This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 11)

Artificial Intelligence Nvidia Researchers Boost LLM Reasoning Skills by Getting Them to ‘Think’ During Pre-trainingBen Dickson | VentureBeat “This approach encourages the model to ‘think for itself before predicting what comes next, thus teaching an independent thinking behavior earlier in the pretraining,’ the researchers state in their paper. [Models trained like this] show significant improvements … Read more

A Nanoparticle Drug Triggered the Brain to Rapidly Flush Out Toxic Alzheimer’s Proteins in Mice

The brain is like a city within a fortress. Its cellular inhabitants normally hum along in their daily routines. Neurons send out the electrical signals underlying memory and cognition. Supporting cells provide nutrients and fine-tune neural signals. Immune cells keep an eye out for infection and other dangers. A liquid bath washes away toxic proteins. … Read more

Chips Just 10 Atoms Thick Could Bring Computers With Extremely Compact Memory

The relentless shrinking of silicon components has led to exponential improvements in chip performance, but we’re starting to hit physical limits. Now researchers have developed a way to integrate materials just 10 atoms thick into conventional chips. For decades, rapid advances in miniaturization meant the number of transistors on a microchip doubled approximately every two … Read more

ChatGPT-Like AI Unveils 1,300 Regions in the Mouse Brain—Some Uncharted

At the turn of the 20th century, Korbinian Brodmann released one of the most consequential brain maps ever. By studying the humps, grooves, layers, and cells of the cortex—the outermost layer of the brain—he divided the wrinkly tissue into 52 distinct areas. Brodmann’s map was based solely on microscopic images of the brain. Since then, … Read more

Investors Have Poured Nearly $10 Billion Into Fusion Power. Will Their Bet Pay Off?

Over the past five years, private-sector funding for fusion energy has exploded. The total invested is approaching $10 billion, from a combination of venture capital, deep-tech investors, energy corporations, and sovereign governments. Most of the companies involved (and the cash) are in the United States, though activity is also increasing in China and Europe. Why … Read more

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 18)

Artificial Intelligence Self-Improving Language Models Are Becoming Reality With MIT’s Updated SEAL TechniqueCarl Franzen | VentureBeat “Researchers at [MIT] are gaining renewed attention for developing and open sourcing a technique that allows large language models (LLMs)—like those underpinning ChatGPT and most modern AI chatbots—to improve themselves by generating synthetic data to fine-tune upon.” Biotechnology 95% … Read more

Are these local newsletters local news? (And does it matter?)

When I hear the term “local newsletter,” I think of the type of news product I created as a local journalist: a roundup of community-specific news, whether it’s originally reported, aggregated, or a combination. But when I browsed Aniket Panjwani’s database of local newsletters, I found something very different. Yes, there were a few newsletters … Read more

‘Shifting from reach to impact’ – India’s hyperlocal playbook for sustainable news

Ritu Kapur, Co-founder and CEO of The Quint, started the session at Indian Printers Summit 2025 with two “confessions.” First, even though she runs a digital-only news organisation, she actually starts her day with three print newspapers.  Second, back when The Quint was launched in 2015, she was convinced that by 2025, print newspapers would … Read more

Why right-wing authoritarians share news

Social media — for those of us old enough to remember, “Web 2.0” — was once hailed as a democratizing force. The reality has been, of course, both contradictory and convoluted. It turns out that putting communication power in the hands of the people enables not just social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and … Read more