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Small Businesses Are Ready and Willing to Switch Banks for Better Support

Business owners want greater control, simpler tools, and meaningful rewards, creating new ways for banks to deepen relationships and grow revenue.

Oct 23 • 2:25 PM EDT • Business • thefinancialbrand.com

Vehicle Crashes Into Visalia Business After Driver's Foot Slips Off Brake

A vehicle crashed into a Visalia business after the driver lost control. Fortunately, no injuries were reported in the incident.

Oct 23 • 10:47 AM EDT • Business • gvwire.com

Poll: Low-information voters have turned hardest against Trump and the GOP

In 2024, the voters who knew the least about politics were some of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters. A Data for Progress poll released just before the election found Americans who didn’t consume any news at all said they’d vote for Trump over Kamala Harris by a 20-point margin, 60%1 to 40%. In February, we reported that many of these voters had soured on Trump. Voters who couldn’t name the party in control of Congress moved away from Trump at about twice the rate as high-information voters. But approval isn’t vote choice. With the midterms less than two weeks away, it is worth asking if these voters are turning against the president’s party in federal elections, too. In our October Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, conducted Oct. 13–19 among 2,028 U.S. adults, we asked respondents two factual questions about politics: which party has the most members in the House, and which has the most members in the Senate. I classified anyone who got at least one of these questions wrong as “low-knowledge.” About 30% of adults miss at least one question, including 25% of 2024 Trump voters, 22% of Harris voters, and more than half of people who didn’t vote in 2024. In this article, I do two things with this data. First, I repeat my February analysis and compare how these two groups feel about Trump’s job as president; then I look at each group’s voting behavior in the upcoming House midterms. Register for free to read the rest of this piece.

Oct 23 • 10:03 AM EDT • Politics • gelliottmorris.com

Op-ed: The case for a primary care triple-double

Strong primary care is the foundation of a high-performing health system, proven to control costs and

Oct 23 • 10:00 AM EDT • Health • fiercehealthcare.com

Pope hope, that’s entertainment, and getting ahead in the CIA

Happy Friday friends, I want to start by just breathing for all of us a big long collective sigh of relief at the news this week that the pope’s doctors have basically blown the all clear for Leo’s health. Going from knowing nothing to him declaring to the world he needed surgery, to a cancer diagnosis, to bouncing out of the hospital in barely even days, to ringing the bell in less than two weeks is whiplash inducing. But in the best possible way. We are living in a world in which the Roman pontiff, by dint of history, biography and circumstance, is once more at the epicenter of global affairs. Not just conversations about religion, or Christian and post-Christian values, but the bleeding edge of the most pressing issues of human affairs. Think I am exaggerating a touch? Consider the images of the crowds who greeted Leo in Paris just weeks ago, and juxtapose them with the absolute photo negative scenes unfolding there recently. Ask yourself how many world leaders are talking about AI right now and directly citing the pope as they do so. Try to name a country who has had as many top-ranked diplomats in and out of both Russia and Ukraine in the last three years as the Vatican has in the last three months. It has been fascinating to watch Leo XIV emerge as not just a kind of pop culture reference point or totem to be cited (Francis was often name-checked this way) but as a kinetic force in global conversation. Given the state of things, we need global figures of gravitas and values, even better if they have real wisdom behind what they are saying. So news of Leo’s illness was, it seemed to me, a tremor with potentially Richter Scale implications. That not only has the worst not come to pass but instead we’ve had the best of outcomes announced is something to really be grateful for. Humanity, it seems to me, is entering one of its irregular but cyclical phases where the pace of change — technological, social, and geopolitical — outstrips the ability of previously settled norms and received wisdom to cope. Such periods – and I think the first decades of the last century were a similar such time – throw into question the viability of all kinds of institutions. And many of ours have been straining to breaking point for a few years now. The papacy has the power and the potential to be a steadying pole in all of this. That’s my hope, anyway. It’s a lot to freight the office with, though it is arguably its ultimate purpose from its founding, to be a steadying rock on which all that matters can be anchored. It’s also, of course, an intolerable weight of responsibility to place on a single man. But I am encouraged to have hope in – and for – Leo. The apostle whom he succeeds, after all, was famously unequal to some moments, failed some tests of faith, and resiled from taking the road which led ultimately to the circus on Vatican hill. Human frailty and limitations, of health, of character, of temper, can open us to Christ, whose strength is greatest in our weakness, so St. Paul learned. That gives me hope, and I am sure it consoles Leo, too. And so I will continue to pray for him. Because we need apostles of rock right now. Here’s the news. Subscribe The News The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued yesterday a new document “Venite ad me: Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in an Epochal Change.” It’s not a short document, and it is at pains to stress this isn’t a doctrinal note from the dicastery, either. Rather, it brings together reflections on an important issue from the Church around the world. Some of it I actually found really rather powerful. It is, however, 25,000, which is a lot for a busy reader to get through on a weekday. So, you can read our busy reader’s summary right here. — News broke yesterday of an Oct. 22 meeting of U.S. bishops with President Donald Trump. The meeting was organized by an official at the Heritage Foundation, according to several sources close to the meeting. Video of several U.S. bishops praying in the Oval Office over President Trump was posted on social media Thursday afternoon, first by White House Communications Advisor Margo Martin, and then by the official twitter.com account of the Archdiocese of Denver. The meeting has drawn sharp criticism because of its proximity to the upcoming midterm Congressional elections, in which Democrats are widely expected to win control of the House of Representatives, while control of the Senate remains closely contested. Sources close to the bishops’ conference told The Pillar that some USCCB senior officials were surprised by the existence of the meeting when video of it first emerged online. And a source close to conference president Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City told The Pillar that the archbishop was “deeply frustrated” by the occasion of the meeting. An official conference spokesperson told The Pillar that the meeting was “not organized with or by the USCCB” and was “not affiliated with the conference.” You can read the whole story here. — The next National Eucharistic Congress will be held in Indianapolis in 2029, a return to the city that hosted the last gathering in 2024. You read it here first. By here, I don’t mean this newsletter, I mean at The Pillar. We broke the story this week. It’s a big deal, in as much as the last congress was a roaring success and the next installment has the potential to be a real focal point for evangelizing efforts in the coming years. Read all about it here. — As Pope Leo prepares for the longest trip of his pontificate, Church leaders in Uruguay say the pontiff will encounter a highly secularized culture, in a country with a very different Catholic history than many of its South American neighbors. The nation has not had a papal visit since 1988, and leaders who spoke with The Pillar say it has a dire need for evangelization, even amid the prospect of a small revival in faith. This is real reporting on the Church in the country, and frankly a story you simply are not going to be able to read anywhere else. Read the whole thing. — The Archdiocese of Detroit announced this week a plan that would see the vast majority of its parish priests reassigned next summer, amid a restructuring process expected to dramatically shrink the number of parishes in the archdiocese. Archbishop Edward Weisenburger said this week that the plan “asks much of our priests,” but is a “sacrifice they are making as brothers of one, unified presbyterate.” The thing is, as JD pointed out in an analysis yesterday, pastors of parishes have a legal right to stability in office, so the only way this kind of wholesale reassignment goes ahead is if all of the archdiocesan clergy agree to resign. That creates its own kind of legal issues, though, and re-raises longstanding questions about the effectiveness of canonical due process protections for priests when dealing with coercive exercises in authority. Read the whole thing here. — More than three months after the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its decree declaring the excommunication of the leadership of the Society of St. Pius X, questions remain about the full effects of the society’s schism. Specifically, the DDF’s July claim that marriages witnessed and confessions heard by SSPX priests are now invalid remains contested — and it emerged this week it appears that the Vatican’s own legal experts don’t agree. You can read my whole analysis of the situation and what it means here. All I would add is that the DDF’s undeveloped, some would say unsubstantiated, claim about the invalidity of some SSPX sacraments came in their July Explanatory Note on the schismatic consecrations by the society that month. It touches directly on both papal acts of governance — indeed it purports to nullify them — and the most intimate pastoral encounters possible in a parish setting. If there is one aspect of the Francis-era style of governance I would like the curia to finally cut out, root and branch, it would be these attempts to try to effect extraordinarily sensitive legislative acts via a note. — At least a dozen French bishops have spoken out following an eruption of violence on the country’s streets Oct. 17. Not surprisingly, they unanimously condemned the violence, but the length and content of their interventions varied significantly. Several sought to distinguish between the actions of rioters and what they suggested were the legitimate concerns of peaceful young protesters. Many also evoked Pope Leo XIV’s Sept. 25-28 visit to France, suggesting it offered a powerful counter-image to the scenes of looting and destruction. A number of bishops also stressed their solidarity with law enforcement officials who struggled to contain the disorder, as well as the owners of the roughly 3,000 damaged or looted businesses. What’s the background to the nationwide unrest that the French media calls “les violences du 17 octobre”? And what exactly are the bishops saying? Read all about it here. — A Polish bishop called for the firm defense of unborn children as well as compassion for their mothers this week, as the lower house of Poland’s parliament passed two bills seeking to liberalize the country’s abortion laws. The bill on decriminalizing assistance in an abortion passed by 217 votes to 213, while the abortion in cases of fetal abnormality bill passed by 233 to 203, thanks to the government’s majority in the lower house. Both bills will now move to the Polish Senate, the upper house of parliament, where the ruling coalition has a larger majority. The fetal abnormality bill is symbolically significant because if it became law, it would effectively overturn a 2020 ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal that a 1993 law permitting abortion for a severe and irreversible disability or a life-threatening incurable disease was unconstitutional. Read the whole story here. Subscribe **[The St. Paul Center App | Bible Study On-The-Go Read and understand the Bible with St. Paul Center’s new app! With today’s leading Catholic Scripture scholars as your guides, the St. Paul Center app empowers you to read the Bible](https://stpaulcenter.com/app?utm_source=pillar&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=applaunch)** from the heart of the Church. Download the app for free at either the Apple or the Google app stores. https://stpaulcenter.com/app That’s entertainment I have written before about my deep and sincere reservations about the celebrity exorcist subculture which has taken root in American Catholicism. And, because I am very ill at ease with the entire thing, I try to keep a weather eye on the phenomenon without being drawn into the kind of online back-and-forth which these figures sometimes generate. Earlier this week, JD noted that one such celebrity exorcist type, Fr. Chad Ripperger, has undertaken, on the request of his bishop, a year’s fast from interviews and public speaking. I’m sure that will be salutary for him, if for no other reason than that receiving with docility requests from one’s rightful ecclesiastical superiors always comes with graces. Then a second thing happened this week which caught my eye. Apparently, another fixture in the celebrity exorcist world, Fr. Carlos Martins, has initiated a lawsuit against two lay men — apparently associates of Rippenger, though I am unclear in what way, exactly — for allegedly defaming him and his ministry on a podcast. It seems the suit was initiated nearly a year ago and is now pending. At issue, I read, is that the two men described Martins on a podcast as “not who he says he is” with regard to his exorcism ministry and that he “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” These statements Martins considers to be false and defamatory and, his suit claims, “directly affected the sale and reception of [his] The Exorcist Files book that was newly released at the time these episodes aired.” I don’t want to get too into the weeds of the details here, but a couple of things struck me about all this.

