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Ask the Developer Vol. 21: Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream — Part 1 - News
This article has been translated from the original Japanese content. This interview was conducted before the game was released. In this 21st volume of Ask the Developer, an interview series in which developers convey in their own words Nintendo's th…
Who’s giving big to Miami-Dade politicians this year? Townhouse builder tops the list
In county government, Miami-Dade Commissioner Vicki Lopez raised the most in political contributions to start 2026.
Prep Sports Report: Borchers stepping away from Cooper football program he built as first head coach
By Terry Boehmker NKyTribune sports reporter Randy Borchers is leaving the Cooper football program that he created 18 years ago and developed into a state title contender to devote more time to his family. Borchers said he accepted an administrative position in the central office of the Kenton County Board of Education. That means he’ll...
Millions of Rockstar Games business records stolen, hacking group says
A hacking group with a history of compromising major global corporations said it had stolen nearly 80 million records from video game developer Rockstar Games, the maker of Grand Theft Auto.
Former Naughty Dog Dev Recalls Crunch Culture for Games Like The Last of Us and Uncharted
Former Naughty Dog designer Benson Russell has explained how the developer eventually began to believe workplace crunch was necessary to make games like The Last of Us at its "level."
International Collaboration Helps Pinpoint Universe’s Expansion Rate
The universe is expanding, but the exact speed at which it’s doing so – a figure known as the “Hubble constant” – remains a mystery. Now, an international collaboration of astronomers has developed a framework that incorporates a range of methods into one analysis, to produce a more precise measurement.
Apple Seeds Second iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5 Betas to Developers
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming two weeks after Apple released updated first betas. Registered developers can download the betas from the Settings app on the iPhone or iPad by going to the General section and selecting Software Update. iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5 do not include new Siri capabilities, suggesting any Siri updates are being held until iOS 27.
Apple releases iOS 26.5 beta 2 for iPhone
Apple has released the second iOS 26.5 beta for developers. iOS 26.5 beta 2 follows two versions of the first...
Fable still coming out this autumn, despite reports that developer Playground Games is "worried" about Grand Theft Auto 6
Fable is still slated to release this autumn, despite recent delay rumours suggesting it could slip into 2027.
PowerWash Simulator delisting two free DLC packs from Xbox store in May
Developer FuturLab has announced it is delisting two free PowerWash Simulator DLC packs soon, as its partnership with publisher Square Enix is coming to an end.
4A Games announces Metro 2039, and we're getting an Xbox-themed reveal stream later this week
Developer 4A Games and publisher Deep Silver have announced Metro 2039, the fourth entry in the post-apocalyptic FPS series. A full reveal is coming this week.
"You think we're stupid?" - Players react to Pokémon and Palworld lookalike Pickmon being renamed to "better align with our brand identity and lore"
After a divisive reveal in March, the developers behind the Pokémon and Palworld lookalike Pickmon are renaming the game, but players aren't convinced.
GTA 6 Hackers Say Stolen Data "Will be Published as Their Demands Had Not Been Met"
Hackers have said they will publish data obtained from GTA 6 developer Rockstar Games online because their demands have not been met.
Venezuela hopes to lure back international miners, but it's a risky business
Venezuela's effort to attract foreign investors to develop its gold, iron and bauxite seams has enthusiastic backing from the Trump administration but faces big challenges, including armed groups with deep interests in the chaotic, largely illegal prospecting industry that has developed over the past 20 years, according to nine miners, residents and community activists who spoke to Reuters.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles 2 DLC character Shinobu Kocho (Infinity Castle) launches April 17
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles 2 downloadable content character Shinobu Kocho (Infinity Castle) will launch on April 17, publisher Aniplex and developer CyberConnect…
Bruce Springsteen's former drummer pushes back on the Boss's political attacks on Trump: 'Gotta have respect'
Bruce Springsteen's former drummer Vini Lopez speaks out against the Boss's anti-Trump rhetoric, saying everyone should respect the president.
Former Xbox Exec Says Developers Didn't Want a Sony Monopoly
Former Xbox executive Ed Fries comments on the early days of Xbox, the opinion of Japanese game companies, and more.
