Recommendable!
Thursday, October 29, 2026
China’s Purges Are Breaking Records
What is Xi Jinping doing late in his career?
China Communist Party Central Committee
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde steps down
This woman (age 70) should never have become the ECB President 8 years ago!
What has she achieved during her tenure? She was a French fashion show in person!
Putin Woos Africa With an Anti-West Pitch with Palki Sharma
Serious stuff! Putin the Terrible is all over Africa!
Chart of the day
Alpha's share price dropped about $60 from roughly $340 to $280 or roughly 1/5 of its value within 10 days!
A startup that wants to sell sunlight at night from mirror satellites as Sunlight-as-a-Service
Amazing stuff! I think, the concerns of astronomers or the news media reports about it are overblown! Some of the best telescopes on Earth are e.g. on the tops of Andean mountains.
"A startup that wants to sell sunlight at night from mirror satellites lit up a California mountainside brighter than a full moon this month without warning anyone, and astronomers are furious."
"... Earlier this year, the US Federal Communications Commission approved the construction and launch of a prototype mirror satellite designed to reflect the Sun’s rays onto patches Earth during nighttime, despite widespread protests by the astronomy community. ..."
A Satellite Company Tests “Sunlight As A Service” — Without Astronomers’ Knowledge "The California demonstration by Reflect Orbital used spotlights to imitate sunlight-reflecting satellites."
Company graphic
"A promotional photo shared by the company shows a bright orb in the distance, casting long shadows of low brush near Lone Pine, California, a level of brightness exceeding a full Moon.
On October 10th, Reflect Orbital set up powerful spotlights near Lone Pine, Calif., to simulate the illumination its proposed satellites could provide. The sudden light came as a surprise to local residents."
President Trump announced to end exaggerated 46th President-era methane rule setting limits on oil and gas emissions
Good news! Bravo!
The senile, demented and long-time pathological liar, the 46th President, had probably no clue what was going on in his administration!
"... He said the rollback will save $45 billion and unlock 210 million barrels of oil."
"... "Tonight, I'm officially terminating Biden's expensive and unnecessary methane regulations to save consumers and energy producers $45 billion in costs, unlock vast quantities of Texas natural gas and produce 210 million barrels of oil," Trump said. ..."
Trump announces end of Biden-era methane rule, citing $45B in savings "The rollback comes as president pushes to boost domestic energy production amid high fuel prices"
New Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro pushes laptop pricing to a new extreme
Almost $15,000 for a single laptop? This seems almost insane!
Prostate cancer drug shrinks or disappears tumours in 70% of participants with advanced prostate cancer in a small trial
Good news! Cancer is history (soon)!
"An oral drug for advanced prostate cancer called JNJ-6143 caused tumours to shrink or disappear in around 70% of participants in a small clinical trial.
The drug, which interferes with a protein that prostate cancer cells need to survive, was acquired by pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson following a US$3.05-billion deal to buy Halda Therapeutics last year. The drug also triggered a drop in prostate-specific antigen levels in blood tests for 77% of the 31 participants."
"...
- The company was testing JNJ-6143 in patients with advanced prostate cancer who had received multiple treatments
- Its novel approach selectively kills cancer cells by interfering with a protein they need to survive
- In the trial, 77% of 31 evaluable patients receiving the 50-milligram dose saw their PSA levels, a blood marker used to monitor prostate cancer, fall by at least 50%; in 48% of patients, PSA levels fell by at least 90%
- Among patients whose tumors could be measured using imaging, 75% had a confirmed complete or partial response
..."
Johnson & Johnson reports 75% tumor response rate in advanced prostate cancer with JNJ-6143, a first-in-class RIPTAC™ molecule (original news release) "JNJ-6143 is an investigational, once-daily, novel, small molecule designed to trigger cancer cell death through a targeted dual-protein lock between BRD4 and androgen receptor, a highly expressed tumor-selective protein in prostate cancer cells"
Would you rather vote for Dan J. Sullivan or Dan S. Sullivan for US Senate in Alaska?
I did not follow this weird story. Seems to be the latest Dimocratic Party escapade? Maybe too clever by half!