Oct 23 • 9:10 AM EDT • Entertainment • pillarcatholic.com

GuliKit TT Pro review: The ideal Switch 2 controller for players on the go

A protective case and an accessory box make it easy to travel with the TT Pro.

Oct 23 • 7:30 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com

Democrats’ Projected Majority Grows as 19 More House Races Shift Away From the GOP

Republicans’ path to keeping control of the House has all but evaporated. The outstanding question is how large Democrats’ majority will be in 2027; in the best-case scenario, their party could enter the new Congress with more seats than they had after successfully flipping control of the House in 2006 and 2018.

Oct 23 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • cookpolitical.com

Hakeem Jeffries eyes speaker role as Democrats seek House control

Jeffries could become the first Black American to hold the role.

Oct 23 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • ny1.com

Microsoft Announces Per-Hour Cost for Xbox Cloud Gaming Service

You're on the clock, kids.

Oct 22 • 8:46 PM EDT • Technology • gizmodo.com

SpaceX and Tesla have high election stakes as Elon Musk pours $366 million into campaigns

Musk’s biggest political bet is on the Senate, where control could shape future investigations, federal spending and regulations affecting SpaceX and Tesla.

Oct 22 • 2:26 PM EDT • Business • cnbc.com

Dept. of Health confirms 10th travel-related dengue case on Maui

DOH teams have been deployed to conduct inspections and implement mosquito control measures in the affected area.

Oct 22 • 1:43 PM EDT • Health • hawaiinewsnow.com

How well have past GOTY winners sold?

We’re less than two months away from 2026’s The Game Awards, and what a year it’s been for fantastic games, including Resident Evil Requiem, Forza Horizon 6, Slay the Spire II, the Blood of Dawnwalker, and Control Resonant – just to name a few. So as we approach the end of the year, we thought we’d look back on our estimates for the GOTY winners of the past four years. In terms of revenue, Elden Ring (2022 winner), Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023), Astro Bot (2024), and Expedition 33 (2025) have generated a combined $3.8B via 73M copies sold: Let’s have a look, then. Elden Ring has generated $2B in revenue Elden Ring is a phenomenon in every sense. It’s sold a whopping 36.4M copies across Steam (50%), PS5 (35%), and Xbox (15% across console and PC). Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Elden Ring also just passed an astronomical milestone: $2B in revenue. While PlayStation and Xbox account for half of Elden Ring’s copies sold across these three platforms, they account for 57.5% of revenue. This – as ever – is due to regional pricing and the higher relative share of PC gamers in lower-priced markets. For example, around 17.4% of Elden Ring’s Steam copies sold were in China, where the game costs about 26% less than the price in the States. There’s an … interesting narrative going around these days that console gamers are only interested in ball-and-gun games and have the patience for little else. Well, Elden Ring’s impressive sales prove that is simply not true, and across all platforms. What’s more, over 9.8M people have played Elden Ring for over 100 hours, with nearly 3.5M people getting all of the achievements and trophies. For reference, 10.9% of Elden Ring’s PlayStation players have the platinum trophy, while 10.5% of players on Steam and 3.9% of Xbox players unlocked all the achievements. Git gud, Xbox players! Of the 1.5M people who played Elden Ring on PlayStation last month, 4% also played Dark Souls 3 last month, 4% played Bloodborne, and 3% played Sekiro. There’s those Soulsborne diehards for you. By many accounts, including my own, Elden Ring is one of the best games of all time. It’s an evergreen seller that will continue to be a cash cow for Bandai and FromSoftware for years to come. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Elden Ring has sold another 2M copies across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox this year, generating almost $110M. This means it’s outperforming many of this year’s high-profile releases. Even Elden Ring’s standalone run-based PvE spinoff, 2025’s Nightreign, has sold 7.8M copies and generated $282M in revenue. Baldur’s Gate 3 is another billion-dollar-plus banger Another cross-platform phenomenon is Baldur’s Gate 3, which has sold 23.2M copies and generated over $1.2B in revenue. About 18.7M of these copies (80.6%) are via Steam, 2.9M via PS5 (12.7%), and 1.6M (6.8%) via Xbox. Around 1.3M folks on Steam bought BG3 before it hit 1.0. The PlayStation version launched about a month after the PC 1.0 release, while the Xbox version came four months later due to technical issues around developing local co-op on the Series S. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Across platforms, Baldur’s Gate 3’s monthly active users have never dropped below 2M, including 2.2M MAUs last month (68.5% on Steam, 21.9% on PS5, and 9.6% on Xbox). And it still regularly brings in 280K to 400K players every day: About 1% of BG3’s Steam player base has played for over 500 hours! That’s a little under 200K people. Astro Bot is also an evergreen seller, albeit a more niche, family one Astro Bot, 2024’s winner, has now sold 4.7M copies and generated $291M in revenue. The budget, including marketing, is almost certainly under $100M, given the small Japan-based core team and three-year dev timeline. You can really see why the tides are changing toward less expensive hubs. Astro Bot is the only first-party winner on this list, but follows other first-party winners of The Last of Us Part II (2020’s winner), God of War (2018), and Breath of the Wild (2017). Around 46.6% of Astro Bot’s copies sold have been physical, which is far higher than the typical game. This makes sense for a couple of reasons: There’s a large family audience for this one, and physical boxes are an item to wrap when giving Astro as a gift. Astro has collector value for the PlayStation core (this is nostalgia-fueled platformer celebrating PlayStation’s history) Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Astro is another one of those games that continues selling over time, regularly selling more than 100K a month. It’s sold around 1M more copies this year ($60M in revenue) and is a popular title with families. We can see this using the Alinea platform’s MAU crossover tool: Astro Bot’s top #2, #3, and #4 games by crossover in any given month this year are Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox – without fail. The #1 title every month, though, is Astro’s Playroom, a pack-in with all PS5 consoles. For every month this year, between 20% and 30% of Astro Bot players also played Astro’s Playroom that month. So the free pack-in is a noice funnel for converting players to a full paid product. Expedition 33 sells 8.7M despite Game Pass cannibalisation Finally, we have last year’s winner – Expedition 33. The turn-based-RPG banger has generated $366M via 8.7M copies sold, with 58.8% on Steam, 35.7% on PS5, and 5.5% on Xbox. Xbox’s share of copies sold is this low due to Expedition 33 launching on Game Pass, where 4.3M people across console and PC accessed the game. A little under 700K Xbox players used their subscription to play Expedition 33 this year. That said, the game’s 1.5-year Game Pass deal ended last week on October 16, and we’re already beginning to see a positive trend on Expedition 33’s copies sold via Xbox (but the jury’s still out!). There’s understandably a lot of French pride behind this one, as France is the game’s #3 market on both Steam and PlayStation. Vive la France! One thing that stood out to me is that the GOTY winners aren’t $300M Hollywood productions made in the US. They’re mostly mid-budget studios outside the traditional AAA cost centres. Lots to think about there. Also, good games sell well; who’d have thunk it!? And there’s a whole load of them this year, with GTA 6 still to come, too. GTA just made the cutoff point for the VGAs this year. What a coincidence! Loading... Cool links and other stuff Our physical games newsletter from Tuesday was picked up by GameSpot, Eurogamer, TweakTown, and a bunch of others. We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up. Next week, we’ve got some exciting news regarding the future of our newsletter, so stay tuned! The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. Want to see why these companies (and many others) are subscribed to Alinea? Get a free platform trial! [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

