2026-11-04 Discoveries

Fujifilm to boost tape production 5x as AI fuels archiving demand

Low costs and offline security mean magnetic tape still has a job.

Stringman, an $800 open-source room scale gripper robot

Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins and attempts to share all API data

Is there an existing issue for this? I have searched the tracker for existing similar issues and I know that duplicates will be closed Describe the Issue Opening Postman on my Mac was followed by u...

Qwen 3.8 27B on my laptop can interpret model weights, too

Yesterday’s hot paper was Sparks of Weight-Space Programming: LLMs can natively read & write neural network weights by Rikiya Takehi, Jayden Teoh, Alex Zhang, and Omar Khattab. The paper (OK, …

The Little Book of Generative AI Foundations: An Intuitive Mathematical Primer

This book provides a compact, derivation-oriented introduction to the mathematical foundations of modern generative artificial intelligence. Rather than surveying every recent architecture or implementation detail, it develops a coherent…

Etching Press Aims To Impress

There’s an old joke about inviting a girl up to your dorm room to ‘look at your etchings’– but if you’re going to do that, you’d best have some etchings, …

US tech giants' hidden AI debt swells 90% to $3.2T in 6 months

Google, Meta, others' commitments and obligations reach 80% of assets

New research shows how Guided Learning supports students

New research shows Guided Learning drives higher learning gains, plus new features for Google Classroom.

The San Francisco Public Library Launches a Free Online Archive with 80,000+ Historical…

Over 100,000 people move to the San Francisco Bay Area each year. Their motivations for doing so no doubt vary, but these days, the ambition to make a fortune at the epicenter of the tech industry — especially amid the rapidly inflating AI bubble — is hardly unheard of. Unfortunately, that desire…

Toddler Phone Calls Family and No One Else

The great thing about the modern world is how connected we are. It’s also the worst thing about the modern world, to be honest. [Allan Binder] wanted to give his …

Plants Experience Optical Illusions, Too

You don’t need a brain to get fooled

Assyria is Far from Ancient in Esther Elia’s Characterizations of Contemporary…

The Albuquerque-based artist explores contemporary Assyrian experience through pattern, fashion, and autobiography. 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 Assyria is Far from…

Teamily AI

Your personal agent, agent teams & people in one messenger

Soviet Animations of Winnie the Pooh, Created by the Innovative Animator Fyodor Khitruk

In 1962, the animator Fyodor Khitruk made his directorial debut with Story of One Crime, a film that broke with a Soviet tendency to make imitations of Disney-style animations. The film, as The Guardian explained in its 2012 obituary for the animator, came as a shock. It was stylistically simple…

We’re providing funding for organizations building AI for teachers.

Google.org is funding five organizations to build AI tools for teachers. See how these initiatives support educators and students. Get the details.

Detecting an Eight Magnetic Pole State using Chiral Phonons

The idea that magnetism doesn’t necessarily always have a dipolar configuration is not a new one, but it’s not an easy theory to find evidence for. Most recently a team …

Why Your Shrink Should Prescribe Exercise

A new viewpoint paper argues we’ve been thinking about physical activity the wrong way

AgentKit by Scalekit

MCP gateway for production agents that acts on your behalf

In an Updated Edition, Photographer Ivan McClellan Returns to Black Rodeo Culture

'Eight Seconds: Legacy in Motion' features 91 new images that spotlight the people and places integral to Black rodeo culture. 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 In an…

AI in the learning era

Read announcements from Google’s 2026 AI in the Learning Era event.

Jailbreaking my car's navigation system just so I can change the time

Mac at Any Scale

What it takes to run Macs in a datacenter: custom MacBook racks, virtualizing macOS with Apple's Virtualization framework, and building and distributing huge VM images across the fleet.

Can you solve the Billy Bonka riddle? - Edwin F. Meyer

You accidentally end up in the top secret lab of an eccentric candy factory. Can you win Billy Bonka's game and get set free? -- You’re on a tour of the eccentric Billy Bonka’s mysterious candy factory, when a wrong turn searching for the…

Could One Brain Region Be Tied to Feeling Sick All Over?

When you break your foot, the pain is mostly confined to your foot. When you get the flu or another systemic infection, your entire being aches: Lethargy creeps into your limbs, your appetite vanishes, your temperature jags between scorching and chilled to the bone, and you just want to pull the…

Testifly

Autonomous AI QA. Zero prompting. Zero maintenance.

Collins Obijiaku’s Tender Portraits Conjure Memories and Community

'Wherever You Are, Remember Me' opens on November 7 at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles. 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 Collins Obijiaku’s Tender Portraits Conjure…