
The new funds came from Bezos,
as well as from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock, among others.
This is the second fundraise round for Prometheus, which launched late last year with an initial raise of $6.2 billion, according to CNBC.
Prometheus is bu…

Jeff Bezos's Prometheus raises $12B to build an 'artificial general engineer' for the physical world | TechCrunch
The new round values the physical AI startup that aims to automate heavy engineering and drug design at $41 billion.

The Guardian's tech team share their shoe-leather experiences covering AI data centers, as field investigation becomes increasingly important in tech coverage (Gautam Malkani/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/202

‘These are some of the most complex structures ever created’: how tech reporting moved into the physical world
The Guardian’s global tech reporting team are investigating the impact of the vast datacentres being built to power the AI revolution. We spoke to them about how their beat has become increasingly offline

Seahawks S Emmanwori set to come off PUP list https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/49584391/seahawks-nick-emmanwori-passes-physical-set-come-pup-list

A message from Dutch Rabobank meant as reassuring that doesn't really work that way. "For Europe and the Netherlands immediate physical fuel shortages due to disruption in the Strait of Hormuz are improbable until the end of May."
Published on 13 May.
https:…

"I think when you're just counting on your voice, you actually need double the energy. I find myself acting out the scenes and being very physical while I'm recording because I think you can tell when someone is just sitting on a stool."
—Judy Greer
#acting #coaching …

This is the second major loss of a drive containing valuable information in Japan in the last week.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/japanese-energy-firm-loses-drive-with-data-of-109-million-clients/…

Japanese energy firm loses drive with data of 10.9 million clients
Kyushu Electric Power Co., Inc. has disclosed a physical security incident that affects private data of more than 10 million customers.

RE: https://sfba.social/@MLNow/116737024951017189
Once more, I see the penny wise, pound foolish action of the Mayor's budget decisions - in this case returning stressors that impact both physical and mental health to a low income community.

RE: https://sfba.social/@MLNow/116737024951017189
Once more, I see the penny wise, pound foolish action of the Mayor's budget decisions - in this case returning stressors that impact both physical and mental health to a low income community.

Ahahhaha just because I verified that the pixel 10 comes with a physical sim card slot doesn't mean that it actually comes with a physical sim card slot*. I fucking despise Pixel hardware from the very core of my being.
* turns out it comes with a sim card slot everywhere else except the US

Since it was relevant to a discussion I just had on here and is something most people probably haven't thought about much (unless you've taken one of a handful of philosophy classes), I thought I'd try to lay out a key piece of Descartes' Meditations (#philosophy

A look back at the 2007 heist of a Verizon data center in London, highlighting the role of physical data security as cyber defenses grow more sophisticated (Nathaniel Rich/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/12/magazin

How a Gang of Thieves Pulled Off a Multimillion-Dollar Data Center Heist
The world’s most valuable assets are stored on rows of servers in giant, anonymous buildings. And they can be stolen.

tree-of-life: Protein interactomes across the tree of life (2019)
Protein-protein iteraction networks ("interactome") for 1,840 species. An interactome captures all physical protein-protein interactions within one species, from direct biophysical protein-protein interactions to regulatory protein-DNA and metabolic interactions. .
This network has 596 nodes and 1739 edges.
Tags: Biological, Protein interactions

Zur Situation der Menschheit: https://annas-archive.gl/blog/physical-destruction.html

AI companies destroy physical books — let’s scan rare books before it’s too late
AI companies are secretly buying, scanning, and destroying millions of physical books to train their models, permanently locking human knowledge inside private corporate servers. Anna’s Archive is urgently calling on volunteers worldwide to scan and upload books to their shadow library before this cultural heritage disappears forever.

Surveillance pricing is bad for privacy, equity, and price transparency.
So EFF supports a California bill,
S.B. 2564,
which would ban this creepy practice.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/californias-bill-ban-surveillance-pricing

Yes to California's Bill to Ban Surveillance Pricing
Corporations harvest and monetize ever-growing amounts of our personal data, such as our browsing history and physical location. One bitter fruit of this poisonous tree is known as “surveillance pricing”: corporations offer the same product to two different people at two different prices, based on...

