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A Surprise PlayStation DRM Issue Is Worrying Fans
Some players claim a new DRM system for digital PlayStation purchases is locking them out of games after 30 days
Cut in half: Nike ACG Ultrafly Trail Review (2026)
Nike ACG Ultrafly Trail review: Nike clearly listened to feedback from the first Ultrafly, and the ACG reboot delivers a much better product. We found in the lab that the new dual-plate setup, upgraded ZoomX foam, and lower weight create a true trail super shoe that surprised us right away. It's perfect for flying over gravel roads or easy, flat trails. The premium price is hard to ignore, and the high drop may divide opinions, but in our view, this is an amazing weapon for crushing all your personal bests.
iOS 26.4.2: Apple Emergency iPhone Update Fixes Deleted Notification Bug
Apple has released a new iPhone update — that has taken many by surprise — to address a vulnerability that was recently exploited by the FBI.
'It was a ghost town': Strip District faced low turnout despite preparation for busy NFL Draft weekend
As the NFL Draft drew 320,000 fans on Day 1, the Strip District saw unexpectedly low foot traffic, leaving business owners surprised and disappointed.
Great Balloon Rush-Hour Race reroutes, lands on school's sports field
Some students at Kentucky Country Day got a balloon surprise today!
Sean McVay comes off as 'muted,' 'mad' after Rams' surprise pick of Alabama QB Ty Simpson
Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Surprising things about visiting
I went to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and was surprised by free entry, a scenic tram, and difficult stargazing.
The NFL Draft opened with a gamble, a surprise and a sign of things to come
The Rams picking QB Ty Simpson shocked experts and fans alike, but it wasn't the only takeaway from Thursday's first round.
NFL Draft 2026: Sean McVay comes off as 'muted' after Rams' surprise pick of Alabama QB Ty Simpson
iOS 26.4.2: Apple Fixes iPhone Flaw Used By FBI To Read Deleted Messages
Apple has released a new iPhone update — that has taken many by surprise — to address a vulnerability that was recently exploited by the FBI.
Euro zone business activity contracted in April as costs rocketed, PMI shows
Business activity in the euro zone suffered a surprise contraction in April with the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran sapping demand as prices soared, a closely watched survey showed on Thursday.
ESPN draft analyst's final mock is dream scenario for 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers were able to steal a starter at a position of need in a surprise pick in Matt Miller's final mock draft of 2026.
Google Releases Android 17 QPR1 Beta 1 for Pixel
Google surprised us a bit this afternoon with the release of Android 17 QPR1 Beta 1 for its Pixel line-up. This update will come after the first stable build of Android 17 is released, which...
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger says she’s not surprised about narrow margin of victory for Dems in redistricting fight
OnePlus Watch 4 makes a surprise debut with a major software upgrade
OnePlus has soft-launched the OnePlus Watch 4, revealing a titanium design, 3,000 nit display, and a surprising jump to Wear OS 6.
Shaky political science: using "simulated" elections over real-world elections
[Dear DSOS readers – this article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in early December, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting. We found that many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data, and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first three articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report, the second one analyzing a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report, and a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research]. In this fourth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we shine a spotlight on seven studies that were web-hosted and funded by New America’s Political Reform Program and its Electoral Reform Research Group (the ERRG is an ad hoc committee headed by New America’s Political Reform Program and joined by the American Enterprise Institute, the Unite America Institute and Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law). This research consortium has been led by Lee Drutman, senior fellow with New America’s Political Reform Program. These seven studies are simply not credible from any objective standard about how political “science” is supposed to illuminate our understanding of either ranked choice voting or politics in general. The feature that six of these seven studies have in common is that they all used surveys – artificial, simulated elections -- to attempt to say something cogent or interesting about ranked choice voting (RCV) elections. None of them used real world data from actual RCV elections – either the 1000+ elections in the US or the many thousands of elections from places like Australia, Ireland and elsewhere where RCV has been used for 100 years. While a few of these studies conclude with some mixed positives about RCV, our analysis here is content neutral. The idea that, with a political reform like RCV, you can ask respondents in a mock, artificial election to vote with that method, with only the barest of explanation about how RCV works or its likely impacts (i.e. no spoiler candidates, majority winners, voters liberated to pick their favorite candidates, coalition-building), and then ask them their thoughts/reactions about voting in that system, with fake candidates and no real campaigning, no real exposure to an actual election or actual candidates, rests on some very puzzling assumptions. The findings of these seven studies actually are contradicted by the findings from many other studies based on real-world RCV elections. These New America studies also failed to list the real-world RCV studies in their own citations, instead including those studies that reinforced their conclusions. The seven studies featured in this article were chosen because they form a cohesive cohort which precisely illustrates one of the main points of our research paper, namely that using surveys, i.e. artificial elections, or mathematical/theoretical models, instead of real-world data, is in fact “shaky political science.” Below are summaries of our analysis of five of the seven New America studies. You can read our complete analysis of all seven studies at our paper, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting.” Choosing to “Vote As Usual” by Andre Blais, Carolina Plescia, and Semra Sevi. New America. (Blais et al., 2021). This study, web-hosted and funded by New America’s Political Reform Program and its Electoral Reform Research Group, used two surveys in which respondents completed ballots for simulated elections using plurality, approval, RCV and point (Score) voting. In both cases the authors provided the respondents with only minimal explanation of each method. For example, the entire explanation for RCV was “For this vote, rank the candidates from your first to your last choice (you do not need to rank them all). This is called the ranked vote.” That’s it. The study did not provide any context or explanation to survey respondents about why she/he might want to rank multiple candidates. Participants were not even told that ballots would be tabulated using an “instant” runoff, not to mention any description of RCVs ability to eliminate