"BREAKING: ALASKA GOVERNOR ORDERS PROBE OF DEMOCRAT NOMINEE OVER ALLEGED SENATE RACE TRICKERY
The announcement came after The New York Times reported Mary Peltola’s campaign helped recruit a retiree named Dan J. Sullivan to run against U.S. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan." (Just the news)
Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Ballot (paid access)
Arizona election candidate makes too many golf courses in Arizona a campaign subject
What about all the ice skating rinks in Arizona? Does the candidate play golf herself? I am not sure this was a smart move, could be self defeating.
Caution: This is a satire.
According to Google: "There is no public information or record indicating that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes plays golf."
On a personal note: There is a large golf course next door where I live in the Phoenix metro area. I like to go walking there.
"Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes drew criticism after saying in a Politico interview that Arizona probably has too many golf courses, part of a broader discussion about water conservation.
Her opponent in Tuesday’s election, state Senate President Warren Petersen, accused Mayes of targeting a multibillion-dollar industry.
The Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry cited golf’s $6 billion economic impact and 66,000 jobs. The chamber said courses use 2% or less of the state’s water, figures that track a 2023 industry study by the Arizona Alliance for Golf. ..."
Attorney General Kris Mayes (official photo)
Why is the human brain three times larger than the chimpanzee's brain?
Amazing stuff! A long time ago, a viral infection made our brain grow!
"We humans share nearly 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees—yet our brains are three times larger. To figure out where our brains diverged from those of our closest living kin, researchers looked for clues in our genes.
They found that, sometime between 5 and 7 million years ago, an African ape got a viral infection. Occasionally, as in this ape’s case, a virus inserts some of its own DNA into its host’s genome to tell it to produce more virus. That DNA can stick around long after the infection, get replicated across the genome, and be passed down to future generations—and that’s exactly what appears to have happened. The researchers found that, while the ancient viral DNA showed up in 158 locations across the chimpanzee genome, it’s absent in the human genome .
So, the researchers removed the viral DNA from chimp stem cells using the gene editing platform CRISPR. The removals caused a gene called LINC00662 to turn on; it is normally activated in humans but not chimpanzees. The activation amped up the activity of genes involved in neuron development. Similarly, when the researchers turned off LINC0062 in human cells, the neuron development genes got no boost. ..."
From the abstract:
"Over the past 5 to 7 million years, humans and chimpanzees have diverged in brain size, structure, and cognition despite high conservation of protein-coding genes.
However, retroviral infections within host genomes have introduced numerous species-specific regulatory elements. Chimpanzees harbor lineage-specific PTERV1 endogenous retroviruses that are absent in humans, but their role in brain evolution has remained unclear.
We performed an epigenomic analysis of PTERV1 insertions in chimpanzee neural organoids and found they are heavily DNA methylated, forming over 150 species-specific heterochromatin domains with the potential to influence gene regulation.
We identified a chimpanzee-specific insertion on chromosome 19 that silences the long noncoding RNA LINC00662 through DNA methylation spreading. CRISPR-mediated deletion of this PTERV1 restored LINC00662 expression in chimpanzee induced pluripotent stem cells.
We show that LINC00662, a human-specific transcript expressed during brain development, plays a role in neuronal maturation, axon outgrowth, and neural organoid development.
These findings reveal a mechanism by which endogenous retroviral insertions contributed to human-chimpanzee brain divergence."
An ancient virus in chimpanzee DNA switches off a gene that is active in humans (original news release) "Humans and chimpanzees share almost all their genes. Despite this, our brains have developed in different ways. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have now shown that a viral pandemic dating back several million years is likely to be part of the explanation."
Fig. 1. PTERV1 insertions form chimpanzee-specific methylated heterochromatin domains in neural organoids.
Fig. 3. LINC00662 is a cytoplasmic human lncRNA expressed during brain development and associated with neurite-related proteins.
Fig. 4. Loss of LINC00662 impairs neurite-associated maturation in human neural organoids.
When Google search provides two different, contradictory responses to two very similar search requests
It appears, Google's current approach to query various news sources to answer a question occasionally fails terribly! Here is such a case.
Wrong answer
Correct answer
US military's drug boat strikes have now killed at least 240 people since September 2025
Using the military for law enforcement operations is often controversial!
How much effort is being made to try to capture/arrest these alleged drug smugglers before killing them?
Why are drug smugglers still using this dangerous route?
"The U.S. military killed five people Tuesday aboard what Southern Command described as a “go-fast vessel” associated with “narco-terrorists” in the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the death toll from its campaign against suspected drug traffickers to at least 240 since September 2025. ...