Khalil Mack Gets Blunt About Raiders’ Failed Maxx Crosby Trade https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/khalil-mack-failed-maxx-crosby-trade/

A ravenous black hole in our backyard could be our window into the ancient universe | Space
A ravenous black hole in our backyard could be our window into the ancient universe | Space https://www.space.com/astronomy/black-hole

New blog post on the importance of owning physical (and digital) media, when possible: https://spacetimetech.wordpress.com/2026/06/28/the-importance-of-owning-physical-and-digital-media-when-possible

The importance of owning physical (and digital) media when possible
I wrote some about the continued popularity of physical media here in 2024, but I wanted to do one more post on it this year, to also feature some other formats, history, tips and tricks, and outri…

Bucs lose an OTA practice for being too physical https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/49032098/bucs-docked-ota-too-many-guys-ground-says-bowles

Automatic Field-of-View Adjustment for a View-Expansive Microscope via LSTM-Based Gaze and Pipette Motion Interpretation
Kenta Yokoe, Takuya Hara, Tadayoshi Aoyama
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10401 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.10401 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.10401
arXiv:2608.10401v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) operators frequently adjust the field-of-view (FOV) during procedures, which interrupts workflow and increases procedure time. Conventional microscopes require manual objective lens switching and illumination adjustments to achieve different FOV sizes. We propose an AI-based automatic FOV adjustment method integrated with a view-expansive microscope. This microscope enables the simultaneous acquisition of a large FOV and high-resolution images using a single objective lens through multiview imaging with galvanometer mirrors and high-speed vision, thereby eliminating the need for physical lens exchanges. Our method utilizes a long short-term memory (LSTM) model to predict the appropriate FOV size based on real-time analysis of the pipette's position and velocity, combined with the operator's gaze position. The AI model is trained using ICSI procedure data from an expert with over five years of micromanipulation experience. Experimental evaluation with novice operators reveals that the proposed automatic FOV adjustment system significantly improves the ICSI procedure speed, reducing the average task completion time from 60.5 to 48.0 s (p < 0.001). The experiments also demonstrate that this improvement enables novice operators to achieve ICSI working speeds equivalent to those of expert operators.
toXiv_bot_toot

Physical Film Files
From the film itself, to the artwork, the packaging, and the special features—this is about celebrating movies the physical way...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/physical-film-files/

copenhagen: Copenhagen Networks Study
A network of social interactions among university students within the Copenhagen Networks Study, over a period of four weeks, sampled every 5 minutes. Interactions include physical proximity (undirected), phone calls (directed, weighted), text messages (directed), and information about Facebook friendships (undirected). Nodes include some metadata, including gender.
This network has 692 nodes and 2426279 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Un…

"Spotify's effective payout averages roughly $0.003 to $0.005 per stream... By contrast, Bandcamp pays artists roughly 82% of each sale. A direct $10 album sale can exceed revenue from thousands of streams. Buying music or books directly from artists, whether physical or DRM-free digital, is one of the most direct ways to support them."
Artists are likely better off when you #buy o…

UK astronaut #JohnMcFall could become the first person with a physical disability to live in orbit, thanks to an agreement signed between the UK government and US commercial space company #Vast: #Haven1 (not launched yet!) as early as next year.

What is Raiders rookie QB Fernando Mendoza’s Madden NFL 27 rating? https://raiderswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/raiders/2026/08/12/what-is-raiders-rookie-qb-fernando-mendozas-madden-nfl-27-ratin…

𒌫

Jeff Bezos' Prometheus, which is building AI models for physical tasks, raised a $12B Series B at a $41B valuation, following a $6.2B Series A (Dan Primack/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/06/11/prometheus-bezos-industrial-ai

Prometheus, Jeff Bezos' AI startup, is now worth $41 billion
"Make that dream-build loop 10 times faster."