the spoiler effect or liberate voters to rank their favorite candidates without fear of helping the “greater evil” candidate to win. That’s like taking an iPhone back in time to 1970 and asking someone if they like it better than their rotary phone without explaining how it works. Their first survey targeted states that held 2020 Super Tuesday Democratic primaries and used the real candidates’ names in the survey; the second survey used fictitious candidates. In other words, they surveyed respondents who had only ever participated in plurality elections, had no history or background with using RCV or any of the other methods, had no clue about its likely impacts, and did not communicate how the alternative methods would be counted, and then asked them: “How satisfied are you with using each system?” Predictably, the winner was plurality elections, the system used for president, Congress, gubernatorial and state legislative elections – in other words, the method they have been using, year after year, all their voting lives. With so little explanation of RCV and its impacts, this study is simply not credible in discovering anything useful about real-world RCV elections. It merely shows that a basic voter education campaign is needed when adopting a new election system. Additionally, the result contradicts many other post-election surveys following real RCV elections, asking opinions from voters who had just participated in a RCV election, that showed a great deal of satisfaction with RCV (see details on that in Studies 22-25 in our paper, as well as the four studies cited in the review for Study 28). Share Other studies on “satisfaction” and “understanding” make similar mistakes, in terms of basing their surveys on inadequate explanation to respondents and lack of education about context. How could any survey ever hope to measure accurately, in essence simulate a real-world election, without actual campaigning candidates, the media writing about those candidates, organizations endorsing candidates and voters being inundated with crucial information? More than anything, what these “studies” based on surveys show is that if you ask voters about something they don’t know very much about, and fail to adequately educate them, their responses will unsurprisingly reflect their confusion. Equally puzzling is that New America’s Electoral Reform Research Group, headed by political scientist Lee Drutman, found this to be a credible enough study that they not only published it but highlighted it in Drutman’s own discussion of research related to ranked choice voting. This pattern was repeated in study after study featured by New America’s Electoral Reform Research Group. For example in Ranked-Choice Voting and Political Expression: Voter Guides Narrow the Gap between Informed and Uninformed Citizens by Cheryl Boudreau, Jonathan Colner, and Scott MacKenzie, the researchers based their analysis on a survey which found that respondents who were asked to vote in a simulated RCV election, with minimal explanation of RCV or how it works, displayed less evidence of being informed about how to use RCV effectively, with the least informed voters ranking fewer candidates. As pointed out under the study above, in a real election voters are informed by a wide variety of methods, including public education by the election administration, by interested political groups, the media, and the candidates themselves who benefit from voters being aware of how to vote in the new system. In Support for Ranked-Choice Voting across Race and Partisanship by Joseph Anthony, David C. Kimball, Jack Santucci and Jamil Scott, the researchers used respondents from different parties and races voting in simulated plurality and RCV elections, who indicated their satisfaction with each voting method. Instead of using real world election results, the authors fell back on the easy, armchair and less reliable academic research methodology of making up mock elections. As with the other studies, little explanation was given of how RCV works or what its implications might be (electing majority winners or eliminating spoilers, for example). Unsurprisingly, this study found that respondents were not very satisfied with RCV. However, when the authors added an explanation that RCV has a tendency to elect more women and people of color, they found that this greater explanation increased the preference for RCV. The more voters were familiar with it, and the more they understood potential positive impacts – surprise! -- the more they were open to switching away from the status quo. Of note, the results from this study are thoroughly contradicted by a number of other studies whose data was obtained from real RCV elections with real voters. Those studies show a great deal of satisfaction with RCV. More “fake election” research An interesting wrinkle on this “research by fake elections” approach, which only served to illustrate how unreliable such “research” can become, was taken in Ranked-Choice Voting, Runoff, and Democracy: Insights from Maine and Other U.S. States by Joseph Cerrone and Cynthia McClintock_,_ also web-hosted and funded by New America’s ERRG. It gets high marks for creativity, but an eye-roll for thinking this could possibly add anything meaningful to our understanding of real world RCV elections. This study tried to determine whether RCV, plurality or two-round runoff elections provided greater voter satisfaction and acceptance of election results. To determine that, the authors conducted a survey asking if voters were satisfied with a fictional newspaper report of an election, with three different versions given to respondents – plurality, runoff and RCV, with variations of Republican/Democrat winners and variations of “come-from-behind” winners,” i.e. candidates not initially in first place but who win the “runoff.” Again, a minimal explanation of RCV or how it works was given, and the survey showed that respondents had the greatest unfamiliarity with RCV than the other methods. The unsurprising result? Respondents were much more satisfied with “come-from-behind” victories in a traditional two-round runoff election than in RCV, even though RCV is also a runoff system but with a single round of counting. Interestingly, the dissatisfaction with RCV disappeared for those who were more familiar with RCV. In fact, among those respondents who were “very familiar” with RCV, they were equally satisfied with RCV, runoff and plurality. Surprise, surprise. Again, what this study revealed, more than anything, is not only the inadequacy of the explanation for RCV given by the authors of this study, but the failure of the research format itself, thinking that such an artificial mock election could somehow simulate what actually happens in the real world in a real RCV election. Those four studies reviewed above are fitting examples of inadequate and shaky political “science.” Other studies reviewed in our paper from the New America/Electoral Reform Research Group cohort which also used mock elections included: Ranked-Choice Voting is an Acquired Taste by Joseph Anthony and David C. Kimball. New America. (Anthony et al., 2021). Ranked-Choice Voting is No Refuge for Extreme Candidates by Melissa Baker. New America. (Baker, 2021). Also included in this New America cohort is Does Ranked-Choice Voting Reduce Racial Polarization? by Yuki Atsusaka and Theodore Landsman, which actually did use real-world election results data but applied an odd and unconventional methodology to