Over the previous months, these strikes have gained mounting legal scrutiny, domestically and internationally. In September, the United Nations found reasonable grounds to believe the killings constituted murder under international law and warned that the broader campaign could amount to crimes against humanity. ...
The families of two men killed in an October 2025 strike have also sued the U.S. government, alleging wrongful death and extrajudicial killing. The lawsuit, filed with assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union and Center for Constitutional Rights, concerns Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, both from Trinidad and Tobago. ..."
Credits: Defense News
50 US Marines put on undersea cable and pipeline duty in the Baltic Sea alongside Finnish and other NATO soldiers
Bad news, if you have to protect undersea cables like this! Nothing is safe from Putin the Terrible!
"A team of close to 50 reconnaissance and intelligence-focused Marines are being sent to join a NATO mission that oversees the network of undersea internet cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
The Marines are being sent to join the NATO-led operation due, at least in part, to their expertise with unmanned reconnaissance drones and other tactical intelligence-gathering skills. In a Marine Corps press release, the senior officer in the Finnish Navy said the Marines would work alongside Finns and other NATO forces to monitor waters in the Baltic, which are crisscrossed with data cables and natural gas pipelines. ..."
Credits: Defense News
Flavio Bolsonaro Lands in Florida After Fleeing Brazil Through Argentina
What is going on in Brazil?
"... the Bolsonaro family is expected to request political asylum in the United States. ...
On Tuesday, rumors published on Brazilian and Argentine outlets indicated that Flavio Bolsonaro had refused to comply with a recent court order demanding he relinquish his passports and instead fled the country. Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Justice Alexandre de Moraes — known for his years-long persecution of conservatives in Brazil — signed the order to seize Bolsonaro’s passports just moments after the conservative Senator lost the October 25 presidential runoff election against socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. De Moraes reportedly justified the need to seize Bolsonaro’s passports and ban him from leaving the country by arguing that the measure is part of an investigation against Bolsonaro on corruption allegations.
Sen. Bolsonaro had initially announced on Sunday that he would challenge the results of the election, citing a controversy surrounding a sudden Sunday ruling issued by STF Justice Cristiano Zanin ordering the forced extension of voting hours from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Sunday. The controversy was further fueled by the fact that Justice Zanin was President Lula’s personal lawyer when the socialist president was convicted and sentenced to prison for corruption. Zanin was appointed to the top court by Lula in June 2023, months after he took office for a third term. ..."
Russia is actively supporting Houthi operations against Saudi Arabia
Putin the Terrible at work!
"Russia is actively supporting Houthi operations to disrupt global energy markets by providing the Houthis with satellite imagery of Saudi oil and military infrastructure.
A Switzerland-based geospatial intelligence firm told the Associated Press on October 28 that it has consistently observed Russian military satellites positioned above major Saudi energy and military sites in the days prior to and following Houthi drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia.[i] Russian satellite activity followed a similar pattern around attacks on Saudi infrastructure originating from Iraq, where the Houthis maintain a presence and have launched attacks on Saudi Arabia with Iraqi militias."
"Russia is actively supporting Houthi operations to disrupt global energy markets by providing the Houthis with satellite imagery of Saudi oil and military infrastructure. Russian satellites have routinely been positioned above major Saudi energy and military sites in the days prior to and after Houthi attacks on those sites since July 2026. ..."
Microsoft hits 10 quarters of record-breaking revenue in a row
Wow! Doing business in the age of ML & AI!
"... The tech giant reported yet another quarterly revenue record on Wednesday: $92.3 billion, a 19% increase over the year-ago quarter.
Microsoft has now reported record-breaking revenue for 10 quarters in a row. ...
The record-breaking income was largely driven on the strength of Microsoft Cloud, which reached $63.9 billion in revenue this quarter, an increase of 30% over the year-ago quarter, Microsoft said. ...
Still, a good chunk of the revenue was from AI, because Microsoft also reported $10 billion in revenue from OpenAI. Despite branching out to AWS, Oracle, and others, OpenAI still runs a lot of its services on Microsoft’s cloud. ..."
Trump Department of Energy loans $5B to nuclear plants that will power data centers
Good news!
"The Trump administration is giving Constellation Energy $5 billion in loans to expand nuclear generating capacity at eight power plants by 1.1 gigawatts.
Most or all of the additional power from seven of those facilities has already been bought by Google, Meta, or Amazon. ..."
