2026-11-05 Discoveries

Basically no one is using AI agents for their DoorDash orders

But it's still early days for the relatively new e-commerce use case.

Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux

A hands-on look at dual-booting Linux on the Nvidia RTX Spark laptop, the GPU clock throttling bug found, and why WSL still wins.

AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt

AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt

Kimi K3.1 Pro model weights are out

Image-Text-to-Text model with 2.8T parameters. Download, explore files and run it on Hugging Face.

Progress on provable inference for large language models

Sharing progress on a powerful type of cryptographic proof known as a zkSNARK, which is uniquely fit for provable inference.

New Research Tests Whether AI Models Know Their Own Thoughts

By injecting “thoughts” directly into large language models, researchers are trying to map out AI’s capacity for introspection. The post New Research Tests Whether AI Models Know Their Own Thoughts first appeared on Quanta Magazine

OpenAI to acquire Pierre Computer Company

Product compliance, demystified: how Raspberry Pi helps you get to market

How Raspberry Pi helps industrial customers bring fully compliant products to market faster.

Beautiful Laser Harp Hides Some Neat Tricks

Laser harps aren’t quite a right of passage, in that not everyone builds them, but it’s likely everyone at least contemplates building one at one time or another. We’re lucky …

If Fritz Lang’s Iconic Film Metropolis Had a Kraftwerk Soundtrack

The case of the copyright history of Fritz Lang’s influential sci-fi masterpiece Metropolis is as convoluted as the history of its film print. Lang’s vision and his original almost-three-hour cut were doomed to censorship right from the start. The Nazis took out its more socialist scenes. It’s…

Watch Henry Cavill build a video game on his Googlebook

Henry Cavill built a video game on his Googlebook to help support men’s health.

It’s DOOM

Dirt cheap toy cameras have long been a target for the curious camera hacker, and we’ve seen plenty of lens swaps and other hardware hacks. Until now their internals have …

The Female Iron Age Queen Who Helped Bring Britain to its Knees

New scholarship reveals an exiled Roman client king was a woman

We're sharing our framework for building safer and more helpful AI for health.

Many of us have turned to AI with a health question or received care from a doctor who’s using it. The adoption of technology for health is accelerating and impacts bill…

Great Art Explained Traces the Incredible Story of Henri Matisse’s ‘The Red Studio’

The documentary short by art historian James Payne traces the history of the paradigm-shifting painting. 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 Great Art Explained Traces the…

PasteGuard for Mac

Keep secrets and personal data out of AI chats

A New Search Engine Lets You Explore 4 Million Works of Art & Historical Photographs…

We live in an age when you can describe practically anything you want to see in words, then see it almost immediately. Nobody will ever have laid eyes upon that particular sight before — and quite possibly, nobody ever will again. There we have both the upside and the downside of artificial…

Archaeologists Unravel an 88-Year-Old Murder Mystery

The killing of James Leslie Starkey

Slavdom Unearthed: Marian Wawrzeniecki’s Neopagan Paintings (1891–1923)

A neopagan visual archive meant to rival the iconic power of the Christian West.

Making a Wax Motor for Micrometer-Level Control

Although not very glamorous, wax motors are a fairly common type of linear actuator. They use the thermal response of waxes and the resulting volumetric expansion or reduction to create …

Take a closer look at art with the Courtauld

Examine art in new ways with The Art of Looking, a new project from Google Arts & Culture and the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Datashake MCP

Plug review and social data straight into your AI assistant

Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson’s Whimsical Books and Dolls Celebrate Black Community

Later this month, Fort Gansevoort presents 25 of the late Ohio artist's works in 'Beaded and Bound.' 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 Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson’s…

Residential proxies detected on White House network

Our new Residential Proxy Observatory shows residential proxy traffic exiting the White House network: 236 times in 30 days, through 28 public proxy services.

The Closest Thing We Have to Alien Matter

The world’s coldest liquid is far stranger than you’d imagine. Sponsored by Ground News - Go to https://ground.news/Ve and subscribe to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage Plan. Stay informed on breaking news and compare coverage…

What Happened When Neuroscientists Started a Mouse Fight Club

Their brain activity shifted

Guerrilla bike lanes: San Francisco makes illicit infrastructure permanent (2016)

When two cyclists were tragically killed in hit-and-run collisions this past summer, a group of anonymous urban activists known as the San Francisco Transformation Agency erected a set of protected bike lanes using traffic cones. Usually…

Virelo

Turn your video folders into a private streaming library

Visible Brushstrokes Push on a Subtle Grid in Stelios Pupet’s Contemplative Scenes

From his studio in Athens, Stelios Pupet renders meditative paintings that place organic elements within a subtle grid. 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 Visible…