Alcatraz, which develops AI-powered facial-recognition security systems for building access, raised a $50M Series B, bringing its total funding to $100M (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2026/04/02/alcatraz-r…
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.
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
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 …
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…
“National data shows that almost half of Australians already fall short of minimum physical activity guidelines, and rising prices are making even basic care unaffordable for many.”
I’m not saying this stupid war on #Iran is wholly responsible for #inflation, but it’s certainly not helping—and even its dis…
Got an Amber Alert today, and my weather app, @…, did a better job than the state of Tennessee. In fact, TN failed, as they do at most things lately.
The alert from TN had a Bitly link (already looks suspicious) that goes to a Facebook page that requires you to login. :picard:
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 320 nodes and 387 edges.
Tags: Biological, Protein interactions
Avoca, whose AI agents let physical services businesses handle inbound calls and dispatch, raised $125M across seed, Series A, and Series B at a $1B valuation (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/04/27/avoca-a
En la mani del #1deMayo un compañero me ha hablado de este artículo sobre la salud del uso de la #ia en el entorno laboral. No lo he leído aún pero me ha dicho que es muy interesante lo que plantea
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
I keep seeing things about how they're adding Tales from the Crypt to Shudder starting tomorrow, but Shudder is $7.99 a month and up. I looked on eBay and the whole series on DVD is on there for less than $30 shipped, in the USA at least. And you'd own all of it forever. The math doesn't math. Physical media ftw
Simulating Infant First-Person Sensorimotor Experience via Motion Retargeting from Babies to Humanoids
Francisco M. L\'opez, Hoshinori Kanazawa, Ondrej Fiala, Yakov Balashov, Valentin Marcel, Lukas Rustler, Miles Lenz, Dongmin Kim, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Jochen Triesch, Matej Hoffmann
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27583 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.27583 https://arxiv.org/html/2604.27583
arXiv:2604.27583v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Motion retargeting from humans to human-like artificial agents is becoming increasingly important as humanoid robots grow more capable. However, most existing approaches focus only on reproducing kinematics and ignore the rich sensorimotor experience associated with human movement. In this work, we present a framework for simulating the multimodal sensorimotor experiences of infants using physical and virtual humanoids. From a single video, our method reconstructs the infant's body configuration by extracting its skeletal structure and estimating the full 3D pose from each frame. Then we map the reconstructed motion onto several developmental platforms: the physical iCub robot and the virtual simulators pyCub, EMFANT and MIMo. Replaying the retargeted motions on these embodiments produces simulated multisensory streams including proprioception (joints and muscles), touch, and vision. For the best-matching embodiment, the retargeting achieves sub-centimeter accuracy and enables a rich multimodal analysis of infant development as well as enhanced automated annotation of behaviors. This framework provides a unique window into the infant's sensorimotor experience, offering new tools for robotics, developmental science, and early detection of neurodevelopmental disorders. The code is available at https://github.com/ctu-vras/motion-retargeting/.
toXiv_bot_toot
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 800 nodes and 6429 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unwei…
Analysis: Asian suppliers account for ~90% of Nvidia's production costs, up from 65% in 2025, as latest wave of collaborations shifts from chips to physical AI (Abhishek Vishnoi/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20
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
"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
From collider experiments to large-scale astronomy systems, this session by Dmitriy Kostunin and Julian von Hoerschelmann-Schliwinski takes an honest look at where AI delivers measurable gains, and where it falls short.
Learn more about this session: https://2026.berlinbuzzwords.de/session/ai-in-the-physical-world-from-observation-to-discovery/
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-…
Management: return to office (80 %) because that's needed to perform, solve problems faster, move forward together. Physical presence matters.
Also management: spread out development from 1 continent and 2 sites to 3 continents and 4 sites.
🫠
A tl;dr version might be, that no physical system can exist outside the universe, which for the purpose of measuring it is not finite; therefore no physical system can be simulated with arbitrary accuracy.
Mathematical modelling of physical systems means deciding what features to include. I often advise my students that the very simplest models are the best place to start. E.g. start to model a car as a simple mass with forces applied to it, then add complexity later if needed, instead of getting bogged down by the details of every component at the start.
This FT article suggests a similar thing in an entertaining way.