New study reveals how egg quality declines with reproductive age in females
Good news!
Notice again how the elite university calls women "people" and tries very hard to avoid mention "female", "woman" or "women" in this article that is about a woman's health topic. The elite university uses "individual" or omit entirely to refer to women or females. Plus, the abstract of the research paper also avoids mentioning females or women! Very appalling, if not disgusting!
"As many as 1 in 6 adults [adult females/women] face fertility difficulties worldwide, research has shown, and the challenge become harder as they age. ...
A new Yale study offers new insights that could improve outcomes for these individuals females/women and families. ...
According to their findings, the structures that help eggs reduce chromosome numbers accurately before fertilization become weaker as people [females/women] age. This is problematic because eggs must halve their chromosome number to assure that fusion with a sperm restores the correct number needed for health embryo development.
The researchers also identified how three proteins cooperate to maintain these critical structures. Restoring one of these components to the structures that anchor chromosomes improved chromosome positioning in aged eggs, they found, revealing a contributor to declining egg quality and a potential direction for research into preserving reproductive health. ...
For the study, the researchers investigated whether weakening centromeres could be an additional cause of chromosome errors in aging eggs. They focused on three proteins — CENP-A, CENP-B, and CENP-C — that are components of centromeres.
They combined studies of naturally aged eggs from [female] mice with experiments that recreate specific features of aging in young eggs within hours. First, they measured centromere proteins in young and aged eggs.
Then they used targeted protein degradation, a technique that directs the cell to remove a selected protein, to reduce CENP-A in the young eggs. With quantitative, high-resolution live microscopy, they tracked how chromosomes moved, lined up, and separated during division. ...
The researchers found that naturally aged eggs have lower levels of CENP-A and CENP-C proteins at their centromeres. Reducing CENP-A in young eggs by the same amount lost during natural aging caused chromosomes to become incorrectly positioned and lag behind during division. ..."
From the abstract:
"Maternal age is the primary risk factor for aneuploidy in mammalian oocytes, but the molecular mechanisms that preserve meiotic chromosome segregation fidelity during aging remain incompletely understood.
Using ultrastructural analysis, we observe that spindle microtubules in aged [female] mouse oocytes tend to exhibit increased misorientation and shorter interaction lengths, whereas microtubule number and density remain largely unchanged.
We demonstrate that the levels of the key centromeric components CENP-A and CENP-C are reduced in oocytes from aged [female] mice. Acute degradation of CENP-A during meiosis I affects CENP-C stability at centromeres and causes chromosome segregation errors in young oocytes, a phenotype not observed in mitosis.
The expression of exogenous CENP-C rescues these defects via CENP-B–dependent centromere binding, supporting a link between centromere weakening and meiotic errors.
This intervention also partially improves chromosome alignment in oocytes from older [female] animals. Together, these findings implicate centromere weakening, alongside cytoskeletal disorganization, in the age-related decline in chromosome segregation fidelity in oocytes."
Declining centromere strength compromises meiotic chromosome segregation in aging oocytes (open access)
Super-resolution image of the intricate chromosome division machinery in a young mouse oocyte. At metaphase I, homologous chromosomes (green) are positioned within the spindle’s network of microtubules (orange). Centromeres (magenta) mark the sites where chromosomes connect to this machinery, helping ensure that the egg receives the correct number of chromosomes.
Fig. 1 Ultrastructural analysis identifies age-associated differences in microtubule organization in mammalian eggs. ...
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Inside Japan’s Giant Neutrino Detector
Very recommendable (and funny)!
Ukraine Moves Closer to Its Own Satellite Network as Test Craft Reaches Orbit
Good news! Europe begins to build more of their own satellite networks!
"Ukrainian communications company Himera and Danish satellite manufacturer GomSpace have sent Obria nano, a test satellite, into orbit as the first step toward an independent Ukrainian communications network.
Himera told Ukrainska Pravda on Tuesday, Oct. 27, that the satellite reached orbit aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission on Oct. 1, and is reportedly already operating. ...
In the long term, the company plans to deploy a satellite constellation covering all of Ukraine’s territory.
The network would also complement existing European satellite systems and form the basis of a sovereign Ukrainian communications system. ...
Ukraine also signed seven agreements with Finland on Oct. 22, including deals to expand Kyiv’s use of Finnish satellite capabilities through Nokia and ICEYE. ..."