Hackers Give Rockstar Games Until April 14 To Pay For Stolen Data
As Rockstar Games confirms hack, ShinyHunters hackers give the GTA developer just days to pay ransom for stolen data.
Where will diners park at downtown food hall?
Developer Jim Long of Heritage Real Estate Co. says there should be plenty of parking options, with nearby garages and metered parking.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
Peru holds presidential election amid a decade of political tumult
In the span of a decade, Peru has seen nine presidents come and go. How has that affected this year's presidential race?
GTA 6 Developer Rockstar Reportedly Hacked, Data Being Ransomed
Well known hacking group, ShinyHunters, claims to have breached the GTA 6 developers cloud servers
Developer seeks demolition of New Haven's Sports Haven
A plan released for the city's Long Wharf section calls for a mixed use of residential and commercial uses for the former Sports Haven betting parlor.
Cozy RPG Deleted From Steam After Seemingly Ripping Off Tetris
The farming sim was removed from Steam last night by the developers, who cited "insufficient verification during the planning stage of a minigame" as the cause
GlassWorm Campaign Uses Zig Dropper to Infect Multiple Developer IDEs
GlassWorm uses a fake WakaTime VS Code extension to infect IDEs, deploy RATs, and steal data, prompting urgent credential rotation.
Professor Layton and the New World of Steam Adds PC and PS5 Release to 2026 Global Simultaneous Launch — but There’s No Xbox Version
Professor Layton and the New World of Steam is coming to PC via Steam and PlayStation 5 as well as Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, developer Level 5 has confirmed.
Honkai: Star Rail version 4.2 update ‘So Laughed the Masses’ launches April 22
The version 4.2 update for Honkai: Star Rail, dubbed “So Laughed the Masses,” will launch on April 22, developer miHoYo announced.
Crimson Desert Dev Confirms Boss Rematches, Hard Difficulty, Enemy Territory Recapture, and a Whole Lot More Is Coming Soon
Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss has outlined a number of significant changes coming to the game in the coming months, each addressing various community complaints that were highlighted recently. Here's everything you need to know.
Mac OS X Cheetah Successfully Ported to Nintendo Wii
Developer Bryan Keller was curious whether an old version of Apple's Mac operating system was capable of running on the Nintendo Wii after seeing Windows NT ported to the gaming device, so he decided to give it a try. He was able to get Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah to operate on the Nintendo Wii, and he shared a blog post walking through the project.
Inaugural Entertainment Acquires Green Day Inspired Comedy, And Announces New Title, “NIMRODS”
Today, Inaugural Entertainment announces the acquisition of a new Green Day inspired comedy from Live Nation Studios, as well as a new title, NIMRODS. The film, formerly titled “New Years Rev,” was developed by writer/director Lee Kirk with global rock superstars Green Day and produced by Tim Perell for Process. …
A smarter way to build vaccines: Scientists harness AI to target emerging alphaviruses
A team of scientists at The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), led by Nikos Vasilakis, Ph.D., and Peter McCaffrey, MD, has developed a new computational pipeline that could dramatically accelerate ...
Mohegan Names Joe Soper VP, Sports & Entertainment
Casino and resort developer Mohegan has announced the appointment of Joe Soper as VP of Sports & Entertainment, where he will oversee strategy and
How Two Indie Darlings Are Challenging a Collapsing Industry With Their Next Game
'Prove You're Human,' from the developers behind '1000xResist' and 'Slay the Princess,' is a surreal interrogation of an AI that thinks she's human.
The Lift adds PS5 and Xbox Series versions, delayed to 2027
First-person, narrative-driven, supernatural handyman simulator The Lift for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam in 2027, publisher tinyBuild and developer Fantastic Signals announced. The…
Warhammer Survivors adds PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and Switch versions
Survivors-like roguelite action game Warhammer Survivors will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and Switch alongside its previously announced PC (Steam) version in 2026, developer Au…
Borderlands Mobile Out Now On IOS Devices And Is Free-To-Play
It's a free-to-play mobile game developed by Zynga, sorry
Former GTA 6 developer warns trailer visuals won't match final gameplay
A former Grand Theft Auto 6 developer has tempered expectations for GTA 6's graphics when it releases, suggesting it will fall short of the trailers.