the data which relied on shaky assumptions and non-real-world scenarios that were too divorced from reality. To determine levels of “racially polarized voting,” the researchers imagined “ethnic parties,” by which they mean political parties for each ethnic group, which was especially odd since the election data they were using came from nonpartisan RCV races. But then they made an even odder assumption, namely that since race and ethnic characteristics of studied voters were not available, the authors tried to infer that information based on who voters selected and the racial make-up of voters in each district. This amounted to little more than vague and ambiguous guesswork dressed up with a bunch of mathematical equations used to give it a veneer of scientific appearance. Indeed, it seemed to assume racial polarization in order to prove racial polarization. Based on this questionable methodology, the authors concluded that RCV doesn’t reduce racial polarization. But the premise of this study missed an obvious reality: since RCV incentivizes more candidates to run and can result in more diverse fields of candidates, one would expect more racially-polarized voting in voters’ top rankings, not less, because more voters would have someone on that ballot who represents their racial or ethnic identity and more freedom to vote for their real first choice. By encouraging more diverse candidates and eliminating the spoiler effect, RCV facilitates voting for a favorite candidate of your own race and then selecting a second choice with the best likelihood of winning. The real measure is what voters do with their additional rankings – do they consider other candidates and vote “for the best of the rest”? This study didn’t tell us anything useful about that. But readily available data shows this is common in real RCV elections, and candidates act on this knowledge by engaging with voters outside their racial group. So the authors of this study failed to consider or account for what actually happens in real-world elections, and their conclusions are tainted by this failure. New America has contributed a great deal over the past 2.5 decades to our understanding of many policy areas, including politics and political reform (full disclosure: Steven Hill, one of the authors of this article and of the “Shaky Political Science” research paper and series, is a former senior fellow and former director of New America’s political reform program, 2005-2010). So it was especially disappointing that New America funded and published such a large batch of dubious studies about ranked choice voting. The stated praiseworthy goal of its Electoral Reform Research Group was to inspire new academic research about ranked choice voting that would shed light and help the public better understand the impacts of RCV. Instead, the ERRG research did just the opposite. It produced dubious research that created more confusion and misinformation. In so doing, New America’s political reform program contributed to “shaky political science.” Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS, a reader-supported digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe
Warriors reportedly targeting surprise SEC coach if Kerr departs
If Steve Kerr doesn't return for a 13th season in the Bay Area, the backup plan is reportedly already set.
Coachella: Madonna, Justin Bieber, and all the big winners from Weekend 2
A surprise appearance helped Justin Bieber turn around his festival performances.
Watch: Panthers arrive for 1st day of offseason program
Panthers players were greeted with a little surprise when returning to the building for the start of the offseason workout program.
Arts & Entertainment Year in Review 2025-26
Students surprise film professor with trip to Criterion Closet At the end of the 2024-2025 school year, film students at Grand Valley State University thanked their professor with a trip to the Criterion Closet. Students surprised Associate Professor Joel Potrykus with a trip to the Closet, located in New York. The Criterion Closet is a...
Scientists stunned as bacteria rewire DNA machinery to shape cells
Cyanobacteria—ancient microbes that oxygenated Earth and made complex life possible—are still revealing surprises billions of years later. Scientists have now discovered that a molecular system once used to separate DNA has been repurposed into something entirely different: a structure that shapes the cell itself.
Curing U.S. Health Care, Part I
In 2008, much to their own surprise, leading Democrats unified around a program of major health care reform. Policy wonks had spent years developing the concepts behind what eventually became Obamacare; big Democratic victories in the 2006 midterms and the prospect of controlling both Congress and the presidency made it possible to imagine turning those ideas into reality. During the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama advocated similar plans, based on those ideas, for expanding insurance coverage. And it happened! The Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010. When it was fully implemented in 2014, millions of Americans got health insurance: Impressive as the raw numbers are, they don’t tell the whole story. Before the ACA, even upper-middle-class Americans often found it impossible to get health insurance if they had pre-existing medical conditions. Many Americans were trapped in jobs they wanted to leave but couldn’t for fear of losing their employment-based coverage. Meanwhile, dire predictions from the usual suspects about runaway costs proved wrong. In fact, overall U.S. medical spending has grown much more slowly since the ACA was enacted than before. But the U.S., alone among advanced nations, still falls far short of providing universal health care. As you can see from the chart above, 8 percent of the population was still uninsured in 2024, a number that is set to rise over the next two years as a result of Republican policies. True, many of the uninsured in 2024 were undocumented immigrants, who we don’t try to cover. But there are still a lot of uninsured. Moreover, a significant number of Americans who have health insurance are in fact underinsured. As a result, they are at risk of incurring devastating healthcare costs and are sometimes forced to forgo needed care. This number is set to rise sharply in the next two years as a result of Republican policies adopted under Donald Trump. And not only is the U.S. unique among advanced countries in its under-provision of health care coverage, it also incurs by far the world’s highest healthcare costs per capita. So now may well be a good time to get behind a new push for major health reform — an effort, if you like, to finish the job begun under Obama. Today’s primer is devoted to the economics of health reform. During his failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Donald Trump famously complained, “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.” Actually, we did know — and it’s not that complicated. Health economists understand the principles very well. And because health policy varies greatly among advanced nations, we know a lot about what works and what doesn’t. This will be the first in a series about health reform. Beyond the paywall I’ll address the following: 1. Why markets can’t be trusted to deliver healthcare 2. Routes to universal healthcare 3. What works? In a follow-up post I’ll discuss the pros and cons of different approaches, and possible paths forward for the United States.