Saw a hard-hitting ad about the consequences of driving while on drugs, which was immediately undermined by the shock physical trauma of a Tango soft drink ad.

Did our errands again with our SUV.
I had concerns that we'd never use it. I was wrong.
No gas needed, had physical exercise, fresh air...

So THAT’S what they look like. Oddly, I’ve read about books receiving Nebulas and Hugos and PKD Awards, but it never occurred to me that they were physical artefacts AND accolades. Huh. 🤔
Re: https://wandering.shop/@effies/116717392735380026

White House Releases Results of Trump's Latest Physical Exam (Chris Cameron/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/us/politics/trump-health-medical-physical-exam.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260530/p43#a260530p43

The Quantum Mechanics of Rare Events: From Quantum Walks to Stochastic Inflation
Daniel Green, Kshitij Gupta, Akhil Premkumar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06319 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.06319 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.06319
arXiv:2608.06319v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Rare fluctuations in physical systems depend on the detailed microphysics responsible for the fluctuations. In classical statistical systems, the large deviation principle has elucidated the role of semi-classics in describing this regime, and has simultaneously provided a the mathematical foundation of statistical mechanics. Large deviation theory for quantum system is considerably less developed. As all physical systems are fundamentally quantum mechanical, this leaves a major gap in our understanding of rare fluctuations relevant to statistical physics, cosmology, and more. In this paper, we develop the practical aspects of the theory of large deviations relevant for calculating rare events in physical systems from quantum walks to cosmology. We first analyze the case of the anharmonic oscillator coupled to a bath, showing explicitly how the system evolves from dominantly statistical (e.g. thermal) to quantum fluctuations. We then generalize these results, showing that the dominant rare fluctuations minimize the measurement-induced relative entropy. This perspective provides a thermodynamic description of a wide range of open quantum systems. We apply these results to random walks that arise in cosmology through stochastic inflation. We show that the evolution of the density matrix of long wavelength fields on a fixed de Sitter background breaks the KMS symmetry, giving rise to a stationary density matrix that does not respect detailed balance.
toXiv_bot_toot

Entire Cowboys roster passes physical, ready for camp today https://insidethestar.com/entire-cowboys-roster-passes-physical-ready-for-camp-today

CBS legend spills on 'jaw-dropping' meeting before firing: 'Accuses me of physical abuse' - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/cbs-news-2677008874/

No, I can't see any possible way this could be a bad thing.
https://www.404media.co/fcc-wants-to-kill-burner-phones-by-forcing-telecoms-to-get-all-customers-ids/

FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones By Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customers’ IDs
The FCC wants to legally force telecoms to collect new and renewing customers’ government issued identity number and physical address, impacting everyone from the privacy-conscious to domestic abuse survivors. “We never thought that would happen here.”

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."
—Bruce Lee
#acting #coaching

copenhagen: Copenhagen Networks Study
A network of social interactions among university students within the Copenhagen Networks Study, over a period of four weeks, sampled every 5 minutes. Interactions include physical proximity (undirected), phone calls (directed, weighted), text messages (directed), and information about Facebook friendships (undirected). Nodes include some metadata, including gender.
This network has 536 nodes and 3600 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unwei…

“We believe physics is the third modality for AI models,
after text and pixels,”
says MIT PhD student and CSAIL researcher Minghao Guo,
a co-lead author on a paper introducing GeoPT.
“Our general-purpose model has the versatility to help build a world model for physics.
Many models, such as those that generate robotics data and videos, are already well-versed in textual and visual data,
but with physical accuracy, they’ll get more-realistic results.”

With a feel for physics, AI models simulate a wider range of real-world scenarios
“GeoPT” teaches AI models the basics of physics by virtually reenacting everyday mechanical interactions in 3D. In turn, the systems can simulate how vehicles and other objects respond to things like wind and water more efficiently and accurately.