Ukraine Strikes Russia’s Largest Steel Plant, Chemical Factory
There are plenty of other targets in Russia besides refineries!
ICE plan to buy robot dogs spurs protest from about 300 hundred of Boston Dynamics employees. Really!
Bad news! Did they also protest when ICE has used real dogs?
"Hundreds of employees at the US robotics firm Boston Dynamics signed a petition calling for executives to halt a sale of the company’s robot dogs to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—but executives stood by the deal, while saying the robots would not be weaponized.
On September 25, the Department of Homeland Security contract awarded $1.3 million to a Connecticut company called Radeco to provide ICE with modified versions of Boston Dynamics’ quadruped robots. But Boston Dynamics workers sent the petition letter with more than 300 signatures—half of them anonymous—to the company’s executives in early September and shared copies with The Boston Globe and WBUR public radio station. ..."
The data center boom has an upside: major innovation for and modernization of the US grid
Good news! Unfortunately, the article below is actually quite disappointing. It only scratches the topic.
"... While all of those new connections are driving an ever larger amount of stress to the grid, ... provide the kind of load orchestration and management that helps utilities maximize the potential of the current system. ... software can help organizations efficiently deploy energy while also optimizing connections to reduce utility payers’ bills, the founder said. ...
a company that is working to build out and expand the physical infrastructure of the grid, while also making it run much more efficiently. ... superconductive power lines that promise to transfer energy at a much more efficient rate than traditional ones. ... carry power five times farther than traditional cables while also requiring 20 times less space ..."
Females with autoimmune diseases ‘less likely to be believed’ than males and face longer diagnostic delays. Really!
When gender bias is a prejudice!
Notice also this is an international study with less than 7000 participants (of which 91% were female), and it is based on self reporting.
"... Diagnosis can be challenging because many autoimmune diseases initially cause symptoms such as fatigue, pain, sleep disturbance or low mood, which are common in the general population. Symptoms can also affect multiple parts of the body and change over time. ..."
From the abstract:
"Background
Females have higher rates of autoimmune disease and reported misdiagnoses. Our study uses patient-reported diagnostic data to capture, and compare between sexes and diseases, elements of the diagnostic journey not routinely documented in medical records.
Methods
In this international cross-sectional study, an online survey was used to capture data on the time from symptom onset and number of clinician consultations before achieving the autoimmune diagnosis, and rates and types of reported misdiagnoses. These were then compared between males and females (self-reported biological sex). The survey was co-designed, pre-tested, and approved by patients, charities and clinicians. It was made available internationally through an online survey platform between Dec 7, 2024, and March 7, 2025.
Any individual aged 18 years or older reporting any autoimmune or rheumatic disease of likely inflammatory origin (e.g., polymyalgia rheumatica) confirmed in a clinical correspondence was eligible to participate.
Patient-reported measures included: time to diagnosis and number of healthcare visits from symptom onset, and types of perceived misdiagnoses. Pearson Chi-squared tests and Bayesian regression models were used to compare males and females. Results were adjusted for potential confounders. Firth’s penalised logistic regression model was used for disease group due to small numbers of males in some categories of misdiagnosis. ...
Findings
Of the 6607 participants with autoimmune diseases, most were female (91.2%), White (87.8%), and resided in the UK (69.7%).
Females were significantly more likely than males to report longer delays to diagnosis from symptom onset, more visits to healthcare providers, and a higher proportion reported that their autoimmune disease had been attributed to psychiatric (43.3% vs. 32.7%; p < 0.001) and psychosomatic causes (33.9% vs. 21.5%; p < 0.001). While more males than females reported being misdiagnosed with another physical disease (47.6% vs. 43.5%), this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.131). Disease group was a significant predictor of perceived psychiatric and psychosomatic misdiagnoses with diseases with visible physical symptoms and/or more definitive biomarkers (e.g., Type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis) having lower rates of psychiatric/psychosomatic misdiagnoses. After adjusting for just disease group, females had significantly higher odds of reporting receiving mental health misdiagnoses (1.56, 95% CI 1.25–1.96; p < 0.001), and psychosomatic misdiagnoses (OR = 1.87, 95% CI 1.45–2.43; p < 0.001) than males. Following adjustment for age, disease group, continent, and household financial situation, females had significantly higher odds than males of psychiatric misdiagnoses (OR = 1.46, 95% CI 1.14–1.87; p = 0.003) and psychosomatic misdiagnoses (OR = 1.74, 95% CI 1.31–2.32; p < 0.001).