Madonna joins Sabrina Carpenter in a surprise Coachella appearance
Madonna made a surprise return to the Coachella stage, joining headliner Sabrina Carpenter for a trio of songs.
Kap Vert causes shock in Scottish Grand National triumph
Kap Vert causes a 20-1 shock by storming to a surprise win in the Scottish Grand National at Ayr.
Moved kids from US to Spain; going better than expected, surprises
My two sons, ages 10 and 7, didn't speak Spanish when they moved to Spain from the US, but they adapted to life here better than I could've expected.
How an unusual coalition is rebuilding — and honoring
Seattle's Memorial Stadium once hosted sports, concerts, civic events and even water skiing. Why the Kraken are helping to build a new stadium might surprise you.
NSF awards record number of coveted PhD fellowships in surprise move
Quantum science and AI research are big winners just a year after the U.S. funding giant slashed its Graduate Research Fellowship Program awards in half
The iPhone 18 Pro colors have leaked, and one of them is stealing the show
There are several nice surprises in the iPhone 18 Pro color list.
Anabaena Learns A New Trick - Cyanobacteria Surprise Scientists With Evolutionary Shift
Photosynthetic bacteria helped shape Planet Earth.
🏆Shocks and LOTS of goals: Thursday's Sudamericana highlights
That’s a wrap on all of Thursday’s Copa Sudamericana matches, and here we bring you the star, the surprise, and the disappointment of the day.Álvarez’s machine got goingAfter the draw in Paragu...
Solo cruise surprises on Royal Caribbean's Wonder of the Seas
I took a solo cruise on board Royal Caribbean's Wonder of the Seas and was surprised by how many people mistook me for a lost child.
Scientists Opened Up A Martian Meteorite And Found Ink From A Violet Gel Pen Inside
While we will have to wait a long time for samples collected on Mars to be returned to Earth, we do have Martian rock sent to us the old-fashioned way – unfortunately, analysis reveals a few surprises that shouldn't be there.
In the Katzmann Lecture, Senator Andy Kim takes aim at political corruption
Last year’s edition of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which gauges countries’ perceived resistance to corruption, gave the United States its lowest score since the index’s current scale debuted in 2012. That result likely would not surprise US Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, who focused on corruption in politics when he delivered the fifth annual Robert A. Katzmann Lecture on April 6. The event honors the career and impact of the late Judge Katzmann of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a professor of practice at NYU Law.
Local priest recalls woman, who cut young boy in Walmart, barricading in rectory years prior
When the priest heard Guzman had slashed a 3-year-old boy’s face in a Walmart parking lot, he wasn't surprised.
‘Textbook blasphemy’: Notre Dame students surprised and dismayed by Trump’s feud with Pope Leo
At one of the United States’ best-known Catholic institutions, students were siding with Pope Leo XIV over President Donald Trump in the wake of Trump’s clash with the pontiff over the Iran war and raising concerns about his recent social media post seemingly depicting himself as Jesus.
Exclusive First Look: Ridley Scott Says The Dog Stars Will Surprise You
Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, and Josh Brolin play desperate survivors in this adaptation of Peter Heller’s end-of-days novel.
Is Swalwell the Straw That Broke Congress’s Back? | WSJ Politics Newsletter for April 15
Plus, two of Jeanine Pirro’s deputies make a surprise visit to the Fed’s headquarters-renovation construction site
Video: Capcom Shares A Big Surprise In Its Latest Pragmata Trailer
What other mysteries await on the moon?
I'm a New Yorker who went to Seattle for first time, what surprised me
I was surprised by free bananas, cheap train travel, and hilly streets during my first trip to Seattle.
The strangeness of Opening Day in 1910
President Taft threw out the first pitch, but Opening Day in 1910 was filled with even more surprises.
24,000 Years After Being Frozen In The Siberian Permafrost, This Ancient Creature Woke Up And Began To Reproduce
Scientists thawed the ancient sample from the Alazeya River in northeastern Siberia, and to their surprise, the creature woke up.
