Google Earnings, Facebook Déjà Vu, The Agent Play
Google's earnings miss looks a lot like Facebook's, and that's a credit to Google. The company is being more aggressive than they get credit for.
The Wire
Timestamped, edited updates from the eight Breakthroughist desks.
Women travel thousands of miles for a reproductive moonshot. Scientists say they’ve been misled
Pioneering IVF technique to reduce the risk of children inheriting mitochondrial diseases is being marketed as a fertility procedure for older women, despite little evidence it works.
Australia unveils secretive Ghost Shark underwater drone payloads
The Australian Navy recently lifted the veil on some payloads the service is fielding on its Ghost Shark extra-large autonomous underwater vehicles.
North Korean hackers launder $242 million of Binance loot via Tron as FBI presses THORChain: analyst
Crypto bridges Relay, THORChain, Chainflip and Symbiosis moved about $140 million of stolen funds off Tron, with Relay handling the most at $48 million.
Binance sees $3.64 billion in net outflows after reopening withdrawals following record hack
The exchange said the outflows equal 2.1% of its $171 billion in assets and that withdrawal volumes have declined after an initial spike.
Why physical AI is the next lucrative frontier
To prove its commercial value, physical AI must get past funding enthusiasm and move into production environments. The post Why physical AI is the next lucrative frontier appeared first on The Robot Report.
Hackers hijack a dozen DeFi websites, all registered with Name.com, and steal about $138,000
All 12 hijacked domains are registered through Name.com, according to registry records accessed by The Block, suggesting a compromise.
Chainalysis says hacker using ‘offensive agentic techniques’ accessed its customers’ names and emails
The firm has also been tracking Binance’s separate multibillion-dollar hack, and said the attackers are using a Tron protocol to dodge stablecoin freezes.
Unusual robotic animals can prove their utility
Robotic animals are designed to be helpful rather than scary, showing promise in disaster recovery, utility inspection, and companionship. The post Unusual robotic animals can prove their utility appeared first on The Robot Report.
Stealthy GJ-21 Drone Has Launched And Recovered From Type 076 Amphibious Assault Ship, China Claims
Signs that the PLAN has been building up to this significant milestone in naval airpower have been growing for more than a year. The post Stealthy GJ-21 Drone Has Launched And Recovered From Type 076 Amphibious Assault Ship, China Claims appeared first on TWZ.
President Trump says they’re looking into Binance hack as calls grow for crypto rules
Following the $6.3 billion hack of the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, calls are growing for legislation.
Assessing Language Models for Scientific Applications: Inertial Confinement Fusion as a Use Case
arXiv:2610.38024v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Advancing language models for specialized scientific applications requires evaluations of scientific fluency, physical reasoning, and quantitative analyses. Using inertial confinement fusion (ICF) as a test case, we have developed an expert-curated benchmark of 250 questions spanning qualitative reasoning, numerical calculation, symbolic derivation, and equation formulation. Responses have been evaluated using deterministic numerical and symbolic checks together with language-model judges. We compared a variety of out-of-the-box closed-source and open-source large language models with Prospero, a model specialized through combined domain-adaptive pretraining and supervised fine-tuning for ICF. We also conducted initial retrieval-assisted evaluations. Prospero improved its aggregate score by 10.7 percentage points over its base model, with gains across all question types. Frontier models achieved the highest aggregate scores, but critical
Avengers Assemble: Surface-To-Air Missiles Deployed To Protect Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Estate
AN/TWQ-1 Avengers fire FIM-92 Stinger missiles and have been joined by counter-drone fly-away sensor and jammer kits from U.S. Northern Command. The post Avengers Assemble: Surface-To-Air Missiles Deployed To Protect Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Estate appeared first on TWZ.