Google plans to open its first physical Google Store outside of the US, in Tokyo's Omotesando district "this summer", marking Google's 11th physical store (Damien Wilde/9to5Google)
https://9to5google.com/2026/06/01/goog

Google Store Tokyo to be first physical store outside US, opens this summer
After being exclusive to the United States, the first physical Google Store outside of the region is coming to Tokyo, Japan, this summer.

Vision-Language-Action Models Meet World Models: Embodied Agentic AI for Low-Altitude Wireless Networks
Feibo Jiang, Li Dong, Lei Mao, Kezhi Wang, Cunhua Pan, Dong In Kim, Naofal Al-Dhahir
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.11618 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.11618 https://arxiv.org/html/2606.11618
arXiv:2606.11618v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Low-Altitude Wireless Networks (LAWNs), composed of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and other aerial platforms, provide integrated perception, communication, and computation services in low-altitude airspace. However, deploying large generative models in this domain faces three major challenges: 1) Limited embodied action mapping; 2) Inadequate physical environment modeling; 3) Insufficient closed-loop optimization. To address these challenges, this study proposes an Embodied Agentic UAV framework. Centered on a Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model as the execution core, the framework establishes an end-to-end embodied decision-making pipeline from multimodal environmental perception to continuous control generation. In addition, a World Model (WM) is introduced to capture the coupling between UAV actions and environmental state evolution, thereby supporting environment prediction, policy verification, and dynamic optimization. Furthermore, memory and reflection mechanisms are incorporated to form an adaptive closed-loop optimization paradigm of decision, execution, evaluation, and update, thereby enhancing the system's autonomous decision-making capability and continual evolution ability in complex dynamic environments. Experimental results validate its effectiveness in enabling robust, predictive, and sustainable autonomous control in LAWNs.
toXiv_bot_toot

Finally got my paws on a physical CD of Switched-On-Bach by Wendy Carlos, which she apparently REALLY doesn’t want copied. I guess that explains why there is no digital version.
The disk format is a rococo tangle. iTunes can play the music, but it cannot import from the disk. It cannot understand whatever arcane trick was used to construct it. I had to copy the AIFF files manually and import the copies, then add metadata manually.

Time-Frequency Grid States for Reconstruction and Correction of Channel-Induced Distortion in Entangled Photons
Siang-Yun Liu, Bo-Ren Huang, Zhi-Xuan Zen, Yen-Hung Chen, Pin-Ju Tsai
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.12216 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.12216 https://arxiv.org/html/2606.12216
arXiv:2606.12216v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Characterization of time-frequency (TF) quantum states requires reliable reconstruction of their TF distributions. However, imperfect transmission or measurement channels can distort reconstructed joint spectral intensities (JSIs), especially when the underlying perturbation mechanism is unknown. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a reconstruction and correction framework that uses a TF grid state as an intrinsic frequency-domain reference. By analyzing the displacement of the grid points, a Gaussian process regression model is employed to reconstruct a correction mapping for the nonlinear coordinate deformation without assuming a prior physical model of the distortion. The learned mapping reduces the residual coordinate deviation of the TF grid state by approximately a factor of 11 and, when applied to an independent frequency-entangled test state, improves the Gaussian-shape fidelity from 76.2\% to 90.0\%. These results establish TF grid states as practical metrological resources for diagnosing and correcting distortions in TF quantum systems, providing a pathway toward distortion-resilient quantum communication and high-dimensional quantum information processing.
toXiv_bot_toot

FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones By Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customers’ IDs https://www.404media.co/fcc-wants-to-kill-burner-phones-by-forcing-telecoms-to-get-all-customers-ids/

RE: #ShapePacking...