Interpretation
In our survey sample, females with autoimmune diseases reported more challenging diagnostic journeys than males.
Awareness of sex and disease differences in diagnostic experiences is essential for improving equality in care. The high number of reported psychiatric and psychosomatic misdiagnoses in both sexes may also reflect the challenges of interpreting presenting and evolving symptoms of autoimmunity. This is particularly relevant for primary care where most patients will initially present. This work is exploratory in nature and our findings should be interpreted cautiously. Future research is warranted into patients’ and clinicians’ perspectives on the causes of sex differences in diagnostic journeys and to design interventions to reduce diagnostic delays and psychiatric/psychosomatic misdiagnoses in autoimmune disease."
There are now 10 or more lawsuits claiming OpenAI GPT-4o caused someone to die or suffer harmful delusions
I suspect most of these or similar lawsuits are rather frivolous!
"The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer with epilepsy, sued OpenAI on Tuesday. The suit, filed by Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu, alleges that ChatGPT coached Wan to taper off her seizure medication and hide it from her doctors before she died in February, The New York Times reported.
Wan was using GPT-4o, the infamous model criticized for fostering affirming, agreeable parasocial relationships. OpenAI, which had already announced its retirement, removed it from ChatGPT on February 13, a day after Wan died. ..."
"... Seven families filed lawsuits against OpenAI on Thursday [11/4/2025], claiming that the company’s GPT-4o model was released prematurely and without effective safeguards. Four of the lawsuits address ChatGPT’s alleged role in family members’ suicides, while the other three claim that ChatGPT reinforced harmful delusions that in some cases resulted in inpatient psychiatric care. ..."
OpenAI announces new discoveries in mathematics, computer science and physics
ML & AI keep on giving at a fast speed! This is just OpenAI! What will be next? So far I have not seen similar news coming out of China.
If indeed the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) is false, then this will probably have major consequences, I suspect. Like reviewing many previous research that was deemed to difficult or too time consuming etc.
"... the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH), a longstanding conjecture about the computational complexity of Boolean formula satisfiability, a problem deeply related to the P vs. NP problem. The ETH has been widely believed to be true, and has been used in hundreds of papers to derive conditional computational hardness results across a wide variety of fields including graph theory, computational biology, databases, computational geometry, and more. Surprisingly, our system has recently proved that the ETH is false, a result that was subsequently verified in Lean. The refutation of the ETH reopens questions about how much faster these tasks could become, and may help guide the search for better algorithms. ..."
OpenAI announces new discoveries in mathematics, computer science and physics "It formed groups of experts to examine and explain the results."
Working with academic communities to build scientific understanding (OpenAI news release) "We are announcing three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics about harmonic analysis, complexity theory, and quantum field theory."
Facebook parent Meta is selling nearly $100 billion in stock to pay for its AI buildout and Nvidia is buying $3 billion of it
Amazing stuff!
Current valuation of Meta about $1.6 trillion.
"Facebook parent Meta is selling nearly $100 billion in stock to pay for its AI buildout, after years of buying back its own shares.
Chipmaker Nvidia, which sells Meta its AI chips, is buying $3 billion of it."
"... Meta isn't the only giant coming up short. Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) each spent more than their businesses brought in during a quarter this year, then borrowed heavily. Meta is the first to hand much of the bill to shareholders instead. ..."
Federal Trade Commission and 20 states sue Dollar General for overcharging millions of customers
What a cheap store chain!
"The Federal Trade Commission and 20 states sued Dollar General on Monday, alleging the discount chain routinely charges shoppers more at the register than the price marked on the shelf.
The complaint, filed in federal court in Tennessee, says the company mislabeled prices for years and collected millions of dollars in overcharges across its 21,000 stores. Alabama, Florida, Ohio, and Tennessee are among the states that signed on.
Regulators say the chain failed thousands of state pricing inspections and fielded tens of thousands of customer complaints without putting safeguards in place. ..."
Detention without a hearing does not violate the due process rights of immigrants
Good news! Good decision!
"... Almost 90,000 immigrants have tried a legal maneuver to escape detention, but an appeals court ruling just significantly undermined that part of the Left’s anti-deportation strategy.