The real science of Pokémon
The Pokémon franchise, including its recent game Pokémon Pokopia, is inspired by real animals and their ecology. It’s no surprise that so many scientists love to try and “catch ’em all”
A sports blitz starts tonight, plus a WNBA Draft surprise
Good morning! I hope your TV is in working order. Coming up: 📆 A busy stretch begins 1️⃣ Dallas’ surprise at No. 1 🏆 Rory’s family win Up First: The NBA leads off a brilliant spring One of the busiest stretches of important pro sporting events begins tonight, and I mean that in quite a positive way. The NBA playoffs tip off in a few hours, with two Play-In games. This weekend, the NHL playoffs will join. Both sports will crown winners by the third week of June … which is when the World Cup will
A sports blitz starts tonight, plus a WNBA Draft surprise
The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! I hope your TV is in working order. Coming up: 📆 A busy stretch begins 1️⃣ Dallas’ surprise at No. 1 🏆 Rory’s family win One of the busiest stretches of important pro sporting events begins tonight, and I mean that in quite a positive way. The NBA playoffs tip off in a few hours, with two Play-In games. This weekend, the NHL playoffs will join. Both sports will crown winners by the third week of June … which is when the...
Italy's surprise rise in exports to US masks deep fragility to tariffs
Italy was the only major EU country whose exports to the United States grew last year despite Donald Trump's tariffs. The result was hailed by Rome's government, but a closer look at the data shows one-off factors at play and little underlying resilience.
2026 NFL mock draft 8.1: Cardinals surprise with their picks (yes, plural), while Giants take a weapon at No. 5
Cruise entertainment | evolution of the guest experience
How cruises are dissolving boundaries between performance, dining and design to create fully immersive, all-day entertainment experiences
FanDuel Sports Network, Cavaliers' local TV home, is gone. It's no surprise
FanDuel Sports Network ended locally with the close of the Cleveland Cavaliers' regular season. It's a sign of a more expensive viewing reality.
'Unbelievable' Liverpool star set for surprise exit offer
Hull City are keen on signing Andy Robertson if they get promotedis one of the two players who's guaranteed to be leaving Liverpool at the end of the current season.The Scotsman has been one of the Re...
Mamdani Embraces Socialist ‘Pothole Politics’ in Knockdown Center Barn Burner
The mayor marked his first 100 days on the job in an event aimed at celebrating city workers while extending the energy of his successful campaign — with a surprise appearance by Sen. Benie Sanders.
End of the Orban Era: The Party Is Just Starting for Hungarians
In the end, the biggest surprise wasn’t just how resoundingly Viktor Orban was ejected from power but how swiftly the Hungarian prime minister conceded the termination of his 16-year reign.
Sparks trade forward Jackson to the Sky for guard Atkins
LOS ANGELES -- It had been rumbling for days now but this was still a surprise when first mentioned.
Jon Jones may ‘feel the fire’ to return after UFC 327 but Dana White definitely does not
Jon Jones continues to flip flop on whether or not he intends to retire from the sport, which doesn’t surprise UFC CEO Dana White one bit. White spent the last couple of years glazing Jon Jones as the GOAT of MMA, but that all ended after “Bones” retired in June 2025, reneging on a reported […]
In a surprise move, Capcom now lets you buy the original Resident Evil games
Capcom recently re-released the original three Resident Evil games on Steam, and hopefully, it isn't a fluke.
New York Giants land 'surprise' defender in latest CBS Sports mock draft
In the latest CBS Sports mock draft, the New York Giants pass on commonly projected prospects in favor of a "surprise" defender.
Football fans are being taken for a ride by the NFL — the DOJ could stop that
Nobody should be surprised that the Justice Department has opened an investigation into the NFL’s antitrust exemption — but it’s far from clear how this game will end.
China's K-pop worries: The reasons why a ban on Korean entertainment has lasted a decade
As mega K-pop group BTS returns to the stage after a hiatus of more than three years, one major market is conspicuously missing from its 12-month world tour: China. The omission of one of the group's biggest fan bases comes as no surprise. In fact, just the opposite would have…
‘I jumped at it’: Australia’s new CDC chief on trust, misinformation and never being surprised by a health threat
Zoe Wainer’s parents started the country’s first public abortion clinic. Now she is making history too, as the inaugural head of the Australian Centre for Disease Control
2026 NFL mock draft 8.1: Cardinals surprise with their picks (yes, plural), while Giants take a weapon at No. 5
In praise of popular science
As a kid, I was enthusiastically and unreservedly in favor of a manned space program. Our destiny lay in the stars, I figured. Get people out there. We need Star Trek here and now. As I got older, I became rather disenchanted with the idea. Humans are expensive, fragile, and inefficient as space cargo. We could flood the solar system with 100 robotic probes for the price of any single manned mission and get back just as useful data. Besides, it turns out space travel is dangerous. Tusk is a reader-supported publication. To support this work, please become a paid subscriber. Subscribe When it came to the recent Artemis II mission, my cynical side didn’t really see the point. Flying around the Moon and back is literally something we did before I was born, and I once owned a Members Only jacket. Apollo 8 circled the Moon ten times and returned to Earth safely the same month that “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was released. What was the point of repeating a feat that far braver people once did with tin foil and slide rules? Yet I’ve surprised myself with how moving I’ve found the Artemis II mission to be. The photos have been stunning. The crew has been professional and engaging. There have been modest but important milestones — the farthest humans have travelled from Earth; the first woman, person of color, and non-American to leave low-Earth orbit; innovations in communication, and more. One thing that really stood out is that this is really NASA at its finest. Not that this is the most important mission they ever pulled off, but they did this in a competent way that celebrated the achievements and kept the crew and the science at the forefront of the project. This wasn’t some billionaire throwing celebrities or cars into orbit as a vanity project — this was a collective effort to send experts in to do a job and come home safely. We don’t see that sort of thing much these days. I’m guessing few people would describe many government agencies as inspiring, but this one counts for me. We’re living through a profoundly anti-science era, in which pathbreaking, lifesaving discoveries like mRNA vaccines are routinely downplayed or even vilified. As I’ve noted previously, this era is something like that of the Red Scare in the 1940s and 50s, in which “egghead” professors were portrayed as out of touch or even hostile to regular Americans. One of the things that helped break that spell was Sputnik — the Soviet communications satellite that demonstrated that the United States was falling behind in crucial scientific research and applications. Its launch triggered a new appreciation for American science and goaded the federal government into supporting research universities and labs. I’m not saying that Artemis is the equivalent of Sputnik, but it potentially reminds people that there’s some value to scientific endeavors and the human faces attached to them. Despite my love for the show “For All Mankind,” I’m far from convinced that there’s any real value to putting colonies on the Moon or Mars that would justify the capital investment and the massive health risks to the astronauts. But sending scientific good will ambassadors on a trip into space once in a while? Bring it. Share
'I Saw How It Was Getting Damaged': Ex-Bethesda Exec Goes to Town on Xbox's Mistreatment
"That shouldn't be a surprise to you"
2026 NFL mock draft 8.1: Cardinals surprise with their picks (yes, plural), while Giants take a weapon at No. 5
US states that surprised me after visiting 29 last year
After traveling across the US last year with my husband, a few states really surprised me, like North Dakota, Georgia, Kentucky, and Minnesota.
