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It’s been a long, hot summer for America’s universities. Columbia, accused by the The President administration of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, settled with the federal government for a whopping $200 million, while Harvard is struggling to defend itself against allegations that it unduly favored some students based on ethnicity, in violation of the prohibition to consider race in college applications. Similar cases abound, making it seem as if our institutions of higher education are little more than heated ideological battlegrounds, offering students an uncertain future and therefore, considering the ever-rising price of tuition, a risky bet. Apologies,…

Grindr’s days as a public company could be numbered. The hookup and dating app, which went public via a SPAC merger in fall 2021, announced Tuesday that its largest shareholders, Raymond Zage and James Lu—who led the company’s go-public efforts—were exploring the possibility of acquiring Grindr’s outstanding stock, which would take the company private again. The confirmation of Lu and Zage’s goal of taking the company private followed reporting on Monday from Semafor, which outlined that a recent Grindr stock slide led a lender to seize shares that at least one of the men had used to back a personal loan. Semafor reported that the two were in talks with Fo…

If you have ever welcomed a new baby into the world, you know the mix of hope and uncertainty that comes with those first days. For decades, newborn screening has been a quiet triumph of public health, catching rare but serious conditions before symptoms appear and giving families a head start on care. Now, genomic newborn screening, which includes whole genome sequencing, is poised to take this life-saving work further by screening for hundreds of genetic conditions at birth and changing the standard of care. FROM RESEARCH TO REAL-WORLD IMPACT The GUARDIAN study is pioneering genomic newborn screening in New York City. As the largest genomic newborn screening prog…

We don’t fully understand human biology. Not proteins, or cells or tissues—and certainly not how they all interact in the dynamic systems that make up our body. I believe AI is the answer to that problem. It offers the promise of a step-change in data analysis and eventually will understand our bodies’ processes at a fundamental level. It will “solve” biology. But it can’t be done by generalist large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. We’re going to need domain-specific agentic software that plans, acts, and adapts. The sort of AI that can support us across messy, multimodal workflows inherent to biological research. This is how we unlock the medicines and treat…

Walmart will be putting millions of sensors on its pallets across its supply chain chain, in a move that technology partner Wiliot is calling “the first large-scale deployment of ambient Internet of Things (IoT)” sensors in the retail industry. The technology is currently deployed in 500 Walmart locations, and the retail giant plans to expand nationwide in 2026. The ambient IoT sensors are battery-free and operate by harvesting energy from sources such as radio waves, light, motion, and heat, according to CNBC. The wide rollout will cover 4,600 Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and over 40 distribution centers, generating high-resolution supply chain…

An investor group including BlackRock, Microsoft, and Nvidia is buying one of the world’s biggest data center operators with nearly 80 facilities in a deal worth $40 billion to secure coveted computing capacity for artificial intelligence. The purchase of U.S.-based Aligned Data Centers from Australian Macquarie Asset Management on Wednesday is the first deal for the AI Infrastructure Partnership formed last year which includes Abu Dhabi-based fund MGX and Elon Musk’s startup xAI among its backers. “With this investment in Aligned Data Centers, we further our goal of delivering the infrastructure necessary to power the future of AI,” said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink,…

When you type a question into an AI search engine like ChatGPT or Google AI Mode and it comes up with an answer, that information comes from somewhere. Scouring the web for content that’s contextually relevant to the asker, it typically assembles an answer based on several different sources, interpreted through the lens of its training data and system prompt. The fight over being one of those sources is the new game of online discovery that’s replacing SEO. Typically called GEO or AEO for generative/answer engine optimization, the field is nascent, and the rules, best practices, and even the benefits aren’t entirely clear. There’s one thing everyone agrees on, though:…

Owning a home sounds like a dream, sure, but a majority of Gen Z Americans feel discouraged about whether they can make this sort of lifetime goal a reality. To blame? Housing just isn’t affordable. While two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 27 say that homeownership is a lifetime goal, 82% of people in this generation believe that actually buying a home is more difficult for them than older generations, according to a new survey of 1,000 Gen Z adults released today by Realtor.com. Things are so bad, in fact, that 16% of Gen Zers rate housing affordability as one of their top life concerns. And it’s not just a feeling: Younger generations have been l…

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid for the 2026-27 school year has officially opened. Despite the U.S. government shutdown, the Education Department will continue to process the FAFSA. If you plan to attend college next year, Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, recommends that you fill it out as soon as you can. If it’s your first time applying, here’s what you need to know: How does the FAFSA work? The FAFSA is a free government application that uses students’ and their families’ financial information to determine whether they can get financial aid from the federal gov…

Robotaxi pioneer Waymo plans to expand to London next year, marking the company’s latest step in rolling out its driverless ride service internationally. Waymo said Wednesday that it will start testing its self-driving cars on London streets in the coming weeks—with a human “safety driver” behind the wheel—as it seeks to win government approval for its services. In a blog post, Waymo said it will “lay the groundwork” for its London service in the coming months. The company said it will “continue to engage with local and national leaders to secure the necessary permissions for our commercial ride-hailing service.” Waymo’s self-driving taxis have been operating …

