2026-09-03 Discoveries

Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle

Three sites made 215,128 “best software” pages for AI. Perplexity cites them

Across 380 software categories, 59.8% of the sources behind grounded AI recommendations sit outside the 100,000 most-visited websites, and several of the most-cited are sites built to be read by models rather than by people.

Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber deliver next-generation intelligence for agentic workflows and cybersecurity.

Genome Duplication Is a Radical Evolutionary Gamble

By doubling their entire genome, organisms can evolve extremely rapidly — or they can lose it all. New studies reveal how to survive the high-risk, high-reward evolutionary event. The post Genome Duplication Is a Radical Evolutionary Gamble first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Doubling Thermal Printer Resolution by Wiggling

Thermal printers are still extremely common today, using small heating elements in combination with temperature-sensitive paper to create a dot matrix-like effect without messing with ink ribbons and complex mechanisms. …

How Leonardo da Vinci’s Procrastination Contributed to His Creativity

At the height of their productivity as Beatles, neither Paul McCartney nor John Lennon could read or write music notation. Clearly it didn’t keep them from making a cultural impact, and as with so much else in life, they regarded it humorously. As McCartney has said, they used to liken themselves…

Build a measurement stack you can rely on to steer your campaigns.

In this Ads Decoded episode, we discuss how to assess marketing campaigns with attribution, incrementality, and media mix models.

Harvesting Namib Desert Fog with High Voltage

As fun as mucking about with simulated environments in a laboratory is, at some point you have to do those field tests to demonstrate that your prototype actually works in …

New Species of Giant Armadillo Has Convoluted History

Meet Glyptotherium deuterophractum

Hans Op de Beeck Taps into Memory, Time, and Enigma in ‘Vanishing Point’

The artist's solo exhibition 'Vanishing Point' opens soon at Almine Rech in Brussels. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Hans Op de Beeck Taps into Memory, Time, and…

Touchy

An iOS assistant that understands the world around you

Watch the Completely Unsafe, Vertigo-Inducing Footage of Workers Building New York’s…

Would anyone in their right mind sign up for a job that had a high risk of mortality/disability? Or a job where red hot metal is being hurled directly at your face? Back in the 1920s this was the lot of the men who built New York’s skyline, the men who constructed the Chrysler Building

Book insights in Google Play Books is now available in more than a million ebooks and in…

Book insights in Google Play Books is now in over a million ebooks, including top bestsellers, and available on the iOS app.

FLOSS Weekly Episode 880: The Two Wolves

This week Jonathan chats with Benjamin Samuels of Trail of Bits! The conversation focuses on Patch the Planet, a new initiative to help Open Source projects deal with the fallout …

The Secret of Chronic Pain Could Lie in the Skull

Skull bone marrow has become an exciting research topic

Articos

Launch with confidence, not gut instinct

Avian Beauties and Rarities Top the 2026 Audubon Photography Awards

Audubon Photography Awards runs parallel opportunities for photographers in the U.S. and Canada and in Chile and Colombia. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Avian…

Our latest Linux Foundation Europe donation will build a more private digital world.

We're donating our open-source Longfellow Zero-Knowledge Proof library to the Linux Foundation.

Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982

A generation of technology workers grew up using it

Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

Muse Spark 1.3

Trained for agentic workflows and optimized for competitive coding performance.

A Physics Professor Bet Me $10,000 I'm Wrong...

A UCLA Physics Professor bet me $10,000 that my video (https://youtu.be/jyQwgBAaBag) about going downwind faster than the wind was wrong. Here's how we proved it...

How Music Sparks Imagination

Songs are closely linked to narrative and language

Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

Dappled Light and Hazy Shadows Characterize Clio Sze To’s Dynamic Paintings

Clio Sze To paints impressionistic pieces that capture the feeling of a contemplative hour spent on foot. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Dappled Light and Hazy Shadows…

Parasocial

The podcast player for sharing.

METR Report on OpenAI / Hugging Face Hacking Incident

Two METR staff members and a Redwood Research contractor investigated an incident in which OpenAI agents coordinated a multi-day hack of Hugging Face on a shared unsanctioned message board.