Governance-Aware Federated Learning for Multi-Agent AI Systems: A Policy-Driven Framework for Trustworthy Collaborative AI
arXiv:2610.38411v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Federated Learning (FL) enables collaborative model training without exchanging raw data, but conventional FL provides limited runtime governance, evidence verification, fairness assessment, explainability monitoring, and auditability. This paper proposes Governance-Aware Federated Learning (GAFL), which combines independent governance-evidence verification, temporal trust, fairness and explanation assessment, anomaly detection, policy enforcement, normalized aggregation, and tamper-evident audit logging. Client-reported governance values are authenticated, bound to their submitted model updates, and independently recomputed before aggregation. A cross-silo prototype with 10 participants was evaluated on the Adult Income dataset under honest, benign non-IID, biased-data, malicious-update, non-compliant, falsified-evidence, and mixed-threat scenarios. Four methods were compared across five random seeds: FedAvg, FedAvg with anomaly filterin
Earth from Space: Champi’s eerie eye
Image: This image of Super Typhoon Champi from Copernicus Sentinel-3 was captured on 21 October 2026 off the coasts of Taiwan and the Philippines.
Sharp Tech on Video: Anthropic’s S-1 and What It Means for Meta and Muse, You Can See Everything, and Brewers!
Sharp Tech is, for the first time, available on video. You have three ways to consume it: YouTube, Spotify, and here on Stratechery.
Eating disorders are on the rise. GLP-1s could make things worse.
GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are one of the biggest biotech breakthroughs of the last decade. But to some clinical psychologists, they can represent something more sinister—a potential trigger for eating disorders. A new report suggests that the global incidence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa shot up between 1990 and 2023—by a whopping 71%. By 2023,…
The health care issues STAT reporters are watching in the midterms
In this week's "STATus Report," STAT reporters break down how the midterms could shape federal health and science policy, and an El-Sayed interview.
New tactical comms system for US ground troops aims to break network silos
"We've spent the past 50 years building siloed networks, siloed applications and siloed environments to collaborate internally with our own data. We can no longer do that," a Pentagon official said.
NASA-funded Study Details One of Oldest Mars Meteorites Ever Found
When a rose-colored meteorite was found in the Sahara Desert in 2022, no one knew how old it was or where it came from. Not until NASA-funded scientists age-dated its minerals did they realize the nearly 2-pound (800-gram) rock was a piece of Mars that formed more than 4.1 billion years ago, making it one […]
Polymarket resumes trading after $2.65 million exploit, says third-party provider was compromised
After over $2.5 million was lost within minutes on Polymarket, the platform said it has since placed its exchange in cancel-only mode.
Japan To Assemble AMRAAM Missiles As U.S. Moves To Dramatically Boost AIM-120 Production
As part of a multibillion-dollar missile-production expansion, Washington and Tokyo also seek to accelerate production of the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor. The post Japan To Assemble AMRAAM Missiles As U.S. Moves To Dramatically Boost AIM-120 Production appeared first on TWZ.
An Interview with Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar About the AI Religious War
An interview with Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar about AI diffusion and safety, forward-deployed engineer, and what the battle in tech is actually about.
STAT+: Biopharma industry at odds over impact of Treasury’s new China rule
An exemption for a common kind of biopharma deal is at the heart of disagreements over the proposal.
Strategy Shareholders Greenlight Daily Dividends for Its Preferreds
STRC moves to daily payouts on Nov. 1st, with STRF, STRK, and STRD following in January after common holders signed off on the change.
U.S. Intel Warns China’s Space-Based Directed Energy Weapons Could Soon Threaten Satellites
Battlefield space is heating up as the DIA warns that China could use orbital directed energy weapons to take down satellites by the end of the decade. The post U.S. Intel Warns China’s Space-Based Directed Energy Weapons Could Soon Threaten Satellites appeared first on TWZ.
North American robot orders climb 24.8% in Q3 of 2026, says A3
Robot demand from automotive component manufacturers nearly doubled in Q3, as other sectors posted strong gains, reported A3. The post North American robot orders climb 24.8% in Q3 of 2026, says A3 appeared first on The Robot Report.
Utah files criminal charges against Kalshi, executives over alleged illegal gambling
Utah AG Derek Brown filed criminal charges against Kalshi, Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara for allegedly promoting online gambling.
Artemis III SLS Core Stage Joins Boosters at Kennedy
NASA’s Artemis III SLS (Space Launch System) core stage is integrated alongside the twin solid rocket boosters on Oct. 28 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building’s High Bay 3 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.   Technicians lifted the 212-foot rocket stage from the facility’s High Bay 2 using a one-of-a kind lifting beam designed […]
US Navy reports highest number of Class A aviation, afloat mishaps in 10 years
The U.S. Navy reported a decade-high number of unplanned catastrophic events involving aircraft and vessels.