Oct 22 • 1:02 PM EDT • Technology • alineaanalytics.substack.com

Go behind stories of sport with legendary television producer

The Reed School of Media and Communications and the School of Sport Sciences will host sports producer John “Flip” Filipelli for “From the Control Room to the Corner Office: A Life Behind the Stories of Sport” at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, in the Media Innovation Center.

Oct 22 • 8:05 AM EDT • Sports • enews.wvu.edu

Scientists trapped a single antimatter particle for months

The scientists captured a single positron and confined it using carefully controlled electric and magnetic fields.

Oct 22 • 6:22 AM EDT • Science • techexplorist.com

The top 10 Senate seats most likely to flip, less than two weeks before the midterms

With the November election in sight, Democratic excitement about the party winning control of the US Senate is running high, but it’s far from a sure bet.

Oct 22 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Nestle third quarter organic sales beat forecast, deconsolidates Russian business

By Alexander Marrow LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Nestle reported better than expected organic sales growth for the third quarter on Thursday and said it ​had deconsolidated its Russian business after Moscow seized ‌control of Nestle's Russian assets last...

Oct 22 • 1:09 AM EDT • Business • kfgo.com

Midterms and Iran: Congress could change hands, but Trump would still control the war

On January 10, 2007, President George W. Bush announced a surge of tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq — among the least popular decisions of his presidency. As a senior adviser, I watched from National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley’s West Wing office.

Oct 21 • 8:00 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Abdul El-Sayed, Mike Rogers clash in bitterly personal debate

A debate between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Senate race was bitterly personal and contentious, while Republican Roger Marshall and Democrat were a bit kinder in Kansas. CNN’s Jeff Zeleny breaks down both debates in contests that could be critical to deciding control of the Senate in November.

Oct 21 • 8:00 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Top Democrats join California immigrant, Nevada group to sue over federal election probes

The lawsuit accuses Trump and his administration of using “shoddily compiled lists of supposed noncitizens” and “coercive threats" against state officials to assert federal control over the midterms.

Oct 21 • 1:18 PM EDT • Politics • latimes.com

A ‘coup’ in Congress? Democrats are gaming out a Jan. 3 nightmare

Democrats panicked over President Donald Trump’s pre-election attacks on California are preparing for a GOP-led effort to maintain control of Congress by mutiny.

Oct 21 • 12:45 PM EDT • Politics • sfchronicle.com

IDWeek 2026: Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Exposure and Infection Risk in Health Care Workers

A poster presented at IDWeek was a systematic review of 35 studies that found rare transmission of viral hemorrhagic fever to health care personnel in high-income countries and highlighted the need for standardized exposure definitions to guide response.

Oct 21 • 11:11 AM EDT • Health • infectioncontroltoday.com

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 – Detailed Impressions of the Necron and AdMech Factions

I had a great time getting chromed up with the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Necrons in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4. The campaign story really starts to come together in some interesting ways in its second chapter. And the ways both of these factions control space differently feel like engaging and welcome additions to the roster compared to the more straightforward playstyle of Orks and Space Marines.

Oct 21 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com

College football mega boosters used to fund buildings. Now they buy QBs. What’s the payoff?

“It's absolutely a non-sustainable business model," said SMU booster Bill Armstrong. "But nobody can control themselves."

Oct 21 • 5:00 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com

How knocking on doors can help beat measles

“As measles outbreaks spread in the U.S., it may be time to learn how other countries get their outbreaks under control,” writes Raj Panjabi.

Oct 21 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com

Ebola in Kenya: Is it under control as nine cases confirmed?

The US has advised its citizens to reconsider travelling to Kenya but the government tries to reassure people.

Oct 20 • 7:41 PM EDT • Health • bbc.com

WATCH LIVE: Trump holds GOP midterm rally in North Carolina

Early voting got underway in North Carolina last week, a key state in Democrats' efforts to retake control of Congress.

Oct 20 • 6:06 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

Democrats fear slippage with Black voters makes Michigan Senate race feel ‘far closer than it should’

Michigan's Senate race could decide control of the chamber — and it may come down to Black voters in Detroit and Flint. Where do you think the race stands?

Oct 20 • 4:16 PM EDT • Politics • scrippsnews.com

How Democrats Might – or Might Not

Just a few months ago, it didn’t look feasible for Democrats to flip control of the U.S. Senate. Now it’s a real possibility – and this is how the party could get there. It’s all about the math. Today, Republicans control the chamber, 53-47. If Democrats can hold all four of their vulnerable seats,

Oct 20 • 3:51 PM EDT • Politics • usnews.com

The Arizona race for governor revealing rifts in Latter-day Saint politics

The Republican crusade to reclaim control of Arizona has come to a head this year, and some of the key players involved in the race are BYU grads.

Oct 20 • 3:29 PM EDT • Politics • ksl.com

Governor Healey's pro-business efforts hurt Minogue

Also a new (and free) downtown space for small businesses, local think tanks join forces, and yes to local control of liquor licenses .

Oct 20 • 1:57 PM EDT • Business • bostonglobe.com

Sundar Pichai: Google’s Frontier Imperative, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future AI Products and Businesses