Epstein survivors criticise Melania Trump after surprise statement
First lady had called for a public hearing for survivors but a group of those affected say they have ‘done their part’ and reiterate calls for Pam Bondi to be questioned
Immigration board denies Mahmoud Khalil's appeal
Khalil said he was not surprised by the ruling, which he called “biased and politically motivated.”
China\'s K-pop worries: The reasons why a ban on Korean entertainment has lasted a decade
BTS is back after a three-and-a-half year break, but their world tour is skipping China. This comes as no surprise, as China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016.
China's K-pop worries: The reasons why a ban on Korean entertainment has lasted a decade
BTS is back after a three-and-a-half year break, but their world tour is skipping China. This comes as no surprise, as China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016. The ban started...
EPA sets ‘no surprises’ science policy, reassigns researchers
Staff expressed frustration with how the transfers are being handled and perceive them as yet another measure to traumatize the workforce.
2K Says Surprise ‘Borderlands’ Mobile Game Launch Isn’t An Accident
A new Borderlands game has launched on mobile, and has surprised everyone. Some thought it was an accidental launch, but it's not.
Which U.S. metros have the highest health spending? The answer might surprise you
There's not a consistent theme among the 10 highest and lowest spending metros, which highlights the “irrationality” of U.S. health care spending, experts say.
Jill Martin Tears Up Over 50th Birthday Surprise Live on ‘Today’
Al Roker, Craig Melvin, and Laura Jarrett celebrated Martin's milestone birthday on the third hour of 'Today.'
Fans Blast ‘Pokémon Champions’ Game—As Nintendo Wipes ‘Pokopia’ Stock Gains
Nintendo stock dipped Wednesday, closing at its lowest price in a month and erasing gains it made last month after the surprise success of “Pokémon Pokopia.”
Losing Dexter Lawrence Would Make the Giants’ Defense Collapse
After years of contract issues, New York Giants superstar defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence II has requested a trade. Lawrence’s disgruntledness doesn’t come as a surprise. Despite his All-Pro production, he ranks just 12th among NFL interior defensive linemen in terms of salary. So, with Lawrence’s established, elite production at 28 years old, the Giants shouldn’t hesitate […] The post Losing Dexter Lawrence Would Make the Giants’ Defense Collapse appeared first on The Lead.
Giants' John Harbaugh not surprised by Dexter Lawrence's trade request: 'There’s business involved'
Dexter Lawrence’s trade request upended the opening of the New York Giants' voluntary offseason program under John Harbaugh, but the coach isn’t closing the door on Big Blue reconciling things with the star defensive tackle.
Phil Weiser’s health plan emphasizes primary care, using courts to lower costs
Weiser’s plan called for the state to shift investment toward preventive care, build on the Colorado Option and use the courts to challenge health care consolidation and enforce laws limiting surprise medical bills.
Is David Jolly riding an off-shore blue wave? His Q1 fundraising suggests momentum is building
Jolly still trails Republican Byron Donalds — by a lot — but he has upped his game since 2 surprise Special Election victories.
Google Pixel teases ‘exclusive’ new model, and we might already know what it is
We’re not due for any new Google Pixel phones in the near future, but a surprise teaser has just dropped...
PS5, PS4 Getting Surprise Launch of Long Forgotten Sega RPG
In news we didn't expect to see today, a 1992 Sega Genesis RPG is being revived for the PS5 and PS4 surprisingly soon.
Surprising things about Amtrak's California Zephyr overnight train
I traveled from Chicago to Emeryville, California, on Amtrak's California Zephyr and booked a bedroom. The 53-hour ride was full of surprises.
West Ham analysis: Opportunity missed after dramatic fightback
With West Ham sitting 18th in the Premier League, in the relegation zone and in danger of dropping to the Championship, this was a glorious chance for the players to give the supporters a day out at Wembley. Bowen had a shot saved following a bright run by Adama Traore, but it was no surprise when Leeds went ahead. Fernandes followed up after Bowen hit the post and then Disasi steered in Traore's cross.
Shiloh Jolie makes surprise cameo in Korean star Dayoung's music video
Shiloh Jolie, the 19-year-old daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, is a backup dancer in K-pop star Dayoung's \
Easter Bunny Leaves Sweet Surprises Across Jay’s Hoppy Trails
JAY - The Easter Bunny took a scenic route through Orleans County this weekend, leaving a trail of treasures for local children to discover on the Jay Community Recreational Centre’s
Screenwriters union and Hollywood studios reach four-year tentative agreement
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The screenwriters union and Hollywood studios reached a surprise four-year tentative agreement after roughly three weeks of negotiation.
New Orleans’ Giant Puppet Festival brings eclectic performances to the Marigny this weekend
“I feel like I have seen a lot of puppet shows, and I am always surprised when I come to the festival."
No experience needed? Novices, newcomers dominate field in SC’s open coastal seat in US Congress.
SC’s 1st Congressional District race is packed with outsiders — just five candidates have ever held elected office. Mark Sanford’s surprise entry is reshaping an already crowded primary and making the path tougher for lesser-known hopefuls.
Nose-Picking May Have a Surprise Link With Alzheimer's, Study in Mice Suggests
Do you really need to pick it?
iFixIt tears down the new AirPods Max 2, isn’t surprised
You know the drill: new Apple product, new iFixIt teardown. Here’s what they found when they dug into the new AirPods Max 2.
From The Sports Desk: The 'Final' countdown
The men’s Final Four features two surprise teams and two No. 1 seeds. Who will prevail?
Gemma 4 and what makes an open model succeed
Having written a lot of model release blog posts, there’s something much harder about reviewing open models when they drop relative to closed models, especially in 2026. In recent years, there were so few open models, so when Llama 3 was released most people were still doing research on Llama 2 and super happy to get an update. When Qwen 3 was released, the Llama 4 fiasco had just gone down, and a whole research community was emerging to study RL on Qwen 2.5 — it was a no brainer to upgrade. Today, when an open model releases, it’s competing with Qwen 3.5, Kimi K2.5, GLM 5, MiniMax M2.5, GPT-OSS, Arcee Large, Nemotron 3, Olmo 3, and others. The space is populated, but still feels full of hidden opportunity. The potential of open models feels like a dark matter, a potential we know is huge, but few clear recipes and examples for how to unlock it are out there. Agentic AI, OpenClaw, and everything brewing in that space is going to spur mass experimentation in open models to complement the likes of Claude and Codex, not replace them. Especially with open models, the benchmarks at release are an extremely incomplete story. In some ways this is exciting, as new open models have a much higher variance and ability to surprise, but it also points at some structural reasons that make building businesses and great AI experiences around open models harder than the closed alternatives. When a new Claude Opus or GPT drops, spending a few hours with them in my agentic workflows is genuinely a good vibe test. For open models, putting them through this test is a category error. Something else to be said about open models in the era of agents is that they get out of the debate of integration, harnesses, and tools and let us see close to the ground on what exactly is the ability of just a model. Of course, we can’t test some things like search abilities without some tool, but being able to measure exactly the pace of progress of the model alone is a welcome simplification to a systematically opaque AI space. Share The list of factors I’d use to assess a new open-weight model I’m considering investing in includes: Model performance (and size) — how this model performs on benchmarks I care about and how it compares to other models of a similar size. Country of origin — some businesses care deeply about provenance, and if a model was built in China or not. Model license — if a model needs legal approval for use, uptake will be slower at mid-sized and large companies. Tooling at release — many models release with half-broken, or at least substantially slower, implementations in popular software like vLLM, Transformers, SGLANG, etc due to pushing the envelope of architectures or tools. Model fine-tunability — how easy or hard it is to modify the given model to your use-case when you actually try and use it. The core problem is that some of these are immediately available at release, e.g. general performance, license, origin, etc. but others such as tooling take day(s) to week(s) to stabilize, and others are open research questions — with no group systematically monitoring fine-tunability. In the early era of open models, the days of Llama 2 or 3 and Qwen pre v3.5, the architectures were fairly simple and the models tended to work out of the box. Some of this was due to the extremely hard work of the Llama, Qwen, Mistral, etc. developer teams. Some is due to the new models being genuinely harder to work with. When it comes to something like Qwen 3.5 or Nemotron 3, with hybrid models (either gated delta net or mamba layers), the tooling is very rough at release. Things you would expect to “just work” often don’t. I’ve been following this area closely since we released Olmo Hybrid with a similar architecture, and Qwen 3.5 is just starting to work well in the various open-source tools that need to all play nice together for RL research. That’s 1.5 months after the release date! This is just to start really investing more into understanding the behavior of the models. Of course, others started working on these models sooner by investing more engineering resources or relying on partially closed software. The fully open and distributed ecosystem takes a long time to get going on some new models. All of this is lead-in for the most important question for open models — how easy is it to adapt to specific use-cases? This is a different problem for different model sizes. Large MoE open-weight models may be used by entities like Cursor who need complex capabilities in their domain, e.g. Composer 2 trained on Kimi K2.5. Other applications can be built on much smaller models, such as Chroma’s Context-1 model for agentic search, built on GPT-OSS 20B. The question of “which models are fine-tunable” is