Tfw you wanna buy physical / DRM-free digital media, but your entertainment budget is empty, yet again 🫠

The case to buy physical media: Sony is removing all purchased Studio Canal movies from users libraries - no refunds - including:
▫️ Terminator 2: Judgment Day
▫️ Apocalypse Now: Final Cut
▫️ Hot Fuzz
▫️ Total Recall
▫️ Rambo: First Blood
▫️ Paddington
▫️ Moonlight
▫️ Bridget Jones’s Diary
☑️ Sony Removes Hundreds of Purchased PlayStation Store Movies From Customer Libraries

Sony Removes Hundreds of Purchased PlayStation Store Movies From Customer Libraries
Sony will remove hundreds of purchased PlayStation Store movies due to licensing agreements, raising fresh concerns over digital ownership rights.

I am challenging the status quo today (Jun-26) and submitted a physical (yes, offline) product at ProductHunt. Feel free to support me there!
#privacy
https://www.producthunt.com/products/paint

Paint the Cameras Dead: Postcards for pushing back against surveillance. | Product Hunt
Not every project needs an app, an AI model or another screen. Paint the Cameras Dead is a physical set of postcards made for the street, not the cloud. Each card helps you notice surveillance cameras hiding in plain sight, ask who controls them and map what you find. Print them, share them, leave them in cafés, libraries or community spaces, and use them today. No download, no account, no update cycle. Just paper, attention and a small act of resistance.

Causal Scaffolding for Physical Reasoning: A Benchmark for Causally-Informed Physical World Understanding in VLMs
Tianyi Tang, Zhuoyi Lin, Zeyu Feng, Tianyi Ma, Yew-Soon Ong, Ivor Tsang, Haiyan Yin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05966

New thread since the other was getting long and disorganized... Continuing bringup and deployment of the new 40/100G core switch. So far I'm about half done by number of existing physical ports, not counting currently dark fiber I plan to light up.

Reading Douglas Adams when I was 12 meant my tiny little mind got to learn all sorts of words and terms that were exciting but not too complex.
I had to rely on context clues and a physical dictionary. Or just, you know, keep reading.
My own writing is even more obtuse.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog…

I would accept Sony PS to stop making physical disc if they didn't claimed this decision was based on players preferences.

"I think when you're just counting on your voice, you actually need double the energy. I find myself acting out the scenes and being very physical while I'm recording because I think you can tell when someone is just sitting on a stool."
—Judy Greer
#acting #coaching …

It's a shame that PlayStation is abandoning physical discs - and essentially physical retail - for games. But any advantages of physical media for games evaporated a decade ago. Developers released literally unplayable games in the expectation of a Day One Patch.

Sources: Microsoft has been working on a disc-to-digital feature for Xbox One and Xbox Series X that will let users digitize their physical game collections (Tom Warren/The Verge)

Xbox testing disc-to-digital feature that digitizes a physical game collection
Microsoft’s disc-to-digital feature could be essential for next-gen Xbox consoles.

Trump Undergoes a Physical Exam at Walter Reed (Karoun Demirjian/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/us/politics/trump-physical-walter-reed.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260526/p63#a260526p63

Outlandish experiment shows top officials risking physical injury to please Trump - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-cabinet-2677002630/

Decided to read Lord of the Rings again which I also have as physical book ... oh heck I wish I could increase the font size!

Rockstar says physical copies of GTA 6 will contain a digital download code, not a disc; physical copies release on November 12, ahead of the November 19 launch (Tom Phillips/IGN)
https://www.ign.com/articles/grand-theft-auto-6…

Grand Theft Auto 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box
Rockstar will sell physical copies of Grand Theft Auto 6 — though you'll only get a box containing a digital download code.