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has little patience for doubts about Google’s willingness or capacity to compete at the frontier of AI. His company’s latest Gemini 4 Argon model — long-promised and recently delivered — beats OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest public models on coding, math, science, and knowledge-work benchmarks and has placed Google’s AI back among the world’s best. Amid chatter that Google was fine with good-enough lightweight ‘Flash’ models, Pichai pushed back hard against any suggestion that company is limiting its research ambitions. “We won’t do it any other way,” he told me in a Big Technology Podcast interview recorded this week at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. Pursuing cutting-edge research is costly for Google, requiring compute and chips that otherwise could be sold at a high markup by its cloud business. But Pichai said allocating resources to frontier AI development is “ground zero” for Google. “Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development,” Pichai told me. In our conversation, we discussed Argon (which Pichai says processed three times as many tokens as Gemini 3 in the 72 hours after launch), AI’s role in developing better models, the AI interface of the future, competition with OpenAI, Google’s partnerships with Anthropic and Apple, data centers in space, and the nature of his optimism. You can read the full conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, below, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice. Alex Kantrowitz: Google is back at the frontier with Gemini 4 Argon, which beats OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s public models on benchmarks spanning coding, math, science, and knowledge work. The conventional wisdom was that Google had given up on the frontier to focus on fast, good-enough models for its products. That was wrong? Sundar Pichai: Very wrong. Look, we are so committed to being at the frontier. It’s in our DNA. We won’t do it any other way. We’ve been thinking about the AI frontier for well over a decade now. The frontier is very dynamic. It’s very competitive. It’s very exciting. I couldn’t be more pleased with how Argon has come together. We took our time with it. We made sure we tested it safely and deployed it carefully. We took a bit longer than our other models, given its capabilities. Across the board, be it for agentic work, knowledge work, coding, creative tasks, Argon is one of the really good frontier models. The first 72 hours since we launched, it’s almost up to 25 trillion tokens used, which is about three times what Gemini 3.0 had in the first 72 hours. And we are capacity constrained as we are serving it. Excited, but there are always areas….. You know, the frontier is very dynamic, and you have to keep evolving the models. There are areas which we can see we need to improve as well. We’ll be at work on all of that as well. Which areas? On any given model, Argon would be across the board better at everything if you just look even two months back. But the space is so evolving. Even on coding, for example, there are pockets where we know we need to do better, and there’s clear feedback. We’ll make it better. The argument for standard models is that they’re already good enough to build great products, with the frontier valuable only for certain tasks. Meta built Muse with good models rather than the best, and Google could put standard models into Maps, Gmail, and Search. Why isn’t that sufficient? It’s definitely not how I have thought about it at all. We are deeply committed to driving the state of the art and actually pushing where this technology can go, all the way from transformers. That’s a journey we’ve been on. You will see us continue to do that. When you’re at the frontier, you get an earlier look into the emerging capabilities, earlier than others, which helps you better prepare for the future. We are fortunate to have a wide set of opportunities across consumer and enterprise. Some of our cloud customers, for sure, want the model at the frontier. The frontier models will be better at developing the next set of models in an era of recursive self-improvement. I would argue it matters there. Internally, we have definitely seen a steep point of inflection by deploying Argon to our developers. It definitely tackles problems which our previous models could not do. Being at the frontier puts you at the innovation frontier and helps you drive that as well. There is room for models of all sizes and capabilities. That’s why we did Flash, Flash-Lite, etc. I agree with you that you can develop very good product experiences with not necessarily the most frontier model, because they tend to be slower and more expensive too. But we care about the Pareto frontier, and we’re committed to doing all of that. You said developing frontier models gives you a look at what’s coming. What do you see on the horizon? What makes this moment so exciting is you build something which you think is a culmination of months of work, and you put it out. You already see clear headroom ahead. We’ve all been working on these agentic, long-horizon capabilities, but clearly the frontier is going to have multiple of these agents working together to do things. That’s an example of an exciting paradigm underway. It’s also clear to me that users, both in consumer and enterprise, will have access to some multi-agent framework for them, working all the time doing things. It feels like a moment of infinite possibilities. Sergey Brin said one of Argon’s core innovations was relying more on the model to help develop the model. Yet incidents involving OpenAI’s bots breaking containment and Google’s bots accessing a site they shouldn’t have suggest these systems still aren’t perfectly aligned. Isn’t there reasonable cause for concern about accelerating toward recursive self-improvement? There are three parts to your question. Let’s first talk about RSI itself. You’re right, Sergey mentioned RSI being a critical contributor as we are developing Argon. But to be very clear, today, in a continuum, we are pretty far from the end state of RSI or something like that. The right way to describe it is you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development. You almost have agents helping AI researchers in some automated way work together to build these models. It’s good to at least understand where we are today, and it’s super exciting. I expect that continuum to keep making progress as we go into next year. The second question is around safety. Security comes from defense in depth. You’re talking about alignment, obviously. We all are doing a lot of work to make sure the models are as aligned as possible. But it’s an active area of research, and there are clear gaps. That’s not the only thing we rely on. You have the work you do on alignment, but beyond that, we put a lot of effort into real-time monitoring as these models are working. Making sure you have good telemetry into what’s happening so that you can intervene in real time if you see unexpected behaviors. How you do that, the architecture with which you do that, how you make sure it’s all sandboxed and isolated in a way that it can continue doing its job during real-time monitoring — these are all areas of investment. Obviously, when we deploy these models, giving customers, enterprises, control, both with real-time monitoring, but their ability to decide where they deploy, what type of data which models ever have access to, etc. All that work is very, very important, and we are doing a lot of that. As an industry, we need to constantly up our game and take the time to do all this stuff, including dedicating the compute required to make sure you can safely deploy these models. The third part is: Is it all enough? This is why there are a lot of conversations in the industry, and I think it’s reasonable to be worried. The right way to approach something you worry about is early on thinking about what more we can do. As an industry, you’re definitely seeing increased levels of work on alignment, testing for safety, etc., as we deploy these models. The next step would be developing better standards so there are cross-industry standards of how we do these things, including the ability to evaluate using independent evaluators. If you look at areas like financial controls, we have accounting standards, we have independent auditors. Those are all the next natural steps for us as an industry to work toward, and regulation will end up playing a role as we go through all of that as well. Google pursues both language models and world models, while some other AI companies like OpenAI have focused more heavily on LLMs as the path to AGI. Why is world-model research important to you? As humans, you obviously perceive the world around you, and you’re taking all those inputs. Making sure these models are able to understand the laws of physics, simulate the world in high fidelity. All that, I think, are key enabling blocks for intelligence. We are working across all possible applications of this. Take an area like robotics. It’s not an accident: If you look at embodied reasoning benchmarks, Argon is state of the art. That all comes from our experience building world models. Inherently, I would expect there will be architectures which will converge all of this in the future. But for us, we view this as, today, this jagged frontier that is intelligence. We want to be at the frontier of all the possible approaches, and that will help us both drive better research, better insights, and develop a much better AGI model, is how we think about it. Some people argue Google should focus on selling its computing resources rather than using them for AI research. Cloud wants to sell compute at a high markup, while researchers need a very big computer to build the best models. How do you balance those demands? Ground zero for us is making sure we are investing in the compute that’s needed to be at the AI frontier. In 2015, I set the company to be AI-first. AI is that key horizontal ingredient across everything we do, all the way from Search to Cloud to Waymo. That is ground zero for us, making sure both for research and developing the models that we have enough compute needed. Beyond that, we have these independent businesses which each have their own long-range plans. They’re using those long-range plans to project forward, and we plan for compute for all of them. The cloud team, they have a business and they have a projection and they have demand signals. They have committed contracts. With that help, we can plan on a long-term compute trajectory for them. We’re fortunate to have this wide set of opportunities. There’s no company in the world which isn’t making trade-offs at any given moment in time. But the first principles we operate on is making sure we have enough compute to invest in the frontier, and that’s non-negotiable, and everything else works on top. Remember, we are building our own compute, our own data centers. There are long lead times. The compute we have today is a function of decisions I made in 2024. Even if you think back to a year from today, last year the agentic coding takeoff hadn’t happened. Today, obviously, when you sit and look at anything, everyone is short—not just us, other companies—and everyone wishes you had two times what you had planned for. That comes with the territory. At any given moment in time, we are planning for what we would need two to three years out in the future. You’re going to find some decisions you make may look suboptimal two years out, depending on where the state of the art is. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. The way I think about compute allocation is making sure Google DeepMind, both for research and frontier model development, is cutting edge in terms of compute access. After that, we plan for all our businesses. It’s great we can provide our compute to other people too, like we have done. It allows us to scale that up, get real tests for it in the widest application set possible, test it in the real world, and make sure we are at the cutting edge of technology at every layer of our AI stack as well. Ben Horowitz relayed on a podcast that Andy Jassy had said compute was sold out until 2028. Are you seeing the same thing? If today a customer is coming out and asking us for compute in ’27, that is incredibly difficult to do. Even last year we went out and leased some short-term compute to accommodate some customers and help them out. But yes, we are all dealing with similar timelines. Every major technology shift seems to involve overbuilding, from railroads to fiber. Do you think that’s happening here? It depends on the time frames you’re looking at. This level of build, if I take a long enough time frame, it makes complete sense to me. We are at early stages of the most consequential technology ever, and this is not like fiber. It’s not dark. We are using it. We are capacity constrained on a daily basis. The applications, the underlying technology is improving rapidly. But running a company, the way I work through the moment is you look at your demand signals. You look at your committed revenue opportunities that you’re getting in the form of contracts. You balance that with the underlying technical capability, or internally you balance how we are using it internally, the model trajectories. Based on all that, you take a disciplined approach—a confident, aggressive, but disciplined approach—to plan out compute. But when you talk about the broader economy as a whole, you’re having people operate with various levels of risk. I focus on what I can control as a company and plan through it. If your question is, can there be an overbuild? Yes, because you can have some constrained components. Remember, what matters is a set of everything you need to build out that compute. Memory, electricity, electricians…. Land. Like 2,000 components or more. You could get constrained at some point. There could be things which cause bottlenecks, and then you could have overbuilds. There could be external shocks to the economy. There are macro risks. All that is possible at any given time. But am I confident that the compute we are planning for, we will have uses for it given enough time? Absolutely, yes. I was in the room when you said AI would be as profound as fire and electricity. If you believe that, shouldn’t you give researchers the biggest possible computer, even at the expense of today’s cloud profits? We’re all doing some form of that. Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development. What you’re seeing is true already. But you want to be thoughtful. Even our AI researchers have some constraints, which are also good. That’s what inspires creativity. That’s what helps you come up with a more efficient algorithmic breakthrough, maybe to use less memory. What we are committed to is to invest what’s needed to stay at the frontier. OpenAI President Greg Brockman told me a few months ago that the ideal AI product might have no interface at all—just as natural as conversation. What do you think the interface looks like in the age of AI? Computing historically has been humans adapting to computing. With AI, it’ll be the other way around. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day life. You want to be able to speak to that AI when you want to. It has context. It can be persistently running somewhere, give you continuity. You’re not dealing with a lot of complexity. It’s natural. All that makes sense to me. That doesn’t mean it won’t have any interface, however. Nowadays, even on my phone, Gemini voice models are so good. I can just press the microphone button. I can just ramble. That’s why we call it Rambler. I can ramble. It intelligently corrects with my personal context. Even my friends’ names, weird names, it gets it right, even if it first guesses it wrong. It’s amazing. I’m not going in, backspacing, editing once I finish saying it. It’s remarkable how good it’s gotten. But there are going to be moments you will need an interface. You may want to entertain yourself. You may want to watch a video. You may ask your AI to create something, and you want to watch it, consume it. The way I think about it is, you want it to be as seamless and as natural as possible, and that you are not doing the hard work adapting to whatever the interface is. The technology is adapting to how you’re working at any given moment in time. When I asked Sam Altman about competition from Google, he argued that OpenAI was building AI-native products and implied Google was bolting AI onto existing ones. Do you accept that framing, and can a “bolt-on” compete with an AI-native product? First of all, it’s a very dynamic moment. We are all pushing each other. OpenAI has pushed us as a company too. This is not just we are doing something to them. Far from it. Yes, Google went into its own version of a code red too. In the AI moment, all of us have to respond with varying levels of urgency at any given moment in time. We are constantly building new products as well. Gemini was built from the ground up as a product—the Gemini app I’m talking about. Or tomorrow, as all of us are adapting to agents, are you bolting agents onto ChatGPT, or are they building it natively? How would you think about that? You can always put these questions back. I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as you want to build world-class product experiences that are AI-native and they are winning. Some of it is adapting products, some of it is rethinking new experiences. They will all be part of how you approach this moment. How do you expect to make money from these AI interfaces? If an agent recommends a product and I buy it, should it take a cut of the sale, even if that’s disclosed? I’m going to put enterprise aside. Consumers are going to increasingly value this technology. Take software developers today. Developers are willing to pay for these coding models because it really helps make them more productive. Nobody would want to code the way they were coding three years ago, or even the same time last year. When you’re delivering value, there’s value to be had. I’ve never seen examples where consumer products really scale to billions of users, where people are using it intensely, and haven’t had monetization to go along with it. If you’re providing value to people, there is inherent value to be had. The nature of it may change. You’re asking a scenario in which agents are doing stuff for you. At the end of the day, you will have commercial needs. The agents need to fulfill those commercial needs. The providers on the other side are going to see value in that. There’s going to be some mechanism by which it gets fleshed out. That’s what an efficient system does. But what matters is that you’re building those world-class consumer experiences. I promised myself one product feature request: Can you make Gemini-powered search in Gmail as good as searching Gmail through ChatGPT? What’s going on here? One of the exciting things we announced recently is the unified Gemini agent for enterprise, and we’re bringing that to consumers. These are persistent agents which run 24/7 in the cloud. We’re spinning up a micro VM effectively for every query, and from the runtime, the harness, the model—it’s all a headless service. It’ll work everywhere, and it has your context with you. You can address this agent whether you’re in Workspace, in Search, in Gemini. Agents are going to drive this unification from a customer experience, which people are looking for. When you have a broad product portfolio and you’re moving forward fast, there are always areas where you’re moving forward faster than some other areas. That’s valid feedback. But we are putting a lot of time and effort into making sure, as we build out our agentic experience, that unification and that capability works well across all these services. People have asked where Google’s equivalent of Muse or Dots is. Do you anticipate creating a new product to compete with them? Our goal with Gemini is to be a personal, proactive, and powerful assistant. That’s what we are working toward. You saw us describe the early versions of it at Google I/O this year with Spark. Effectively, already, if you open the Gemini app as a Pro or an Ultra user, you see Chat and Task, and they start giving you that agentic experience. With Argon now, that capability is dramatically accelerated. What we announced recently in our enterprise event, we are bringing that to consumers as well. Soon in Gemini, you will be able to ask something, and it’s a continuum. You don’t need to think about whether you’re asking a chat or an agentic task. It’ll just automatically do the right thing, and it can work persistently in the background securely and get things done for you. Already, empirically, when I look at what’s coming into Gemini in our app, last year you would have tagged them and most of them would have been chats. But a steadily growing percentage is already agentic tasks in Gemini. Yes, we are going to bring personal agents to our consumers. It’ll work in the Gemini app. It’ll work in Google Search. It’ll work in Gmail. You can address it, call it, etc. We want to make sure we’re getting it right. It’ll be powered by Argon, and we are very excited to bring it to our users. Google has invested and committed tens of billions of dollars to Anthropic. What do you see in Dario Amodei that makes you want such a deep investment and partnership? Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us this was a world-class team which was involved in some of the earliest GPT models. We were quickly able to assess that they would be at the frontier. We’ve always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We’ve done that with SpaceX. We’ve done that with Anthropic. That’s what we saw, and we had a chance to partner. Is your partnership with Apple to license Gemini for Siri expanding, contracting, or standing still? For both us and Apple, that partnership was about translating the capabilities of AI into better experiences for users. I thought Apple has done a phenomenal job of incorporating—they customize these models and build it into Siri—and it’s been great to see the reception. We are committed to doing more. You’re going to do more with them? There’s nothing specific to comment, but it’s a partnership. It’s working well. What have you learned so far about the feasibility of data centers in space? It’s a very exciting project. Projects like this remind me—I still recall that moment in the desert for the DARPA Grand Challenge, watching the Stanley car compete in it, which ended up being the basis for Waymo. With all these technologies, you’re at a moment in time where it looks a bit like sci-fi, but 10 to 20 years down the line, it’s actually working in a meaningful way. I feel the same in space. We’ve always believed in betting big on these technologies. Quantum has been a great example of it. We’re probably 10 years into the journey. Waymo, we are almost 20 years into the journey. Space, we are two to three years into the journey. It’s clear to me that it’s an approach which will make a lot of sense in the future. Being in sub-synchronous orbits with 24/7 access to the most abundant form of energy we have access to will make a lot of sense for this exponential increase in compute that we are going to need. Having said that, this is a challenging project. The team has disciplined milestones. It was a super exciting milestone to send the TPUs up to space. Sometime, as we are speaking, we are expecting a “hello world” moment from them. I look forward to seeing that happen, and we’ll continue investing here too. You previously said 25% of the code written within Google was written by AI. What’s the number today? That number in our world today is meaningless in the sense that every part of what we now touch is influenced by AI deeply. What we are tracking with Argon, for example, it’s been a point of inflection. People are using Argon to really go tackle complex projects, including projects which affect millions of lines of code. In the four weeks since we have launched Argon, we have seen a 30% increase in CLs, and more importantly, almost a similar increase—a one-third decrease in rollbacks. People are writing code more productively and better code with it. We are tracking it with newer metrics now. How are you dealing with opposition to data centers? If you can’t build in the U.S. the way you want to, where else do you go? We’re very committed to building our data centers very responsibly. When I look at our largest data centers in some of the communities where we have been the longest, I visit them, I talk to people. There are people who come and tell us their kids have gone to college because of our investments in these communities, and we’ve grown in those communities. To me, this is about doing it right. Engaging with the communities early, doing it transparently. We are committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power, and we cover 100% of the cost of our power needs for these projects. It’s understanding the impact on neighborhoods and making sure you’re working thoroughly to address them. Done rightly, you can continue making progress. But we are constantly taking feedback into account. I do worry not everyone operates the same way. People have been surprised by data centers showing up in their backyard. Those are all important. As an industry, we should continue to do better. But part of the reason, in a 20-year time frame, we are thinking about things like data centers in space is making sure we are able to put these data centers where maybe the trade-offs will be different. What unproven area of AI is Google working hardest to crack? Is it continual learning—getting models to keep updating after release—or something else? There are multiple parallel paths. You saw with Argon we have a million output tokens. With our Gemini models early on, we had a one-million context window on the input side. These are all examples of breakthroughs we are constantly working on. How do you think about synthetic data? How do you think about continual learning? How do you think about more efficient architectures? We do dedicate a meaningful percentage of our compute to these research bets too. It always goes hand in hand, including our world models. Those are all bets we are placing. Sometimes, as part of these bets, there are ideas that emerge which just make their way into the mainline models. Maybe we don’t fully talk about it, but we have multiple steps in these areas. Working in technology requires optimism that building something will improve the world, but those bets can leave real consequences when they fail. I recently returned to a town in El Salvador where enthusiasm for Bitcoin had given way to unfinished construction and something resembling a ghost town. How do you maintain the optimism you spoke about in your Stanford commencement address while accounting for those risks? I genuinely have a deep conviction that improving technology and improving access to technology makes people’s lives better. It’s been my personal experience in my life, out of which comes that deep conviction, optimism. But with that, I’ve always felt humanity’s journey is always about working hard to harness that technology to make it work well for society. The optimism is not an optimism that you just build whatever you want, whenever. You work hard to make sure you’re building technology in the service of humanity, to make the human condition better. That’s got to be the defining goal as we are approaching it. With that framework, I’m very, very optimistic. We are in very early stages of the kind of progress that we are going to see on many areas. We’re all talking about areas like healthcare. A lot of the progress is ahead. The ability to make things in a fundamentally cheaper way on many things where things have been getting expensive for a long, long time, discovering new materials, etc., which really bend the curve—it’s tough to step today and understand the impact of all that, but they’re going to be very profound. I’m very optimistic, but we have to be rightfully concerned about all the ways this technology can go wrong. Sundar, I know you don’t do many of these. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.