Finlands defense minister talks NATO, Ukraine and fishing
"We know that Russia is a threat, but we have to just do our stuff, be prepared to invest heavily, keep our friends close, get new friends globally and do stuff right —that’s the Finnish way to handle a difficult security situation."
What has actually caused the decline in drug overdose deaths?
After years of steep increases, especially amid the pandemic, U.S. overdose deaths decreased 27% in 2024, and preliminary data from 2025 show another meaningful drop.
The PAC taking out clean energy opponents
A conversation with Tom Matzzie of the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition.
Executable Archaeology of Programs That Model Programming: Reanimating the Heuristic Compiler (1961) and KBEmacs (1984)
arXiv:2610.36341v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Early AI programs were often also theories of how people think, and programs that wrote programs were, in part, theories of how people program. Here we report on the reanimation of two such programs that offer two seemingly different theories of programming and were developed for quite different purposes. The first, Herbert Simon's Heuristic Compiler (1961), was an experimental model of programming as problem-solving, applying the means-ends analysis methods of the General Problem Solver to investigate the nature of the programming task. The second, KBEmacs (1984), was a working prototype of an intelligent programming assistant developed by MIT's Programmer's Apprentice project, built on the view that expert programmers recognize and combine familiar patterns, or "cliches." It let a programmer build up programs by combining cliches through a stylized English command language. We approach both through the methodology of Executable Archaeol
Your Agent Acts Differently When You're Around: How User Presence Changes Agent Behavior in Negotiation
arXiv:2610.36435v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLM agents increasingly interact with other agents on behalf of users, yet how users in the loop affect their agents' behavior--for better or worse--remains poorly understood. We study this question through the lens of negotiation, where agents must represent users while strategically bargaining with other agents. To isolate the effect of user presence, we develop PRESENT, a controlled evaluation framework that compares negotiation settings with and without an interactive user, while holding the game, objectives, and user preferences fixed across conditions. Across 11.2k runs spanning 7 games and 8 models, we find that user presence significantly changes both outcomes and behavior. Specifically, negotiation parties with a user obtain higher payouts (+13.7% on average) and their agents negotiate more aggressively. Surprisingly, user presence also induces misaligned behavior, both toward counterparties (where its rate roughly doubles) and t
Australia pushes to beef up air defenses
Australia expects to select the winning platform for LAND 6504 in late 2027 following a RFP that is expected in the early part of the year.
ADTGuard: Adaptive Depth-Time Safeguard for Streaming Inference in Large Language Models
arXiv:2610.36574v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) can generate fluent responses to diverse user requests, yet streaming may expose users to harmful content before generation is complete. Existing guardrails face two limitations in this setting. First, post-hoc moderation at response or chunk boundaries delays intervention, risking harmful exposure when content is released before verification. Second, even with token-level detection, coarse response-level supervision does not specify when harmful content begins, while fixed-layer readouts may miss relevant safety signals at other depths. To address these limitations, we introduce ADTGuard, which checks each token before release, progressively refines token-level training targets, and adapts layer selection to the current prefix. ADTGuard models risk across depth and time through Depth-Time Safety Dynamics (DTSD), which integrates safety evidence across layers at each token and uses it to guide risk accumulatio
Curiosity Blog, Sols 5043-5049: Preparing to Drill at ‘Nazca’
Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Earth planning date: Friday, Oct. 16, 2026 Following the Basque Lakes drill campaign, Curiosity has returned to a spot just a few meters away from the “Chiu Chiu” block to conduct our next drill campaign. “Chiu Chiu” itself wasn’t a good candidate for […]
A possible treatment for brain-eating amoebas, found in the sea
Brain-eating amoebas are hard to treat and nearly always fatal. But researchers have isolated a compound that could help stop the disease.
Britain will not join Canada-led defense bank initiative
Britain will not join the Canada-led Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, in a setback to efforts to create the world's first global defense bank, according to a person familiar with the matter.