Ashton Jeanty: 'We're going to be the most conditioned team, most physical team https://www.raiders.com/video/ashton-jeanty-we-re-going-to-be-the-most-conditioned-team-most-physical-team-and-we-re-g…

Isomorphic Emergence of Lorentz and Gauge Symmetries--A Constructive Interpretation Based on Continuum Mechanics
Ke-Xia Jiang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06244 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.06244 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.06244
arXiv:2608.06244v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Lorentz symmetry and gauge symmetry constitute the mathematical cornerstones of modern physics, yet their ultimate physical origins remain elusive. From the standpoint of a constructive interpretation, this paper demonstrates that both symmetry structures can emerge isomorphically from a unified classical source: dynamical constraints on wave-packet excitations in a continuous elastic substrate medium (SM). Neither symmetry is posited as fundamental, nor does their emergence rely on quantization. Three core results are established. First, taking the transverse wave speed of a homogeneous, isotropic SM as the benchmark under a conventionalist synchronization scheme, Minkowski-type spacetime arises isomorphically, with Lorentz transformations as effective coordinate transformations between inertial frames. This reinterprets the Michelson--Morley null result: observers are composite wave-packet excitations, and medium-induced kinematic corrections are encoded in their measurement frameworks. Second, for wave packets endowed with $SU(N)$ intrinsic symmetry, the requirement of identity invariance drives the SM to spontaneously generate gauge fields. This requires invariant equivalence classes of intrinsic states under propagation, yielding gauge structures isomorphic to Yang-Mills theory. The gauge group $SU(N)$ is uniquely determined by the number of stable normal modes supported by the medium. Third, through the same conventionalist measurement protocols, inhomogeneous distributions of the SM emerge isomorphically as curved spacetime geometry, governed by Einstein-type field equations from variational extremization of the medium's deformation free energy. This paper advances a unified interpretive account of the physical origin underlying the mathematical structures of both Relativity and the Standard Model.
toXiv_bot_toot

Dallas Cowboys To Try More Physical Practice Approach For 2026 Training Camp https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/onsi/dallas-cowboys-to-try-more-physical-practice-approach-for-2026-training-camp

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."
—Bruce Lee
#acting #coaching

Trump regime takes aim at crucial ocean monitoring network. Ships will be dispatched this month to remove the more than 900 deep-sea instruments that comprise the network, one of the world’s most trusted sources of climate and oceanic data. https://www.scientificame…

Trump administration takes aim at crucial ocean monitoring network
The Ocean Observatories Initiative has been collecting data on physical, chemical, geological and biological conditions in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for the past decade

Remember when Xbox tried to move away from physical media to reduce distribution costs during the 2013 Xbox One launch?
And Sony pissed all over Microsoft for it? 🤔
✅ Xbox One loses some disc-free play, family game-sharing plan with revised policies
https://www.

Xbox One loses some disc-free play, family game-sharing plan with revised policies

James Pearce Jr. returns to Falcons for minicamp physical amid intervention program https://www.nfl.com/news/james-pearce-jr-falcons-physical-mandatory-minicamp-intervention-program

Behind the public’s mounting worries is a growing sense that Trump isn’t mentally all there.
Physical and mental health aren’t easily separated, especially as one reaches 80. I often can’t remember where I put my wallet and keys or why I’ve entered a room. I also have less patience than I used to have. (I’m less tolerant of long lines, automated phone menus and Republicans.)
But if Trump can’t remember where he put, say, a top-secret memo or why he entered the Situation Room, or …

copenhagen: Copenhagen Networks Study
A network of social interactions among university students within the Copenhagen Networks Study, over a period of four weeks, sampled every 5 minutes. Interactions include physical proximity (undirected), phone calls (directed, weighted), text messages (directed), and information about Facebook friendships (undirected). Nodes include some metadata, including gender.
This network has 692 nodes and 2426279 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Un…

Decided to read Lord of the Rings again which I also have as physical book ... oh heck I wish I could increase the font size!

Mistral launches Robostral Navigate, a hardware-agnostic robotics navigation model trained via simulation that utilizes a single camera and language prompts (Benoit Berthelot/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

"I think when you're just counting on your voice, you actually need double the energy. I find myself acting out the scenes and being very physical while I'm recording because I think you can tell when someone is just sitting on a stool."
—Judy Greer
#acting #coaching …

Chipmaker Onsemi agrees to buy Synaptics in a nearly $7B all-stock deal expected to close in the middle of 2027; ON drops 9% and SYNA jumps 11% after hours (Samantha Subin/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/25/on-semi-synaptics-deal-physical-ai.html
…

On Semiconductor strikes $7 billion deal for Synaptics in physical AI push
On Semiconductor said the deal bumps up its total addressable market by $30 billion to $243 billion by 2030.