£
History repeats itself more than it should.
If you think we cannot get out from under these ghouls, then all I can say is we did it several times before.
We should be getting good at it by now.
The closest Trump's gonna get to heaven is on an airplane.
Go figure, cause I can't
Keep protests peaceful.
Don't kill anyone.
They DO make a difference.
Here are some resistance related guides from around the world:
🇺🇸 Fundamentals …
Structural-Ambiguity-Aware Translation from Natural Language to Signal Temporal Logic
Kosei Fushimi, Kazunobu Serizawa, Junya Ikemoto, Kazumune Hashimoto
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28426 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.28426 https://arxiv.org/html/2603.28426
arXiv:2603.28426v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Signal Temporal Logic (STL) is widely used to specify timed and safety-critical tasks for cyber-physical systems, but writing STL formulas directly is difficult for non-expert users. Natural language (NL) provides a convenient interface, yet its inherent structural ambiguity makes one-to-one translation into STL unreliable. In this paper, we propose an \textit{ambiguity-preserving} method for translating NL task descriptions into STL candidate formulas. The key idea is to retain multiple plausible syntactic analyses instead of forcing a single interpretation at the parsing stage. To this end, we develop a three-stage pipeline based on Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG): ambiguity-preserving $n$-best parsing, STL-oriented template-based semantic composition, and canonicalization with score aggregation. The proposed method outputs a deduplicated set of STL candidates with plausibility scores, thereby explicitly representing multiple possible formal interpretations of an ambiguous instruction. In contrast to existing one-best NL-to-logic translation methods, the proposed approach is designed to preserve attachment and scope ambiguity. Case studies on representative task descriptions demonstrate that the method generates multiple STL candidates for genuinely ambiguous inputs while collapsing unambiguous or canonically equivalent derivations to a single STL formula.
toXiv_bot_toot
The feeling and smell of HTML doesn't quite compare to the feel and smell of those physical books. But I still think of those manuals whenever I see that bright six-color Apple logo.
[4/4]
I never cease to be mystified by this common work-from-home complaint.
I’ve been 100% wfh aside from a half-dozen short trips to NJ for “all-hands” meetings since 2008. Last one of those was 2016.
I consider solitude when working one of the great positive features of wfh. Having people forcibly interrupt me by their physical presence gained me a ‘prickly’ reputation in my last office.
A while back, I was mostly-lurking on a regional #Meshcore (like #Meshtastic , but different) discord, when someone on there tried to update a repeater and accidentally soft-bricked it. They needed to climb up to where it is to get a physical connection. But there's a raven nesting near where they've …
Things not on my bingo card for this year: winning a prize for physical strength. Turned out, server lifting is a competition @… runs at #GLT, and a cute tux found a loving home.
Is it just me or does #JonyIve share some physical similarities with #TheEdge from U2? 🤔
When Does AI Fakery Become AI Reality?
We are living in the precise historical moment when the question "Is this real?" has become unanswerable in real time, and the fact that nobody seems particularly alarmed by this should alarm us all. The case study arrived this month with the force of a wartime broadcast, which is exactly what it was: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose physical whereabouts and physical condition have been the subject of intense…
Doing errands with our #suv (shopping utility vehicle). For the cover we bought the rain cover of an outdoor backpack. Works pretty well.
Meanwhile I also have an adapter mounted on my axel, too. so I can use it as well. 🎉
Best combination of shopping and physical activity. But I feel a little weird as hardly ever see anybody else with a trailer around. But I simply shouldn't care …
"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
Nintendo says new first-party games exclusive to Switch 2 will have different prices for physical and digital versions in the US, beginning in May (Andy Robinson/Video Games Chronicle)
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/n
Wavefunction collapse is only one interpretation. Under some interpretations, graduate students also have souls.
#Comic
“The project does not involve field research, laboratory experiments, or resource-intensive physical processes. The project-related activities are primarily computer-based and organizational in nature, and focus on the analysis and testing of data-driven infrastructures. Ecological sustainability aspects are therefore only marginally relevant.”
Well, the environmental impact of academic IT projects is indeed marginal compared to commercial operations, but…
⇢
“The project does not involve field research, laboratory experiments, or resource-intensive physical processes. The project-related activities are primarily computer-based and organizational in nature, and focus on the analysis and testing of data-driven infrastructures. Ecological sustainability aspects are therefore only marginally relevant.”
Well, the environmental impact of academic IT projects is indeed marginal compared to commercial operations, but…
⇢
“The project does not involve field research, laboratory experiments, or resource-intensive physical processes. The project-related activities are primarily computer-based and organizational in nature, and focus on the analysis and testing of data-driven infrastructures. Ecological sustainability aspects are therefore only marginally relevant.”
Well, the environmental impact of academic IT projects is indeed marginal compared to commercial operations, but…
⇢
The Pentagon is moving to recruit hundreds of troops to appear as spectators at President Trump’s UFC cage-fighting event on the White House lawn,
and requiring those who attend to pay their own way and meet height and weight requirements.
https://www.
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 568 nodes and 24333 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unwe…
Physical activity is linked to the health of the planet, according to a trio of recent studies
https://phys.org/news/2026-03-physical-linked-health-planet-trio.html
JWST observes the assembly of a massive #galaxy at z~4: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13650 -> "NIRCam images and NIRSpec/IFU spectroscopy (R=2700) show that TGSSJ1530 1049 is part of one of the densest-known structures of continuum and line-emitting objects found at these redshifts. [...] Based on the physical separations and velocity differences between the galaxies, it is expected that these galaxies will merge to form a massive galaxy within a few Gyr. The system qualitatively resembles the forming brightest cluster galaxies in cosmological simulations that form early through a rapid succession of mergers."
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 568 nodes and 24333 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unwe…
Since his first years as a top player, Jannik Sinner has long had one major weakness.
The hotter it is, the more vulnerable he becomes.
It nearly toppled him at January’s Australian Open, before Novak Djokovic did the job instead.
On Thursday, with temperatures climbing toward the 90s at Roland Garros, Sinner could not endure.
In the second round of the French Open, the world No. 1 fell victim to Juan Manuel Cerúndolo of Argentina, the world No. 56.
He grew dizzy…
China will implement new online food delivery regulations on June 1, requiring platforms to regularly verify businesses' identities, locations, and licenses (Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/china-to-crack-down-on-fo…
A look at Eka, which trains its robotic claw on a "vision-force-action model" incorporating realistic joints, motors, and physics principles into its simulation (Will Knight/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/when-robots-have-their-chatgpt-…
"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 …
Spotify launches a feature to buy physical books in the US and UK, powered by Bookshop.org, and expands its Page Match tool to support 30 additional languages (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/15/spotify-l…
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/…
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…
Poetry gives people a language to express collective grief.
In Gaza, poetry documents what cameras cannot always reach and what numbers can never explain.
When destruction erases physical spaces, poetry becomes a witness to history.
https://w…
Physical Intelligence says its new model, π0.7, can direct robots on tasks they weren't trained on, an "early sign" of generalization, surprising researchers (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/202…
"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
RoboForce, which is developing robotics systems to perform physically demanding industrial work, raised $52M led by YZi Labs, bringing its total funding to $67M (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2026/03/16/roboforce-rai…
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 568 nodes and 24333 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unwe…
Since 2004,
René Redzepi has been rewriting the rules of fine dining,
preaching sustainable eating and
creating jewel-like plates that earned #Noma three Michelin stars
and landed it five times at No. 1 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants List.
For effectively transforming the nation into a culinary destination, Mr. Redzepi was knighted by the queen of Denmark.
🆘 Dozens of f…
Sources: Physical Intelligence, which is developing AI models for robotics, is discussing a new funding round of about $1B that would value it at $11B (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-27/ex…
Japan, driven by labor shortages, is increasingly adopting robotics and physical AI, with a hybrid model where startups innovate and corporations provide scale (Kate Park/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/05/japan-is-proving-e…
Sony AI says its autonomous ping pong robot is the first robot to attain expert-level performance in a physical sport after beating some top-level human players (Will Dunham/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sports/ping-pong-robo…
Google DeepMind introduces Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 robotic reasoning model, says it shows significant spatial and physical reasoning improvements over ER 1.5 (Google DeepMind)
https://deepmind.google/blog/gemini-robotics-er-1-6/