ProPublica has tracked 89,170 cases in which immigrants filed writs of habeas corpus, challenging the lawfulness of their detention or imprisonment. The scale is extraordinary. Immigrants filed more habeas cases during the first 13 months of President Donald Trump’s second term than during the previous three administrations combined. ...
However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Friday [10/23/2026] ruled that detention without a hearing does not violate the due process rights of immigrants. ..."
Planning under Noise with Neural Operators
This could be an interesting new research paper by Anima Anandkumar and her team!
From the abstract:
"Planning under uncertain control execution noise requires reliable feedback policies across diverse environments.
We introduce Planning Under Noise (PUN), a neural operator that learns noise-aware value fields for planning in unseen geometries. Building on an established screened-Poisson formulation of stochastic optimal control, we address two challenges: specifying boundary conditions that support navigation across varying geometries and efficiently computing fields with reliable gradients.
Zero-Dirichlet obstacle boundaries terminate sampled paths at walls, weakening the goal signal along long routes and making it harder to estimate reliably.
We instead impose reflecting Neumann conditions on obstacles and a Dirichlet condition at the goal, allowing sampled paths to continue exploring free space until they reach the target.
To solve the resulting PDE without a configuration-space mesh, we extend a Monte Carlo (MC) solver, Walk on Stars (WoSt), to higher dimensions. However, local MC fluctuations can reverse estimated gradient directions and cause planning failures, making direct planning require costly sampling. PUN amortizes this computation by learning geometry-to-field mappings from noisy, partially converged Monte Carlo labels, avoiding expensive convergence for every training example.
At inference, test-time scaling uses bounded local search guided by the predicted global field. We evaluate PUN on planning tasks across dimensions.
Across four noise levels, PUN matches or outperforms all compared planners, achieving 95-100% success on the 4D replanning benchmark while maintaining the lowest runtime. At the highest tested noise level in 4D, PUN achieves 10.7-60.6% relative gains in success rate over other methods while running 3.29-32.15 times faster."
Physicists trap and suspend single positron of antimatter for months
Amazing stuff!
"... After capturing the fast-moving particle from radioactive decay, the scientists cooled it to nearly absolute zero. Then, they suspended the particle in a near-perfect vacuum, preventing it from touching ordinary matter—an encounter that would cause it to vanish.
By trapping and cooling a positron this way, the scientists created what they call a "one-positron quantum cyclotron." In this state, the positron essentially behaves much like an artificial atom with quantum energy levels scientists can precisely control and observe.
The advance ultimately could enable the most precise test yet of a fundamental symmetry between electrons and their antimatter counterparts. ...
team also demonstrated that they could precisely manipulate and detect the positron’s individual quantum energy states. By delivering carefully tuned microwaves, the team added tiny precise amounts of energy to the positron and detect its resulting quantum transitions. ..."
From the abstract:
"A one-positron quantum cyclotron is realized with a single positron suspended indefinitely in the magnetic field of a Penning trap.
This opens the possibility of quantum measurements of the positron magnetic moment at a precision much higher than attained with classical cyclotron motion. Comparing the magnetic moments measured using positron and electron quantum cyclotrons should provide the most stringent test of the fundamental 𝐶𝑃𝑇"
Scientists trap and tame a single particle of antimatter for months (original news release) "Trapped positron sets stage for Standard Model’s toughest test yet"
One-Positron Quantum Cyclotron (open access)
The tank in the center of the lab, lowered beneath ground level, holds the captured positron.
Fig. 1 (a) Energy levels of a one-positron quantum cyclotron.
(b) Trap electrodes that confine the positron.
(b) Trap electrodes that confine the positron.
Fig. 2 The cryogenic dewars, superconducting solenoid, dilution refrigerator, and Penning trap.
English for trippers: Mecca is mega
Medina is leaner! Mock a Mocca!
P.S. No insult or disrespect of Islam intended.
Samsung-linked hospital to bring humanoid robot as surgical assistant into an operating room of a hospital in South Korea
Good news! How serious is the medical staff shortage in South Korea?
"... The project is now in a validation phase. In a simulated surgical environment, the team is testing the robot’s ability to pass and retrieve instruments, operate an endoscope, retract tissue, understand voice commands, and stop and recover safely. To reach commercialization, the robot will go through repeated performance testing, simulated-environment and preclinical studies, usability evaluations by medical staff, establishment of a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) quality system, clinical trials, and regulatory approval as a medical device. ..."
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)