Oct 20 • 1:47 PM EDT • Technology • bigtechnology.com

A special art project reveals the beauty of science to parkgoers in Virginia Beach

A temporary installation at Mount Trashmore transforms a section of the park into a landscape of sound, color and movement.

Oct 20 • 1:03 PM EDT • Science • whro.org

Antigravity's Follow Me Bundle Adds Accurate Tracking And Gesture Controls To Its A1 Drone

Antigravity's watch and ring remote are available as an accessory bundle or as a full kit with the A1 drone.

Oct 20 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com

Antigravity just halved the price of its drone — by swapping its headset for wristwatch control

$800 now buys you a follow-me drone instead of an FPV flight experience.

Oct 20 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

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Some governments use legitimate AI concerns as a pretext to control political discussion, particularly chatbot responses about those in power.

Oct 20 • 8:38 AM EDT • Politics • theconversation.com

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New Edge 1060 heads up trio of new computers and trainer refresh from Garmin

Oct 20 • 8:03 AM EDT • Technology • bikeradar.com

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Scientists have uncovered a surprising reason why statins, the widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs that help prevent heart attacks and strokes, can sometimes cause muscle pain, weakness, and even severe muscle damage. Using advanced imaging technology, researchers discovered that statins can attach to a crucial protein in muscle cells and force open a channel that normally controls calcium flow. This causes calcium to leak continuously, potentially damaging muscle tissue.

Oct 20 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

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Arsenal’s attacking limitations are clear, but defensive strength can keep their title challenge on course until January. With tough away trips ahead, Arteta should embrace what his team do best while finding ways to turn control into more chances.

Oct 20 • 6:30 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

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Jupiter took down Palm Beach Central in an important district game, continued from Friday's lightning suspension. The Warriors now control their district destiny.

Oct 19 • 11:55 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Republicans pull funding in Ohio’s 1st District as race shifts toward Democrats

The district was once considered one of the most competitive in the country, with both parties viewing it as key to maintaining control of the House.

Oct 19 • 5:15 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumnews1.com

People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again

Fed up with ads, tracking and sluggish interfaces, some smart TV owners are turning to AI agents to strip away bloatware and take back control of their TVs.

Oct 19 • 12:13 PM EDT • Technology • techcrunch.com

Finding Hope and Peace Amid Political Division

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Oct 19 • 10:00 AM EDT • Politics • denvercatholic.org

Battelle Extends CDC Partnership with New Public Health Data and Mission Support Awards

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 19, 2026 — Battelle has announced two significant awards from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reinforcing the organization’s longstanding partnership in advancing public health through data, analytics, science, and mission support services. Battelle was awarded a five-year, $12.3 million contract to provide information systems and technical data support for CDC’s […]

Oct 19 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • hpcwire.com

Even Realities G2 review: Smart glasses, stupid controls

Even Realities makes one of the best smart glasses on the market, but controlling its growing feature set is harder than it should be.

Oct 19 • 7:30 AM EDT • Technology • engadget.com

Bridges, Colorado Dems have embraced every tax hike

Kevin Grantham, the Republican nominee for state treasurer, exposed the single most important issue that defines Colorado Democrats during a debate with his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Jeff Bridges. Grantham is a Fremont County commissioner and former state senator from Cañon City who served as president of the Colorado state Senate when Republicans controlled the […]

Oct 19 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com

Notable introduces Flow Compass, giving healthcare operators control of their AI workforce

/PRNewswire/ -- Notable, the leading healthcare AI platform for transforming workforce productivity, today announced Flow Compass, a new intelligence layer of...

Oct 19 • 6:01 AM EDT • Health • prnewswire.com

A tale of two farmers: Ager, Balkcom compete for NC-11 seat

The contest could play a pivotal role in the control of the U.S. House.

Oct 19 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • ncnewsline.com

US teens can access ‘nudify’ apps despite Apple and Google’s parental controls, report finds

Exclusive: Using test accounts, Tech Transparency Project downloaded 135 apps with features to generate nonconsensual nude imagery

Oct 19 • 6:00 AM EDT • Technology • theguardian.com

I run Life360. I believe kids need independence, not control.

Life360 CEO Lauren Antonoff says her independent childhood shaped how she thinks about parenting, technology, and family connections.

Oct 19 • 5:59 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Cucurella: “We cannot relax for a minute”

Real Madrid left-back Marc Cucurella talked to the press after the team’s convincing 4-1 win over Sevilla in La Liga. The Spanish defender was pleased with the effort. “I think we played a very good game from the start. We had quite a bit of control and knew when to attack quickly and when to […]

Oct 19 • 5:09 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

‘Pitchfork Populism’ Over Data Centers Rattles Ohio’s U.S. Senate Race

The issue, which barely registered with candidates last year, looms large in a race that could determine control of Congress.

Oct 19 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • insideclimatenews.org

Farmworkers’ health matters: South Africa looks to alternatives for chemical pesticides

Insects like fall armyworm or mealybugs can decimate food and commercial crops; like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, South Africa’s small and large farmers alike use synthetic chemical pesticides to control these and other pests. But about 385 million cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning are reported worldwide each year, according to the Pesticide […]

Oct 19 • 2:22 AM EDT • Health • news.mongabay.com

The Medical Inflation Trap: Rethinking Private Health Insurance in Southeast Asia

Rising healthcare expenditure is challenging the affordability and sustainability of private health insurance across Southeast Asia. Premium adjustments and cost-sharing may help control financi...

Oct 18 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • cureus.com

Malia Cohen explains why she should be reelected State Controller

California State Controller Malia Cohen is seeking reelection for an office that is responsible for the state's checkbook at a time when voters across the nation are focused on waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money.

Oct 18 • 11:25 AM EDT • Politics • kcra.com

Regional Science Consortium Researching Harmful Algal Blooms

If you've noticed large buoys or boats out on the bayfront and wondered what they were, you're not alone. The Regional Science Consortium is collaborating with Princeton Hydro on a research project funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study ways to control harmful algal blooms. Dr. Jeanette Schnars, the Executive Director of the Regional Science Consortium, explained the goal of the research."We are researching different ways to control blue-green algae, which creates harmful algal blooms and releases toxins," Dr. Schnars said.The project aims to identify potential techniques for controlling harmful algal blooms in Presque Isle Bay.Schnars explained that people may notice circular floats in the water near Perry's Landing and Liberty Park. Those floats are part of the testing process."You might see a circular float, almost like a hula hoop, that is out in the bay, near Perry's Landing and Liberty Park area, and those limn corrals go all the way to the bottom. And what we will do are some treatments within the limn corral in the bottom," Schnars said.After samples are collected, they are brought back to the laboratory at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center for analysis."A lot of those samples are coming back here. We are going to test them for the harmful algal bloom toxins before, during, and after, and see how effective the testing was," Schnars said.Sarah Magyan, an aquatic biologist with the Regional Science Consortium, explained that the team also collects samples from locations throughout the region."We pull samples every week from 30 different sites, and then we bring those back here, we preserve them and run them through the ELISA test," Magyan said.Schnars said researchers hope the results will help them develop effective ways to reduce harmful algal blooms in the future."If we can do some treatments over space and time in upcoming seasons, we may be able to reduce the number of harmful algal blooms we have in this area," Schnars said.The research is also important for public and animal safety. Magyan explained that toxins produced by certain algae can affect the skin, nervous system or liver.While toxin levels may be low for people, she emphasized the importance of protecting pets that swim in local waterways."Toxins can either be skin toxins, nerve toxins, or liver toxins. While we have low levels for people, it is important that we are keeping our pets safe because we recreate with our animals in the water, and we see hundreds and hundreds of dogs on Presque Isle and the rest of the shoreline," Magyan said.Testing began in September, and Schnars said researchers expect to conduct at least another six to eight weeks of testing to better understand the effectiveness of the treatments.