largely background knowledge known by engineers across the industry. There should be a thriving research area here to support the open ecosystem model. The first step is to understand characteristics of different base and post-trained models to understand what they look like. The second step is to tune pretraining recipes for open models so they’re more flexible. Interconnects AI is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe For The ATOM Project and other Interconnects endeavors, we’ve put in substantial effort to measuring adoption trends in the open ecosystem. Everything takes a long time to unfold after a model is first publicly available — and adaptability is why. What we know for sure now, when Qwen has been going from strength to strength with its releases, is that technical staff across the industry has gotten comfortable working with Qwen models. Countless research methods and datasets were made to work with Qwen. It’ll take patience for any other model family to get to this point — a patience I’m not sure many open model builders have. This takes us to Gemma 4, Google’s latest open models. Gemma 3 was released more than a year ago, in March of 2025, and is a bit underrated. Gemma 4 comes in 4 sizes for now, with a bigger, MoE model of over 100B total parameters rumored but not released yet. The models we have today come in sizes of ~5B dense, 8B dense, 26B total 4B active MoE, and 31B dense. I’m most excited that they’re finally adopting a standard Apache 2.0 open source license. This’ll massively boost adoption. The standard of better licenses for strong open-weight LLMs was set by mostly Chinese open model labs in the last 1-2 years, and now U.S. companies are following suit. I will personally be so happy if the horrible Llama licenses and Gemma terms of service were an ~18-month transient dynamic of the industry being nervous about releasing strong open models. The Gemma 4 scores look very solid, the small models have incredible benchmark scores (especially in general domains like LMArena) and the 31B model rivals the recent Qwen 3.5 27B, which is the leading member of that class. The ~30B size range is an important one, as it’s accessible both to researchers and to enterprises looking to deploy the model in real use-cases. Where the 7B model scale is the default for tinkering and research, a 30B model is the default for seeing if an open model can unlock substantial value in your specific workflow — a good mix of intelligence, low price, tractability for downstream training, etc. This takes us back to the above adoption criteria I mentioned for open models and the bigger question — do I think Gemma 4 will be an overwhelming success? Previous Gemma models have been plagued by tooling issues and poorer performance when being finetuned. Gemma 4’s success is going to be entirely determined by ease of use, to a point where a 5-10% swing on benchmarks wouldn’t matter at all. It’s strong enough, small enough, with the right license, and from the U.S., so many companies are going to slot it in. I’m cautiously optimistic that Gemma 4 is going to work better here. Winds are shifting for open models built in America. We saw GPT-OSS go through a bumpy launch to become an overwhelming success. There’s a collective energy around the likes of Reflection, Arcee, Nemotron, Gemma, Olmo, and peers that show substantial demand for building new stacks around open models. There’s capital to be spent on AI stacks across the economy by those who want more ownership of everything, including the model. After launching The ATOM Project 240 days ago, the conversation is shifting into the next stage. Summer of 2025 was a crisis moment where the U.S. AI scene realized it can’t wait and figure out open models after building AGI. The two markets will capture different areas and proceed in parallel. Now that more companies in the U.S. are releasing strong models, we need to improve the ecosystem so that these models are easy to use, understand, and build value around. It’s the hard work to build another inflection point in these adoption plots I’ve been updating consistently, but that’s the work to be done. Join me in it. More data coming soon! Here’s a sneak peek:
Surprise! Zendaya wears something blue, after the old, new and borrowed
l e weddings marriage fashion entertainment lifestyle | WWL
Surprise! Zendaya wears something blue, after the old, new and borrowed
First she wore something old. Then new, then borrowed — and now blue. Zendaya showed up at her New York premiere for “The Drama” in a dazzling blue Schiaparelli couture
Surprise! Zendaya wears something blue -- after the old, new and borrowed
l e weddings marriage fashion lifestyle entertainment | KCBS All News 106.9FM and 740AM
K-pop Star Mark Lee Departing SM Entertainment, NCT 127 and NCT Dream
In a surprise move, the 26-year-old, a founding member of the K-pop mega-group NCT, will exit the boy group and its subunits next week.
GTA 6 Will Likely Borrow Ideas From Red Dead Redemption 2, Former Rockstar Dev Says
"I'll be surprised if they don't use something from Red Dead 2."
Congressmembers give surprise visit to Otay Mesa Detention Center for health inspection
Two members of San Diego’s Congressional delegation visited the Otay Mesa Detention Center Thursday to follow up on months of complaints from people held inside.
“Honestly I was super surprised”
“Honestly I was super surprised”
This tiny claw in a 500-million-year-old fossil just rewrote the origin of spiders
What started as routine fossil cleaning turned into a major scientific surprise when researchers uncovered a tiny claw in a 500-million-year-old specimen where no claw should exist. That detail revealed Megachelicerax cousteaui, the oldest known relative of spiders, pushing the origins of this group back by 20 million years. The fossil shows that key features of modern spiders and horseshoe crabs were already emerging during the Cambrian Explosion.
'Any Update Is a Bonus Not a Right' Says Peak Dev in Response to 'Lazy Dev Cycle' Accusations
The developer of 2025 surprise indie "friendslop" darling Peak is asking players to be a little more gracious to the studio when requesting updates, saying, "Neither us or [co-developer] Aggro Crab are live service studios, any update is a bonus not a right."
You can’t really “train” your brain. Here’s what you can do instead.
The best ways to protect your cognitive health might surprise you.