Age-Friendly Kansas: Three-Year Action Plan
Age-Friendly Kansas Three-Year Action Plan: Promoting connection, reducing isolation and integrating healthy aging across sectors through practical strategies developed with state and national partners.
Scientists create new type of encryption that protects video files against quantum computing attacks
A newly developed encryption framework aims to protect video data from future quantum attacks, all while running on today's conventional hardware.
Road to Vostok's hot start on Steam has "secured the entire production budget" the Finnish survival shooter needs for "years to come", dev says
Road to Vostok, a Finnish survival shooter, has already secured the budget it needs for years to come following an early access release, its developer says.
Pokémon Champions Developer 'Sincerely Apologizes' For Launch Issues, Details List of Bugs to be Fixed
Following a rocky launch, the maker of Pokémon Champions has apologized for the game's various technical issues and released a list of bugs it's currently planning to fix.
This AI Wearable From Ex-Apple Engineers Looks Like an iPod Shuffle
Two former Apple Vision Pro developers made an AI wearable that only listens when you tap it. They hope to win where other AI gadgets have fumbled: privacy.
iOS 26.4.1 Includes These Two Changes for iPhones
Apple today released a minor iOS 26.4.1 update for the iPhone 11 and newer. While the release notes for the update only mention unspecified "bug fixes," we have since learned about two specific changes that are included in it. First, 9to5Mac spotted an Apple Developer Forums thread suggesting that iOS 26.4.1 fixes an iOS 26.4 bug that affected iCloud syncing in some apps.
WireGuard VPN developer can't ship software updates after Microsoft locks account
The popular open source VPN maker is the second high-profile developer to say Microsoft locked his account without notifying him and are blocking their ability to send software updates to users.
Life science real estate developer IQHQ accused of fraud by early investor
Aimco is suing the San Diego-based lab developer for fraud, accusing the company of making false promises to secure an investment that is now worth nothing.
iOS 26.4.1 fixes iPhone bug that stopped iCloud data from syncing, including Apple Passwords
iOS 26.4.1 is available today. While the official release notes were vague, a thread on the developer forums indicates it...
'American Idol' alum Justin Guarini's new girlfriend speaks out amid news of singer's quiet divorce
Justin Guarini's business partner Kim Walsh Phillips tells EW that her relationship with the 'American Idol' alum has 'developed into a romantic partnership of love' after the singer quietly got divorced.
Microsoft’s executive shake-up continues as developer division chief resigns
Another veteran Microsoft executive departs
Developer of VeraCrypt encryption software says Windows users may face boot-up issues after Microsoft locked his account
The maker of the popular open-source file encryption software VeraCrypt said Microsoft locked his online account, which may prevent device owners from booting up their computers.
The World’s First Computer Sank 2,000 Years Ago. Science Finally Solved One of Its Biggest Mysteries.
Using, oddly enough, techniques developed to analyze gravitational wave signals.
The World’s First Computer Sank 2,000 Years Ago. Science Finally Solved One of Its Biggest Mysteries.
Using, oddly enough, techniques developed to analyze gravitational wave signals.
Polygon Labs in Talks to Raise Up to $100 Million for Payments Business
Polygon Labs, developer of the blockchain that underpins prediction market Polymarket and other crypto platforms, is in early talks with investors to raise as much as $100 million to build a new stablecoin payments business, according to people familiar with the talks. The funding discussions ...
Blue Envelope Program Launches in Luzerne County
All Luzerne County police departments will participate in the initiative aimed to improve communication between police officers and drivers with special needs
Forza Horizon 6 Releases Zoomed Out Image of Full Japan Map — and Fans Are Trying to Work Out Just How Big It Is
As players start revving up for Forza Horizon 6 next month, developer Playground Games has shared our best look yet at its full Japanese map.
Brawl breaks out between Braves pitcher Reynaldo López and Angels slugger Jorge Soler
“I asked him if everything was OK and the answer he gave me, I didn’t like it,” Soler said through a translator, according to MLB.com. “That’s why I went out there.”