Oct 18 • 9:19 AM EDT • Science • erienewsnow.com

Scientists Discover a Surprising New Effect of a Popular Blood Pressure Drug

A drug for high blood pressure could inspire future treatments for people with normal readings, thanks to an unexpected effect on the body’s energy-burning fat. Losartan already helps people control high blood pressure. New research suggests it could have a second use in activating brown fat, a tissue that burns energy to produce heat and

Oct 18 • 6:52 AM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com

Opinion: The hidden billing practices raising healthcare costs

Written by Tom Stephens, Executive Director of the Kentucky Association of Health Plans The hidden billing practices raising healthcare costs Sophisticated new mark-up schemes, provider consolidation, and dated diagnosis criteria are all impacting Kentuckians There is no single explanation for America’s high healthcare costs. But any serious effort to control them must start with hospitals. […]

Oct 18 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • linknky.com

Chinese scientists develop nanoparticles to improve pesticide

In a study published in the Journal of Controlled Release, researchers mimicked gut bacteria pili-hair-like structures that function as hooks-to design hollow, rough-surfaced silica nanoparticles

Oct 18 • 2:05 AM EDT • Science • tbsnews.net

Trump approval hits record low, handing Democrats a clear midterm edge

President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a new low and support for Democrats in the race for control of Congress rising, as inflationary pressures contribute to the acrid mood among voters, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

Oct 18 • 12:01 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Scientists Found Dozens of Hammerhead Sharks Hanging Out Near Swimmers. Here’s Why.

Drone surveys spotted groups of up to 100 young hammerheads near Australian swimming beaches, where shark control measures pose a threat.

Oct 17 • 10:24 PM EDT • Science • vice.com

CDC sends a ‘disease detective’ to Pennsylvania amid measles outbreak

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is sending a disease expert to assist with the response to the ongoing measles outbreak in Pennsylvania. “CDC will continue working closely with…

Oct 17 • 9:46 PM EDT • Health • thehill.com

There's a crackdown on sports piracy - but is it already out of control?

The sports industry's lucrative business model is being undermined by dodgy TV sticks and illegal streaming links, writes Theo Leggett.

Oct 17 • 8:11 PM EDT • Sports • bbc.com

Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake reveals new display modes, other settings, controls

The remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time will feature new display modes on Nintendo Switch 2, preview footage has revealed. This comes from Zeltik. There’ll be “Standard,” “Pro,” and “Master” options. With “Standard,” this is what the game will look like for most players. If you choose “Pro,” other minimal information will be shown. Finally, with “Master,”...

Oct 17 • 6:00 PM EDT • Technology • nintendoeverything.com

House Speaker Mike Johnson draws on faith as he fights to hold the Republican majority

Ever the optimist, Speaker Mike Johnson said he believes Republicans will hold on to their U.S. House majority, defying a surge of Democratic momentum in the final stretch of the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

Oct 17 • 12:17 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine Honors Breakthrough That Lets Scientists Control the Brain With Light

An algal protein helped scientists reactivate a fear memory in mice, turning light into a tool for testing what specific brain cells do. Scientists who worked out how to control brain cells with light have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel were honored for their

Oct 17 • 12:08 PM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com

US Army will detonate unstable explosives near ammo plant

The controlled detonation of the toxic degraded material will occur in the coming weeks, with temporary evacuations planned for residents.

Oct 17 • 7:00 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com

Microsoft updates Windows 11 Xbox mode with easier access to desktop and power controls

Microsoft is making it easier to return to Windows from Xbox mode. The latest Insider builds introduce a refreshed Gaming Task View with desktop and power shortcuts.

Oct 17 • 6:47 AM EDT • Technology • videocardz.com

Prison healthcare takeover put on hold as Arizona’s appeal moves forward

Arizona prison healthcare receivership: An appeals court delays the takeover, keeping the state in control pending its appeal

Oct 16 • 10:01 PM EDT • Health • azmirror.com

Detroit Tigers Reportedly Hiring World Series Champion

The Detroit Tigers are reportedly hiring Martin Maldonado as quality control coach, reuniting him with A.J. Hinch and Framber Valdez.

Oct 16 • 8:17 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Democrats are up in the polls. They’re sick to their stomachs.

Polls show Democrats with a clear path to controlling the House and maybe the Senate. But they have burned before.

Oct 16 • 1:31 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Plague is stoppable. The next health threat may not be.

The word plague is scary. Centuries ago, the Black Death killed tens of millions of people and changed the course of history. Plague still kills people around the world, and the word still evokes catastrophe. New fears of plague surfaced on October 2, when a lab worker in Irkutsk, Russia, died of pneumonia. Reports suggested that she may have contracted plague through a laboratory exposure. Understandably, people were alarmed. On October 7, the World Health Organization called for the Russian Federation to be transparent about what it knew. WHO issued an update on October 10. Russian authorities told WHO that testing did not identify plague and that investigations found no laboratory release. WHO said confidence in its risk assessment remained limited and that further clinical, epidemiological, and laboratory information was needed. The cause of the woman’s illness remains unknown, and WHO says a laboratory-associated exposure cannot be excluded. As I explained in a recent interview, this incident is very unlikely to lead to a pandemic. Plague is still active, including in the U.S., which sees a handful of cases each year. But it is a disease we can prevent and treat. Plague doesn’t spread readily, and it responds to antibiotics. The standard response—isolate the patient, trace contacts, and administer antibiotics and monitor for symptoms among contacts for seven days—works. We have even planned for antibiotic-resistant plague. At CDC, we developed a playbook for antibiotic-resistant plague and ran exercises on how to find and stop it. CDC guidance anticipates engineered resistance and recommends two different classes of antibiotics if there’s reason to suspect it. There is no evidence that resistance—or even confirmed plague—is involved in this incident. We have thought through how to address plague, but we’re not ready for the next major health threat that emerges from a lab or from animal spillover to humans. What should concern people is how little stands between the world and the next pathogen to get loose. Since peak COVID, epidemic preparedness has fallen off the political agenda, but the risk is greater than ever. More labs handle dangerous pathogens with more ways to make those pathogens deadlier, and more people live and work in close contact with animals. There are actions we can take now: We need better lab safety in every country. The number of labs that work with dangerous pathogens has increased worldwide over two decades, but there’s no enforceable international standard and no inspection regime; the Biological Weapons Convention, fifty years on, still has no verification mechanism. Labs that study dangerous germs need strong safety systems, training, and oversight. We need to reduce spillover events. Three in four emerging human infections start in animals, and there’s a lot we can do to reduce spillover risk, but the world is doing very little of it. Live-animal markets are one place to act. For instance, closing live-bird markets helped control H7N9 influenza in China. Reducing opportunities for people to encounter infected animals can prevent infections before they become outbreaks. In The Formula for Better Health, which is now out in paperback along with the hardcover, Kindle, and audiobook versions, I argue that labs do too many risky experiments with too many dangerous pathogens in too many institutions, and that every experiment should first answer one basic question: Is the likely benefit greater than the risk? Spillover risk can also be reduced: In the book, I discuss how Brazil cut its deforestation rate by 70% from 2004 to 2012 while increasing agricultural production and reducing risky contact between people and forest animals. We need faster detection and response. Delay costs lives. Strong surveillance, good labs, and trained responders can turn a single case into a small cluster of infections instead of an epidemic. Resolve to Save Lives has worked for nearly a decade to help countries find and stop outbreaks faster. The 7-1-7 target, which Resolve to Save Lives developed with partners in Uganda and elsewhere, provides a clear standard: detect within 7 days, notify within 1 day and complete all essential early response actions within 7 days. In Uganda’s Kasese district, for example, a review of a measles outbreak using 7-1-7 identified shortages of accessible funds, fuel, and vehicles that delayed the response. District leaders established funds they could access quickly. When, a few months later, the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever appeared, the district detected it in three days, notified authorities in one, and mounted an effective response in two. Only one case was confirmed, and the patient survived. Because funds were available before the emergency, authorities were prepared and able to act. This kind of preparation can’t wait until the next crisis begins. Plague is an old disease we that know how to stop. The next threat may be harder to recognize, harder to treat, and easier to spread. Safer labs, less risk of spillover, and faster outbreak detection and response need sustained investment now, while we still have time to prevent the next emergency. Share

Oct 16 • 8:57 AM EDT • Health • tomfrieden.substack.com

Control Resonant becomes the fastest-selling game in Remedy's history, outpacing Alan Wake 2 and the original Control

Control Resonant might not have reviewed as strongly as the original Control or Alan Wake 2, but it sold faster than both of them.

