Alibaba Shares Rise After Unveiling Upgraded Flagship AI Model
Alibaba launched a preview version of its Qwen3.8 Max model, with shares rising as much as 5.4% on Monday. The company described the model as second only to Anthropic's Fable 5.
Thinking Machines is coming for Anthropic’s intellectual vibe
Thinking Machines released Inkling, an open-weights AI model with 975 billion parameters and 41 billion active parameters, designed for fine-tuning through its Tinker platform. The startup positions itself as competing on customization and emphasizing human intelligence enhancement rather than replacement, mirroring Anthropic's intellectual positioning.
How Verizon is preparing for record-setting network spikes during the first-ever World Cup halftime show
The 2026 FIFA World Cup final halftime show, featuring Madonna, Shakira, BTS, and Justin Bieber, is expected to draw over a billion global viewers during its 11-minute performance. Verizon is preparing network infrastructure to handle potential record traffic spikes, as halftime shows historically attract larger audiences than the games themselves, with Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl LIX performance drawing 133.5 million viewers.
Pharaoh’s Daughters Were Skilled at Archery 4,000 Years ago, Reveals New Research
A reassessment of five Egyptian royal women from 4,000 years ago revealed they were skilled archers rather than merely symbolic weapon owners. Researchers identified strong muscle attachments and healed fractures in skeletal remains that indicated actual archery practice.
Moonshot plans to list in Hong Kong within six months at a $30 billion valuation
Moonshot AI plans to list on the Hong Kong exchange within six months at a valuation exceeding $30 billion. The three-year-old startup has distributed a shareholder resolution supporting the IPO and is completing a fundraising round.
Coffee may help the body fight stress and aging through a hidden cellular switch
Coffee compounds activate NR4A1, a cellular receptor that protects against stress, inflammation, and damage. Plant-based compounds like caffeic acid proved far more active than caffeine in triggering this protective response.
Perplexity AI Releases WANDR: An Open Benchmark Evaluating Research Agents That Must Search Wide And Deep
An open benchmark named WANDR containing 500 evidence-heavy tasks evaluates whether research agents can discover multiple qualifying entities with cited, re-verifiable evidence. Perplexity Search as Code achieved the highest scores at 0.363 soft F1 and 0.133 hard F1 on the evaluation harness.
Scientists just discovered a lost branch of Australia’s marsupials
Fossils from Queensland revealed a previously unknown marsupial order that survived in Australia for approximately 35 million years. The discovery challenges the existing theory that all Australian marsupials descended from a single ancestral lineage.
Michael Saylor Calls Corporate Bitcoin Adoption Necessary and Inevitable
Michael Saylor states corporations are essential for Bitcoin to achieve success as global money due to efficiency, scale, and trust considerations. He characterizes corporate Bitcoin adoption as necessary and inevitable.
Common antidepressant may ease long COVID’s crushing fatigue
Fluvoxamine, a low-cost antidepressant, significantly reduced fatigue and improved quality of life in a randomized clinical trial of 399 adults with long COVID compared to placebo. This represents one of the first medications to show meaningful benefits for the condition.
Kimi K3 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro vs GLM-5.2: Open Trillion-Scale MoE Models Compared on Benchmarks, License, and Serving Cost
Three trillion-scale mixture-of-experts models with open weights were compared across benchmarks, licensing terms, and serving costs. The comparison evaluated Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4 Pro, and GLM-5.2 using measured intelligence scores and practical deployment expenses.
Fifa to announce record $15bn World Cup revenue, smashing expectations
FIFA generated $15 billion in World Cup revenue, exceeding its original $11 billion projection. Hospitality and secondary ticket sales drove the increase, with FIFA collecting 15 percent from both buyers and sellers in the resale market.
Others Dreamed of His Basketball Career But He Wanted to Help People–He’s Now a Texas Police Officer
A 7-foot-3-inch man declined basketball opportunities to become a Texas police officer instead. Jordan Wilmore chose law enforcement work over pursuing an athletic career as one of college basketball's tallest players.
NVIDIA Released DeepStream 9.1: Bringing Agentic AI to Vision AI With 13 Skills and Multi-View 3D Tracking
DeepStream 9.1 introduces 13 agentic skills enabling coding agents to build multi-camera video analytics pipelines from natural-language prompts. Multi-View 3D Tracking fuses per-camera detections into a shared 3D world with globally consistent object IDs while AutoMagicCalib removes manual camera calibration.