Braves, Angels throw punches as Atlanta wins 7-2
In what was an otherwise routine and mostly quiet game on Tuesday night between the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Angels, a big time brawl broke out between Braves starter Reynaldo Lopez and former World Series hero Jorge Soler. Let’s set the stage. Earlier in the game, Lopez hit Soler in the hand with a […]
Reynaldo Lopez and Jorge Soler throw punches in wild Braves-Angels brawl
Official RPCS3 system requirements are here
RPCS3 developers release a simplified set of 2026 system requirements, broken into "Minimum", "Recommended", "Optimal", and "Max Performance" tiers.
Amid Iran war, 53 of Israel's future scientists showcase projects in Jerusalem contest
‘Courageous, creative, and deeply committed’: The Young Scientists and Developers in Israel returns for its 29th year amid war, as part of National Science Week events.
Immunic COO highlights the importance of science-led innovation to mark World Health Day
Immunic Inc (NASDAQ:IMUX, FRA:10VA) chief operating officer Jason Tardio talked with Proactive's Stephen Gunnion about the importance of science-led innovation in tackling neurological diseases, particularly multiple sclerosis, on World Health Day 2026. Tardio highlighted that the biotech industry is fundamentally grounded in scientific research and data, noting that “everything we do is rooted in science.” He explained that Immunic is focused on developing innovative therapies designed to improve patient outcomes and address significant unmet medical needs. The discussion centred on multiple sclerosis (MS), a complex neurological disease that continues to present challenges despite decades of progress. Tardio pointed out that while advancements have been made, “the disease is not solved for,” with many patients still experiencing disability progression and requiring safer, more tolerable treatments. He emphasised the urgent need for innovation, particularly in progressive forms of MS where treatment options remain extremely limited. Immunic’s lead asset, vidofludimus calcium, is being developed as a novel approach aimed at addressing the full spectrum of the disease. Tardio also reinforced the broader mission of the healthcare and biotech sectors, stating that the ultimate goal is to help individuals “live a better quality of life” and “a healthier life longer.” Watch the full interview to learn more about Immunic’s approach to advancing MS treatment through science. For more videos like this, visit Proactive's YouTube channel, like this video, subscribe to the channel, and enable notifications so you never miss an update. #Immunic #MultipleSclerosis #BiotechInnovation #Healthcare #MSResearch #DrugDevelopment #ClinicalTrials #Neurology #WorldHealthDay #ScienceDriven #VidofludimusCalcium #PharmaNews #BiotechNews
Scientists map the brain’s hidden wiring using RNA barcodes in major breakthrough
Researchers have developed a cutting-edge technique that uses RNA “barcodes” to map how neurons connect, capturing thousands of links with single-synapse precision. The method transforms brain mapping into a sequencing task, making it faster and more scalable than traditional approaches. In mice, it revealed surprising new connections between brain cells that were previously unknown. This could open the door to earlier detection and targeted treatment of neurological diseases.
Blizzard reveals Overwatch hero Anran's new "fiery and fierce" look, following player backlash over 'same-face syndrome'
Following player complaints over Anran's "baby face", Overwatch developer Blizzard Entertainment has reworked her look.
Seattle Parks and Recreation Releases Draft Outdoor Racquet Sports Strategy and Hosts Events to Gather Community Feedback
Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) is excited to release the Draft Racket Sports Strategy. We invite the community to learn about the proposed approach to balance the needs of pickleball and tennis users in our park system and look forward to gathering community feedback. This strategy was developed in response to growing popularity of both […]
Apple showcases apps using Liquid Glass in new developer gallery
Apple showcased apps using Liquid Glass design well, including Carrot Weather, Denim, AllTrails, and Fantastical in an updated gallery.
Gene Editing Institute Receives $500K Federal Grant to Expand CRISPR Learning Lab
ChristianaCare’s Gene Editing Institute has received a $500,000 federal grant secured by Delaware’s congressional delegation to expand its Learning Lab, a hands-on program that introduces high school and college students to gene editing. The Learning Lab is powered by CRISPR in a Box™, a teaching toolkit developed by Institute scientists that lets students try gene […]
When risky business is in the cards
How poker champions and drug developers manage uncertainty
Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo and George Mason University scientists mine past air temperature forecasts, lower cost with greater subseasonal prediction accuracy
Researchers at Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo and George Mason University‘s College of Science have developed a new method that improves air temperature forecasts one to five weeks in advance—without requiring additional model simulations.