There are just 59 Robotaxis on the road, Bloomberg reports,
with at least some of them still requiring physical human supervision.
Its efforts to expand past its home base in Austin, Texas are floundering,
with the company forced to admit to California state regulators that its self-driving cabs don’t actually drive themselves, according to the reporting.
This incremental progress would be permissible at a smaller company.
But Musk has persistently wooed investo…

Tesla's Robotaxis Are a Complete Disaster
Behind the scenes, the reality is that Tesla's much-hyped Robotaxi program sounds like an absolute hot mess.

Nvidia says South Korea's Naver will use its technology to build AI factories at "gigawatt scale" to meet rising global demand for AI services and physical AI (Heekyong Yang/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific…

Nvidia unveils Cosmos 3 Edge, a world model designed for robots and vision AI agents to perceive and navigate physical environments in real time (Jenny Lee/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/16/nvidia-reveals-new-ai-model-and-expands-…

Nvidia unveils new AI model and expands Japan’s physical AI ecosystem
Nvidia announces new AI model, Cosmos 3 Edge, and expansion of its physical AI ecosystems in Japan.

With the detection of the Higgs boson,
the standard model is an almost complete theory.
Missing from the model is a massless spin-two boson, the graviton.
We might reasonably expect that detection of gravitational radiation would include the observation of the graviton as the quanta of the radiation.
However, the connection between gravitational radiation observations and the theoretical graviton has yet to be realized due to the physical limitations on single-gravit…

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."
—Bruce Lee
#acting #coaching

Nvidia unveils Cosmos 3, an open physical AI foundation model, to help robots and autonomous cars better understand the real world with limited training data (Ina Fried/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/06/01/nvidia-ai-push-cosmos-3-world-model

Nvidia expands AI push with Cosmos 3 world model
The chip giants aims to become a platform for physical AI.

Human Archive, which trains robots using first-person video from 1,000 camera-equipped caps worn by Indian home services workers, raised $8.2M from YC and more (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/26/human…

This startup is betting India's gig economy can train the world's robots | TechCrunch
Human Archive, a startup founded by UC Berkeley and Stanford researchers, is paying gig workers in India to wear camera-equipped caps and sensor devices to collect the real-world physical training data that AI and robotics labs are racing to acquire.

Sony says all new PlayStation games from both first- and third-party developers will be sold in digital formats from January 2028, ending physical game discs (Stephen Totilo/Game File)
https://www.gamefile.news/p/sony-drops-playstation-discs-2028-ps3-vit…

Sony will cease production of discs for new PlayStation games in 2028
The end of an era, a potential fatal blow to video games as physical media, and a hint of what’s in store for the PS6? Also: PS3/Vita online stores scheduled for shutdown.

Serial sexual abuser Donald Trump stopped short of calling on Rep Max Miller to resign Monday,
saying he would “let the families figure that out”.
Asked whether the Ohio Republican should step down following allegations of domestic abuse from his ex-wife, Emily Moreno,
Trump said he has always known Miller as “a good person” and called the situation “a very sad thing.”
The abuse allegations, which include physical abuse of Moreno and their two-year-old daughter,

Trump declines to call for Max Miller’s resignation amid abuse allegations – live
President says he will ‘let the families figure that out’ and calls situation ‘a very sad thing’ when asked if Ohio Republican should step down

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."
—Bruce Lee
#acting #coaching

LG shares jumped 300% this year, after largely sitting out South Korea's chip-rally in 2025, as LG seeks to expand into physical AI businesses such as robots (Sangmi Cha/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Q&A with Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson on why the startup is going public via SPAC, the physical layer as its proprietary advantage, safety, and more (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/05/this

This humanoid robotics company is going public, but its CEO isn't promising a robot in your home anytime soon | TechCrunch
While other humanoid startups chase sky-high valuations, Agility Robotics is betting its future on execution — and a SPAC.