Daughter Saves Dad’s Struggling Shoe Shop With TikTok Appeal—And Customer Lines Out the Door
A daughter posted about Y2K kitten heels from her father's vintage Italian shoe shop on TikTok, attracting customers to the previously struggling store. Rich Collection Italia, owned for over 30 years, now has lines outside its door after the social media appeal reached younger shoppers online.
Scientists use relay synthesis to create key building blocks of reserve antibiotic to combat resistance
Scientists synthesized key building blocks of Neosorangicin A using relay synthesis for the first time in a laboratory setting. This naturally occurring substance can now be developed as a reserve antibiotic to combat resistant bacteria.
China is rebuilding the smartphone around AI agents. ZTE’s NaviX sold out in hours.
ZTE's NaviX Ultra smartphone, running ByteDance's Doubao AI agent and activated by voice or dedicated button, sold out within hours of its showcase at Shanghai's World AI Conference. The device comes in four colors and was prototyped in December.
Kraken Expands Access to Crypto Options with New Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) Contracts
Kraken introduced new options contracts for Bitcoin and Ethereum to expand derivatives trading access for professional and institutional investors. The exchange, which also offers stock trading, aims to make sophisticated crypto options available to a broader user base.
Nanoparticles could remove harmful immune molecules from blood
Nanoparticles can remove harmful immune molecules like proteins and genetic fragments from blood when the immune system becomes overactive. Researchers developed these particles to address cases where excessive immune mediators cause damage to the body.
Butterfly experts are planting 15,000 milkweed plants along Florida roadsides to help monarchs
Butterfly experts are planting 15,000 milkweed plants along Florida roadsides to provide food sources for migrating monarch butterflies. Workers hand-planted the milkweeds in rural areas marked with wildflower signs, and the plants now produce flowers with distinctive orange coloring and pentagonal buds.
After 33 years, two old-school pen pals an ocean apart finally got to meet in person
Two pen pals who began writing letters in elementary school met in person for the first time after 33 years of correspondence across an ocean. Their long-distance letter-writing relationship had continued unbroken throughout those decades.
Drug May Repair DNA at Earliest Stages of Alzheimer’s – And it’s Already Passed Safety Trials
A drug previously deemed safe in human trials reduces multiple Alzheimer's disease features by targeting a key protein in lab models. Researchers at King's College developed this approach to address several disease characteristics at their earliest stages.
Ethereum (ETH) Emerges as Crypto Market Leader in Tokenized ETF Inflows Amid Broader Institutional On-Chain Shift
Ethereum received more capital inflows into tokenized exchange-traded funds than any other blockchain over the past year. The shift reflects broader institutional adoption moving onto blockchain networks through tokenized financial products.
FTX Bankruptcy Proceedings Enter Next Phase with $900 Million Creditor Distribution
FTX's bankruptcy estate will distribute approximately $900 million to eligible creditors in its fifth wave of repayments. This distribution marks continued progress in the estate's obligation to address claims from the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange.
France and Germany pledge to build a European rival to Palantir’s military AI software
France and Germany committed to developing a European alternative to Palantir's military AI software, focusing on data-centric security, AI, and cloud solutions. France's Arcadia platform was identified as a potential foundation for this European sovereign digital backbone initiative.
Chinese car sales in the UK jumped from 384 in 2015 to 285,000 last year. The tariff gap explains why.
Chinese car sales in the UK surged from 384 vehicles in 2015 to 285,000 last year. BYD nearly doubled its UK sales in the first half of 2026 to over 37,000 units, with Chinese brands now holding roughly 13% of new car registrations.
Popular sugar substitutes linked to faster brain aging
Adults consuming the highest amounts of artificial sweeteners showed cognitive aging approximately 1.6 years faster than those with the lowest intake. The effect was especially pronounced in people under 60 and those with diabetes, though researchers noted additional studies are needed to establish causation.
Earth’s biggest volcanic event transformed an entire oceanic plate
Seismic waves revealed that volcanic activity over 100 million years ago created a complex structure within the oceanic plate beneath the Ontong Java Plateau, featuring horizontal layers intersected by vertical magma channels. Unusually slow seismic waves indicated that deep-rising magma chemically altered the plate's composition itself.
Alibaba open-sources its AI chip software stack at WAIC, targeting Nvidia’s CUDA lock-in
Alibaba's chip division open-sourced SAIL, a complete software stack for its Zhenwu AI chips, to reduce developer reliance on Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem. The software stack allows programmers to adapt SAIL to work with mainstream platforms.
Intermittent fasting helped people keep weight off for a year
A 12-week intermittent fasting program limited eating to an eight-hour daily window, with participants maintaining weight loss benefits a year later. Early eating windows proved especially effective at preserving fat loss compared to usual longer eating schedules.