Oct 16 • 7:00 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net

CDC lags in hiring behind other health agencies after DOGE cuts, union says

More than a year after cutting 30% of its workforce and disrupting dozens of public health programs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is lagging in hiring.

Oct 16 • 5:07 AM EDT • Health • abcnews.com

Sullivan and Peltola clash in Alaska race that could decide Senate control

Oct 16 • 4:58 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Li Auto Inc. Announces Equity Financing for Its Chip Business

BEIJING, China, Oct. 16, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Li Auto Inc. (“Li Auto” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq: LI; HKEX: 2015), a leader in China’s new energy vehicle market, today announced that Shanghai Mahe Xin Technology Co., Ltd. (“MHX Technology”), a subsidiary of the Company dedicated to its chip and domain controller business, entered into subscription agreements for equity financing totaling RMB1.625 billion (the “Subscription”). The Company, through a wholly-owned subsidiary, and external invest

Oct 16 • 4:31 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com

Brewery founders hand control of business to staff

Management of the Rebellion Beer Company has moved to workers through an Employee Ownership Trust.

Oct 16 • 1:03 AM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

A quantum highway just one atom high could transform superconductors

Scientists discovered that atomic steps just one atom high can guide quantum vortices through superconductors, making them move more than 1,000 times more easily in one direction than another. This remarkable control over quantum motion could lead to a new generation of ultra-efficient superconducting electronics.

Oct 15 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Remedy Boss Reacts After Control Resonant Sells 1 Million Copies, Becoming Studio's Fastest-Selling Game

Control Resonant has sold one million copies, becoming Remedy’s fastest-selling game in spite of leakers cracking the title and pirating it after its digital launch in September.

Oct 15 • 7:04 PM EDT • Technology • ign.com

Single 2D crystal transforms into transistor with built-in insulation and electrical contacts

A transistor normally requires several fundamentally different materials—a semiconductor to carry current, an insulating dielectric to control it and metallic contacts through which current enters and ...

Oct 15 • 4:40 PM EDT • Science • phys.org

Suburban office condos fetch $2.4 million

An in-state investor bought the majority of an office park in Lorain, giving them control over the site in a growth market, said the selling broker.

Oct 15 • 2:15 PM EDT • Business • crainscleveland.com

New Mexico Department of Public Safety Forensic Laboratory: Science in service of justice - NM Department of Public Safety

The New Mexico Department of Public Safety Forensic Laboratory stands as a model of scientific precision and integrity, where expert analysts, rigorous training, cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art facilities unite in pursuit of justice. From firearms and toolmark analysis to DNA, latent fingerprints, controlled substances, fire debris, and evidence processing, every examination reflects the laboratory’s unwavering […]

Oct 15 • 11:31 AM EDT • Science • dps.nm.gov

Opinion: Socialism’s promises sound familiar. So does the track record.

Illinois has already tried to address high costs, limited access, and economic insecurity through government. Before giving it more control in the hope that this time will be different, we should reckon honestly with what that experience has actually produced.

Oct 15 • 11:00 AM EDT • Business • chicagobusiness.com

He Built California Pizza Kitchen. Then He Lost Control of His Company

CPK founders Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax learned that sustainable growth depends on prioritizing people and protecting company culture.

Oct 15 • 11:00 AM EDT • Business • inc.com

'AI sandboxes' are all the rage. Advocates scramble to control their future

In this edition of STAT's Health Tech newsletter: The groups vying to shape regulations that'd govern state AI sandboxes, and more.

Oct 15 • 9:14 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com

NVIDIA brings DLSS 4.5 controls to GeForce NOW, Ultimate members get up to 4X Frame Generation

GeForce NOW subscribers can now adjust DLSS 4.5 settings on supported cloud games. Ultimate members get additional controls through RTX 5080 cloud systems.

Oct 15 • 8:11 AM EDT • Technology • videocardz.com

Carle Health encourages moderation during holiday season

With the holiday season approaching, enjoying your favorite treats may be challenging, but practicing moderation and portion control can help manage those cravings.

Oct 15 • 7:55 AM EDT • Health • 25newsnow.com

AI Controls IPhone Via ESP32

Do you want to get an AI agent to do something to an iPhone? You could try and jailbreak the device and do some heavy software hacking, or… you could grab a microcontroller off the shelf and …

Oct 14 • 10:00 PM EDT • Technology • hackaday.com

Weekly Entertainment Report: Live music and lively arts, Oct. 15-18 » Nashua Ink Link

"Let the music soothe your soul, let the music take control."

Oct 14 • 9:29 PM EDT • Entertainment • nashua.inklink.news

New batch of Zelda 40th Switch 2 console and Pro Controller contain replaceable battery

UK video game and toy retailer Smyths have just received a new batch of stock of the Zelda 40th anniversary Nintendo Switch 2 console and the Zelda 40th anniversary Pro Controller and these new…

Oct 14 • 5:42 PM EDT • Technology • mynintendonews.com

Early voting surges ahead of midterms, with records falling in many states

The surge comes as Republicans scramble to save control of the House and Senate

Oct 14 • 4:47 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Early voting surges ahead of midterms, with records falling in many states

The surge comes as Republicans scramble to save control of the House and Senate

Oct 14 • 4:47 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Political analysts on what could tip the balance in Georgia’s midterm elections

Finding common ground between Democrats and Republicans has been difficult. However, the nation’s two dominant political parties agree on one thing: the upcoming midterm elections matter for several reasons, chief among them control of Congress.

Oct 14 • 4:33 PM EDT • Politics • wabe.org

Arizona employee health insurance costs are 'out of control,' lawmakers say

Rising healthcare costs and limited state budget reserves could lead to higher employee premiums, greater cost-sharing and other changes to the plan.

Oct 14 • 4:07 PM EDT • Health • azcapitoltimes.com

Taking flight: How bats shed light on human brains

Understanding how bats fly could shed light on how the human brain controls our most complex movements

Oct 14 • 1:45 PM EDT • Science • ls.berkeley.edu

New Xbox Nano Controller is designed for "younger players, smaller hands, or anyone seeking something portable"

Shades of the "Xbox Cloud Controller" that leaked in May this year.

Oct 14 • 12:43 PM EDT • Technology • digitalfoundry.net

Honey, Xbox shrunk its controller

The Xbox Nano is designed for gaming on the go

Oct 14 • 12:16 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com

How the Zelda Ocarina of Time remake changes the classic game’s script

At the start of the iconic 1998 Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, our playable hero Link wakes up in his tree cabin, heads outside and is greeted by his friend Saria. “Yahoo! Hi, Stotil!" she says. In other people’s copies of the games, she might say “Hi, Link!” or “Hi, Brick!” or use whatever other name the player was allowed to input when first launching the game. The more important point is that she starts with a “Yahoo!” In Nintendo’s 2011 remake of Ocarina of Time for the 3DS handheld, Saria greets Link with that same word. But for the 2026 Switch 2 re-remake of Ocarina of Time, out November 5, Saria’s salutation has changed: “Hello, Link!” she exclaims. There’s no “Yahoo” to be heard. Last month, in an official Nintendo video preview, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma described the remake as a “faithful interpretation using modern technologies.” Faithful means the gameplay hasn’t changed much. Dungeons, quests, and just generally what you do in the game doesn’t seem to have changed, not based on what Nintendo has shown nor the hour of the game I played in New York City a couple of weeks ago. The graphics have been overhauled. The controls have been tweaked. Players can now manually control the camera and make Link jump with the press of a button, both notable differences from the original 1998 design. But Link’s journey appears to take the same path, with the same obstacles in its way. The remake’s biggest alteration to Ocarina of Time that I’ve spotted so far just might be the script. About the game’s story, Aonuma said in September, “We’ve added quite a lot of new dialogue for the characters, so that their personalities shine even more.” Earlier this month, I played a chunk of the Ocarina of Time remake at a Nintendo showcase. In the game’s earliest moments, I made a point of talking to characters and recording what they said. I found the script to be more colorful, more natural in its phrasing, more careful to establish its characters, and certainly more wordy even with the removal of that one “Yahoo!”. I’ve got some very early-game examples, so you can judge the new writing for yourself.

Oct 14 • 11:32 AM EDT • Technology • gamefile.news

29 New Changes in the Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake — Redesigned Puzzles, Updated Miniboss Fights, and Deeper Dialogue

I played more than an hour of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Switch 2, and as someone who’s finished the original several times, I noticed a lot of small changes that shine some light on the thought process behind recreating this adventure. It seems everything was on the table when considering what to tweak: altered puzzles more closely fit the modern controls, redesigned miniboss fights spice things up across each round, and new shortcuts and context clues make navigation more intuitive.

Oct 14 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com