Software from tech startup Leto helps caseworkers connect clients with community resources
Leto Tech PBC has launched software developed by Purdue researchers that helps social service agencies and other organizations more efficiently connect their clients with community resources.
'Nathan Drake Horror Game' Changes Main Character After Online Chatter
Earlier this week, users spotted a Nathan Drake rip-off character on the PlayStation Store. The developer has since changed that character.
On plant health and embracing new plant-breeding techniques in South Africa
The major challenge currently confronting South Africa’s agriculture is the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. For many farmers across the country, the most urgent tasks are both securing sufficient vaccines and rolling them out quickly in the coming months, particularly as the beef and dairy industries continue to suffer big losses. There is also pressure on sheep, goats, and other livestock to prevent the disease from spreading. As efforts to get the country through this monumental challenge continue, I believe it is important to sharpen our focus on the broader task at hand: strengthening biosecurity. This covers both animal and plant health. In recent years, we haven’t focused much on plant health, except a few times, such as when we had a goss’s wilt scare in the maize industry, a few cases of citrus black spot, or cases of sclerotinia in sunflower seeds. But the fact that South Africa managed to control the outbreaks of these particular diseases when they occurred a few years ago was due to organized agricultural and government scientific capabilities, and, most importantly, the availability of crop protection or agrochemicals necessary to address some of them. Therefore, as the animal health division in the Department of Agriculture focuses on the pressing challenge of the day, the foot-and-mouth disease, there is an opportunity for the plant health division to assess if they have all the requirements to tackle any outbreak that may occur on fruits, vegetables or crops in future. The challenge with crop diseases is that they can spread quickly and cause much more rapid damage in the field than we typically see with livestock. Therefore, speed is everything in ensuring the appropriate controls are available. I raise this as an important area, particularly given the drastic climate variation we observe across the country. The production conditions in some areas have changed noticeably over time, which may introduce new risks. The other essential part is ensuring that South Africa has access to the best crop protection technology available in the market. Many technology developers worldwide have operations in South Africa. Therefore, the Department of Agriculture, along with the Agricultural Research Council, must continuously interact with technology developers to assess the various crop protection technologies they are releasing globally and determine their suitability and need in South Africa. This will require a proactive approach from the government, unlike the current approach, in which technology developers typically approach regulators with new technologies. The government, recognising the food security risks, must take a proactive approach to ensure that South African farmers have access to the latest crop protection technologies, thereby safeguarding the country’s food security. Beyond crop protection, we must never forget that South Africa’s agriculture is key to ensuring that the country is the most food-secure country at the national level in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa is also the only African country in the top-40 global agricultural exporters, having more than doubled since 1994 on the back of the adoption of high-yielding seed cultivars. South Africa has been the only African country to adopt a bold approach to embracing science and adopting genetically engineered seeds for grains and oilseeds in the early 2000s. Since then, we have seen crop yields improve noticeably, contributing to the gains we mentioned above. But ensuring that South Africa improves further is not a given. The key lies in South African regulators’ attitudes towards new technologies. We have to maintain a progressive approach and not give in to the politics of non-food and non-scientific voices that shout on the sidelines. Food security is national security, and the government must ensure we progress, leaning on science. Therefore, the registration of high-yielding new genomic techniques is required. South Africa cannot afford to fall behind the EU, the USA, South America, and many of its competitors in global agriculture. The Department of Agriculture’s crop science division must adopt a progress-and-science-embracing approach for the good of the country. Thanks for reading AgriView! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe Share
Next Level Games wanted Link in Mario Strikers Charged
According to a developer that worked on Mario Strikers Charged, there was some consideration for having Link in Mario Strikers Charged. As a Mario game, Strikers Charged expectedly stuck with characters associated with that franchise. However, there was the possibility of bringing in that famous character from The Legend of Zelda. That tidbit was shared today by Did You Know...
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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:
Morbid Metal launches in Early Access on April 8
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A 200-year-old light trick just transformed quantum encryption
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