U.S. quantum computing firm D-Wave Quantum has struck a deal with a company called Swiss Quantum Technology (SQT) to bring D-Wave’s Advantage2 quantum computer to Europe. The deal, which amounts to €10 million ($11.63 million), will see D-Wave’s quantum computer deployed in Italy, where it will play a role in supporting the Italians’ efforts toward large-scale digital transformation, D-Wave announced on Wednesday. It will be part of a joint effort—collectively called the “Q-Alliance”—between D-Wave and IonQ, another American quantum computing company. In its announcement Wednesday, D-Wave said little about what SQT does, and scant information about the compan…

Elon Musk‘s lawyers will urge the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday to restore his $56 billion pay package from Tesla, as one of the biggest corporate legal battles enters its final stage nearly two years after a lower court judge rescinded the Tesla CEO’s record compensation. The outcome could have substantial consequences for the state of Delaware, its widely used corporate law, and its Court of Chancery, a once-favored venue for business disputes that has recently been accused of hostility towards powerful entrepreneurs. The January 2024 Court of Chancery ruling striking down Musk’s pay has become a rallying cry for Delaware critics. Chancellor Kathaleen McCo…

A startling message came over the radio from an air traffic control tower near Los Angeles less than a week into the federal government shutdown: “The tower is closed due to staffing.” Without enough air traffic controllers to guide planes into and out of Hollywood Burbank Airport, the tower went dark for almost six hours on Oct. 6, leaving pilots to coordinate their movements among themselves. Flight delays averaged two-and-a-half hours in one of the first visible signs that the shutdown was already taking a toll on the nation’s aviation system. Since the shutdown began Oct. 1, the Federal Aviation Administration has reported controller shortages in cities across the U…

OpenAI unleashed Sora 2 last month, the final boss of slop machines (at least for now). The social app draws entirely from artificial intelligence: Instead of sharing photos and videos of themselves, users can opt in for “cameos” and create fake clips that depict themselves or their friends in any scenario imaginable. It’s mostly being used to make viral meme content and the type of short-form videos you’d scroll past on TikTok, albeit with deepfakes. Sora doesn’t allow you to make videos of other living people (dead celebrities and SpongeBob SquarePants characters are fair game) unless given express permission. As one user put it: “Digital Taxidermy is the…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. A recent Zillow analysis suggests it would take a drop of more than one percentage point—to 4.43%—for the median-income U.S. homebuyer to comfortably afford the median-priced U.S. home. And that assumes a 20% down payment, which many first-time buyers are unable to make. Even more striking, in several high-cost coastal metros, not even a 0% mortgage rate would make the median-priced local home affordable for a household earning the local median income. This includes New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose, where taxes, in…

The ongoing government shutdown is delaying the announcement of the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for tens of millions of beneficiaries. Originally scheduled for Wednesday, the 2024 Social Security COLA announcement will now be Oct. 24. It is timed to the September Consumer Price Index, which also has not yet been released. The agency adjusts its benefits every year based on inflation. The postponement of the announcement is the most recent example of how the government shutdown, entering its third week and with little progress made toward a resolution, has made it more difficult for people to plan out their finances. Projections by Senior Citizens L…

The government shutdown is delaying another major economic report, leaving policymakers at the Federal Reserve with a cloudier picture even as the economy enters a challenging phase of stubbornly persistent inflation and a sharp slowdown in hiring. The Labor Department’s monthly inflation data was scheduled for release Wednesday, but late last week was postponed until Oct. 24. The department is recalling some employees to assemble the data, which was collected before the shutdown began. The figures are needed for the government to calculate the annual cost of living adjustment for tens of millions of recipients of benefit programs such as Social Security. The shutdown c…

Households that have bought Ben’s Original rice products will want to check their pantries right away. The brand, owned by food giant Mars, has issued a voluntary recall for select rice products. At issue is the possibility of small stones mixed in the rice, which could cause intestinal and other damage if consumed. Here’s what you need to know about the Ben’s Original rice recall. What’s happened? On October 10, Ben’s Original announced a voluntary recall of some of its rice products. That recall notice was later published on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website on October 14. The voluntary recall was initiated after Ben’s Original di…

There is an all-out global race for AI dominance. The largest and most powerful companies in the world are investing billions in unprecedented computing power. The most powerful countries are dedicating vast energy resources to assist them. And the race is centered on one idea: transformer-based architecture with large language models are the key to winning the AI race. What if they are wrong? What we call intelligence evolved in biological life over hundreds of millions of years starting with simple single-celled organisms like bacteria interacting with their environment. Life gradually developed into multi-cell organisms learning to seek what they needed and to avoi…

Apple TV+ is dead. Long live Apple TV. On October 13, in a press release about F1: The Movie, Apple TV+ nonchalantly slipped in a line that from here on out it will be known simply as “Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity.” The streaming service’s new name is the same as Apple’s connected smart TV device product and app—effectively merging all of the brand’s TV-centric products under one moniker. Anyone who enjoys a bit of time winding down in front of the television knows about the plus sign. It’s come to represent nearly every streaming service out there: Disney+, ESPN+, BET+, Discovery+, even NASA+. Many streamers that don’t have the “Plus” now once did (we’r…