Seattle-based Augmodo, whose AI-powered "Smartbadges" worn by employees track shelf inventory, raised $21M led by TQ Ventures at a $350M valuation (Kurt Schlosser/GeekWire)
https://www.geekwire.com/2026/augmodo-rais

Augmodo raises $21M to push its spatial AI beyond just retail toward the broader physical workforce
Customer demand is pulling the Seattle startup's technology into warehouses, facility maintenance, delivery, and other parts of the physical workforce.

Robotics startup Generalist, which released its GEN-1 model to complete short physical tasks in April, raised $400M led by Radical Ventures at a $2B valuation (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/202…

In a rare interview, Huawei chip scientist Liao Heng warns Western chip companies will eventually face physical chip limits and talks Huawei's Tau Scaling Law (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-0…

Alibaba's AI unit Tongyi Lab launches the Qwen Robot Suite, its first family of AI models for robots, in pilot testing with some enterprise clients (Wency Chen/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article

Alibaba eyes physical world with its first suite of AI models for robots
Alibaba unveils Qwen robot models to push AI beyond chatbots, as embodied intelligence becomes the next frontier in global AI.

San Diego-based Aether AI, which is building "causal world models" to teach robots cause and effect instead of pattern-matching, raised a $20M seed led by MPCi (Cristian Dina/The Next Web)
https://thenextweb.com/news/aether-ai-causal-world-models-20m-…

Researchers used AI-assisted code to undetectably tamper with data from computerized scans of physical DNA evidence produced by widely used crime-lab machines (Mariah Timms/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.…

Germany's Black Forest Labs launches Flux 3 and Flux-mimic, its first models for robotics, as it expands from generative AI into physical AI (Yazhou Sun/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-0…

Apoha, which is developing a "Liquid State Intelligence" data layer to measure molecules in the real world, emerges from stealth with $36M led by Singular (Mike Butcher/Pathfounders)
https://pathfounders.com/p/apoha-emerges-from-stealth-with-36m-to-teach-…

Apoha emerges from stealth with $36M to teach AI how matter behaves
The company is targeting pharma first, but could apply its technology to food, materials and even embed it into Physical AI.

CarbonSix, which is developing AI automation and robotic intelligence tech for manufacturing, raised a $40M Series A co-led by DSC Investment and LB Investment (FinSMEs)
https://www.finsmes.com/2026/07/carbonsix-raises-40m-in-series-a-funding.html

CarbonSix Raises $40M in Series A Funding
CarbonSix, Inc., a San Francisco, CA-based Physical AI company focused on the manufacturing sector, raised $40m (approx. KRW 60 billion) in Series A funding

Foundational Industries, which aims to build AI-run factories for physical products, starting with custom data center rack enclosures, raised a $25M seed (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/07/30/forget-

Forget robots on assembly lines. Foundational Industries wants AI to run the entire factory
The startup says software-native factories can leapfrog China’s highly automated manufacturing base rather than trying to replicate it.

PitchBook: VC investment in global robotics and physical AI jumped to $26B in 2025 from $4.2B in 2019, and has already topped $23B as of May 20 this year (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/…

Japan commits up to $6.16B over five years to Noetra, a consortium led by SoftBank, Honda, NEC, and Sony, to develop a domestic AI foundation model by 2027 (Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/techn

Japan backs SoftBank-led AI models with up to $6.2bn in chasing US, China
New company will focus on physical AI using data from Japanese companies

Google DeepMind releases Gemini Robotics 2, which combines several different AI models into a single system to control a range of robots, including humanoids (Will Knight/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/google-gemini-can-control-humanoid-robots/

Gemini Robotics 2 Brings Google's AI Into the Physical World
The latest version of Google DeepMind's AI model includes a significant jump into “physical AGI.” But plopping AI into the real world comes with risks.