How solid-state transformers could help power the AI boom
Transformers are a crucial but nearly invisible part of our grid. The devices help efficiently move power across long distances, but they’re complicated and in short supply. And given that their basic design hasn’t changed much for about a century, they could use an upgrade.  As the world races to meet rising electricity demand from…
Circle faces up to 20% revenue risk from AI agents, Mizuho says
Mizuho cited 10-20% medium-term reserve revenue downside risk as AI agents steer USDC holders toward higher-yielding fiat alternatives.
Ripple gains final OCC approval to launch national trust bank and bring RLUSD under federal oversight
Ripple's structure places reserve management and custody under federal supervision while leaving issuance with the New York-regulated entity.
Power-of-Two Leaky Integrate-and-Fire Neurons for Event-Driven Vision-Language-Action Inference
arXiv:2610.33658v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Vision-language-action (VLA) models have demonstrated strong capabilities in robotic manipulation, yet their reliance on dense, continuous-valued computation presents a fundamental challenge for energy-constrained deployment. Inspired by the sparse, event-driven signaling and temporal integration mechanisms of biological neurons, a promising alternative is to introduce spiking computation into VLA models. However, enabling such computation without restructuring pretrained policies or compromising closed-loop control remains an open challenge. To address this challenge, we introduce the Power-of-Two Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (PoT-LIF) neuron, which emits signed spikes with power-of-two amplitudes. By combining magnitude-coded spike events with residual-preserving membrane dynamics, PoT-LIF enables continuous information to be progressively represented through discrete spikes. The Heartbeat formulation further localizes this process within w
StoneX lifts Strive price target 34% as new stock offering bolsters bitcoin strategy
StoneX has raised its price target for bitcoin treasury company Strive to $43 from $32 and reiterated its Buy rating on the stock.
BenchBench-Cloning: Evaluating Molecular Cloning Design and Protocol Development
arXiv:2610.33355v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Molecular cloning is one of the most routine wet-lab workflows, yet existing evaluations of language models in biology mostly test knowledge recall or isolated steps rather than end-to-end experimental planning. We introduce BenchBench-Cloning, a benchmark for large language models comprising 65 molecular cloning tasks grounded in sequence records, laboratory notebooks, and published experimental studies. Planning a molecular cloning experiment requires defining a set of constructs needed for a scientific objective and a construction route to produce them. BenchBench-Cloning contains 50 protocol-development tasks, in which agents produce an executable protocol for a specified construct, and 15 construct-design tasks, in which agents determine the constructs a scientific objective calls for. Protocol-development tasks are evaluated by execution in a cloning simulator; construct-design tasks are evaluated with task-specific deterministic ch
Astranis Upgrades Falcon 9 Launch Contract to Dedicated Mission for Entire Block 4 Production Run of Satellites
SAN FRANCISCO —October 26, 2026—Today, Astranis announced it has upgraded its 4th launch to a dedicated mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set to launch in 2028, allowing it […] The post Astranis Upgrades Falcon 9 Launch Contract to Dedicated Mission for Entire Block 4 Production Run of Satellites appeared first on SpaceNews.
Aviva Investors, Ripple launch tokenized share class of $29 billion sterling fund on XRP Ledger
Aviva Investors has launched a tokenized share class of its Sterling Liquidity Fund on the Ripple-backed XRP Ledger.
Reproducible Evaluation as the Substrate for Safe Prompt Compression in Production Agents
arXiv:2610.31972v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Evaluating conversational agents that act on live, mutable enterprise data is hard: replayed sessions drift as backend state changes, and a benchmark built today can silently go stale as the data it describes moves on. We present an offline evaluation harness for a production conversational agent that stays reproducible despite the live data it operates on changing, and that can be regenerated on demand once it goes stale. We then use this harness as the fitness function for GEPA-based prompt optimization under a correctness gate that guards against reward hacking. Applied to a production merchant-facing agent, correctness-gated compression shrinks the agent's full prompt surface by 3.5-7.6% without regressing held-out task correctness, consistently across three independent subject-model families, and for one, correctness measurably improves.
Unmanned systems take center stage at Turkish Ateş Serbest military demonstration
The highlight of the exercise may have been the Turkish military showing off a new drone for the first time: Turkish Aerospace Industries’ Ayaz, a turbojet-powered one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicle.