- The top 25 stories curated by editors and fellow readers!
Editor's Pick |
| Work Suspect in Killing of Insurance C.E.O. Is Said to Have Used Fake New Jersey ID  The authorities released two images that they said showed the face of the man they believe fatally shot the chief executive of one of the largest health insurers in the country. |
| Work Why 597 million chickens go missing from America?s food supply each year  If you believe in the work we do at Vox, please support us by becoming a member. Our mission has never been more urgent. But our work isn?t easy. It requires resources, dedication, and independence. And that?s where you come in. |
| Work Can Russia still save Assad in Syria?  Just when it seemed he had consolidated his position as Syrian president after the Arab Spring uprising and Islamic State land grabs, Bashar al-Assad's future hangs in the balance after a stunning advance by anti-regime forces, who seized control of key cities. |
| Work How to Build a General-Purpose LLM Agent  Why build a general-purpose agent? Because it's an excellent tool to prototype your use cases and lays the groundwork for designing your own custom agentic architecture. Before we dive in, let's quickly introduce LLM agents. Feel free to skip ahead. |
| Work The Immigrants Most Vulnerable to Trump's Mass Deportation Plans Entered the Country Legally - The New Yorker (No paywall)  One afternoon, in November, 2022, Emily was on her way to church, in Maracaibo, Venezuela, when she received a video call from her husband. It had been two years since they'd seen each other in person. He was a policeman who had fled the country after refusing to arrest pro-democracy demonstrators. Emily and their two children, who were seven years old and eleven months old, had stayed behind. Travelling north was expensive, and the journey would have taken the family through the dangerous jungle of the Dari |
| Work Bird Flu Virus Is One Mutation Away from Binding More Efficiently to Human Cells - Scientific American (No paywall)  A new study finds tweaking part of the H5N1 virus infecting dairy cows in a single spot could allow it to better attach to human cell receptors, raising concerns it could transmit more easily between people |
| Work Academic trolled for PhD 'unfazed by the vitriol'  An academic who received death and rape threats after posting a picture of herself on X with her completed PhD has said she feels "quite unfazed by the vitriol". |
| Work France steps into deep trouble - The Economist (No paywall)  ON DECEMBER 7th, 50 heads of state and government will take their places to celebrate the reopening of Notre Dame, Paris?s 12th-century Gothic cathedral, gutted by fire five years ago but now restored with astonishing speed and loving skill. Donald Trump will be there (Joe Biden, only the second Catholic president of America, sadly will not) to witness France at its best. It has pulled off, on time and to budget, a feat of craftsmanship and renewal that surely no other country could have managed. |
| Work The 70% problem: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding  After spending the last few years embedded in AI-assisted development, I've noticed a fascinating pattern. While engineers report being dramatically more productive with AI, the actual software we use daily doesn't seem like it's getting noticeably better. What's going on here? |
| Work PulseNet identifies and stops foodborne illness outbreaks. Health care needs something similar - STAT (No paywall)  The recently ended Boar?s Head listeria outbreak, which has caused 57 infections and nine deaths, is just one of the many foodborne illness incidents that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention detects each year using its PulseNet system. Many people might not realize the extensive effort behind PulseNet, which systematically collects data on foodborne illnesses from patients across the U.S., performs genomic fingerprinting, and traces outbreaks back to their sources. This network of surveillance has been alerting the public to foodborne outbreaks and recalls for years. |
| Work Your Stress Could Be Stressing Out Your Dog  New research suggests that a person's stress levels could directly impact their dog. The study, conducted by researchers at Queen's University, Belfast (QUB), found a potential correlation between a dog's stress levels and its owner's stress levels. |
| Work Trump picks Musk ally David Sacks as crypto and AI tsar  Ex-PayPal executive and VC investor hosted Silicon Valley fundraiser for president-elect |
| Work As Greenland's Ice Sheet Melts, an Island Town Rises  Geologists are working with local communities to determine how residents can adapt as the area's sea level, in effect, goes down |
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| Work Your Internet Shouldn't Be My Internet I deleted my Instagram a few weeks ago. It felt like the most difficult platform to give up in my quest to redefine my relationship to the internet and reduce the time I spent doomscrolling. |
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| Work Designing a Shared Use, Incubator, or Commissary Kitchen  The shared kitchen industry continues to grow. Pandemic disruptions, a surge in delivery platforms, and the daunting hurdles of escalating construction costs and labor shortages have resulted in a dramatically altered landscape. |
| Work Why Prepping for End Times Is So American  Millions are preparing for doomsday, not together, but by closing the hatch. It's a logical response to a hollowed-out state. |
| Work Is the Dunning-Kruger effect real?  This is an abridged, less technical version of our longer report, found here. You've probably heard that people who are bad at something tend to overestimate how skilled they are. They don't even know enough to know how bad they are. |
| Work Why did clothing become boring?  One of the reasons I'm a historian is that I find the strangeness of the past to be underrated. You can find something deeply, fascinatingly weird about virtually any aspect of any human culture prior to around the year 1880, provided you take the time to dig into it. |
| Work The Future of B2B Marketing: 11 Predictions for 2025, From New Playbooks to Strategic Brands and AI Agents  In 2006, we founded Marketo and I helped create the traditional B2B marketing playbook--the one built on MQLs, marketing automation, and measuring everything. For years, it worked brilliantly. Marketing finally had a seat at the revenue table, with clear metrics and predictable processes. |
| Work Congo government says it's 'on alert' over mystery flu-like disease that killed dozens  Congo's health minister said Thursday the government is on alert over a mystery flu-like disease that in recent weeks killed dozens of people, nearly half of which were children. |
| Work What It's Like to Live in the World's Most Innovative Countries  The BBC speaks to residents and travellers in some of the top-ranked countries on the 2024 Global Innovation Index to find out how cutting-edge technology benefits day-to-day life. |
| Work Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Now it's asking why  Under heavy grey skies and a thin coating of snow, hulking grey and green Cold War relics recall Ukraine's Soviet past. |
| Work How Epic?s 81-Year-Old Billionaire Founder Plans To Keep Her Health Data Empire Private Forever - Forbes (No paywall)  Judy Faulkner takes the stage at Epic System?s annual customer meeting, trailed by a 6-foot tall plastic swan boat that requires two human handlers. Seven thousand healthcare industry executives titter in befuddled amusement wondering why the founder and CEO of a company with $4.9 billion in annual revenue, whose medical records software is used for 325 million patients worldwide, is sporting a wreath of white feathers around her neck and several more from a plume atop her head. Faulkner says it?s her modern spin on one of the world?s great storytellers: instead of Mother Goose, she calls herself ?Lady Swan.? |
| Work Microbiome interventions for children raise the ethical stakes  When she had her daughter in 2008, microbiologist Deanna Gibson rarely saw probiotics in the baby formula on supermarket shelves. "Then when I had my son in 2012, it was pretty much in every formula," recalls Gibson, who is at the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, Canada. |
| Work Why housing shortages cause homelessness  Diona's mom gave her one week's notice. There were too many kids and too little space. If 17-year-old Diona didn't find someone to stay with, she would be forced to check herself and her 3-month-old son into a homeless shelter. |
| Work Bernie Sanders Says RFK Jr.?s Comments On Food Industry ?Exactly Correct? But Health Views ?Extremely Dangerous? - Forbes (No paywall)  Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Va., backed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s comments on the food industry, in an interview with CBS News on Thursday, but stopped short of committing to approve his nomination as Health and Human Services Secretary, citing concern about his views on other key health issues. |
| Work OpenWeb's ousted CEO who refused to quit speaks exclusively with BI about his battle with the board  Nadav Shoval says the conflict that culminated in his dramatic ouster from OpenWeb, the company he cofounded, started with a disagreement over a potential BlackRock investment. |
| Work Emmanuel Macron to Name New French PM Within Days  French President Emmanuel Macron has rejected calls to stand down amid a political crisis that has seen his prime minister ousted in a no-confidence vote. In an address following Michel Barnier's resignation, Macron said that his mandate was one of five years that he would see through to the end. |
| Work Franco-German Fight Over South American Trade Deal Threatens EU Rupture  Ursula von der Leyen granted the wish of her native Germany by flying off to seal an accord with the Mercosur bloc. France, which fiercely opposes the deal, is in uproar. |
| Work Life Is One Long Intelligence Test  This is part of a series, of people, who have contributed significantly to their field. Whilst they are known within the field, rarely are they known outside the field or widely, yet should be. See below for others. I keep a note on my desk; "memory is all we have". |
| Work Insurance companies like United Healthcare are not the only ones to blame for a broken system  Brian Thompson was an advocate for universal coverage through private insurance. I have argued here and elsewhere that better policy, including effective regulation, should make that possible. Perhaps, if we can begin to make affordable, accessible, high-quality health care a reality for everyone, fewer people will feel excluded, disrespected, uncared for — and angry. |
| Work PulseNet identifies and stops foodborne illness outbreaks. Health care needs something similar  Alexander Sundermann is an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Public Health. He studies how to detect and mitigate health care outbreaks using genomic surveillance and infection prevention innovations. |
| Work Inside a Nobel-winning marriage: They see each other as scientific equals, even if the prize committee doesn't  Inspired, Ambros and Lee launched their own search, and by spring the following year had unearthed a dozen more microRNAs. The discovery had them riding high through the summer, as they took trips to their country house and cheered from the sidelines at their teenage sons’ baseball and soccer games. Then came the email from the editor. |
| Work NYC Mayor Eric Adams Takes Victory Lap: 'Remember Y'All Laughed When I First Got My Bitcoin? Who's Laughing Now?'  It’s no wonder Jeff Bezos holds over $70 million in art — this alternative asset has outpaced the S&P 500 since 1995, delivering an average annual return of 11.4%. Here’s how everyday investors are getting started. |
| Work Sundar Pichai says Google Search will 'change profoundly' in 2025  Google CEO Sundar Pichai says the company's search engine will "change profoundly" in 2025. "I think we are going to be able to tackle more complex questions than ever before," Pichai said during the NYT's DealBook Summit on Wednesday. |
| Work Meet the Unstoppable Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock That Could Join Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft in the $3 Trillion Club by 2028  Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Adam Levy has positions in Apple, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. |
| Work Why Jumia Stock Skyrocketed Today  Stock Advisor provides investors with an easy-to-follow blueprint for success, including guidance on building a portfolio, regular updates from analysts, and two new stock picks each month. The Stock Advisor service has more than quadrupled the return of S&P 500 since 2002*. |
| Work Analysis-Gas price shock set to add to Europe's industrial pain  (Reporting by Forrest Crellin, Nora Buli and Nina Chestney; additional reporting by Christoph Steitz in Frankfurt, Jesus Calero in Gdansk and Mark John in London; Writing by Nina Chestney; Editing by Barbara Lewis) |
| Work Teaching Elderly People to Use Android - Lessons Learned  This is my story about an adventure into online teaching, video course making, and choosing a hard-to-reach audience, who desperately needs help. |
| Work GameStop-Themed Memecoins Explode As Roaring Kitty Returns With Intriguing X Post: GME Coin Shoots Up Over 80%  CEO of Integris gathered a team of senior investment managers who have $34.22 billion in combined owned and managed assets in the West Coast — here’s how to invest in their private credit fund that targets 12% annual interest rate. |
| Work Jensen Huang Just Announced Bad News for Nvidia's Rivals  Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is in a position any chip designer would envy. The company dominates the high-growth artificial intelligence (AI) chip market, and this leadership has helped bring Nvidia triple-digit revenue growth in recent quarters, along with soaring share performance. This top chip company has its share of competitors, from other chip designers like Advanced Micro Devices and Intel to its own customers -- due to their in-house chip projects. |
| Work The Doomsday Trade: These 3 Assets Could Skyrocket if WW3 Breaks Out  RISK OF INVESTING. Investing is inherently risky. Do not trade with money you cannot afford to lose. There is a real risk of loss (including total loss of investment) in following any strategy or investment discussed in this article or on our website. This is neither an offer to purchase, nor a solicitation of an offer to sell, subscribe for or buy any securities or the solicitation of any vote in any jurisdiction. No representation is being made as to the future price of securities mentioned herein, or that any stock acquisition will or is likely to achieve profits. |
| Work Here's What OpenAI's $200 Monthly ChatGPT Pro Subscription Includes  Earlier today, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Pro, a $200 monthly subscription for its flagship chatbot. This release is the first of many expected during the next 12 days, as the San Francisco startup has scheduled a slew of announcements to roll out starting today. |
| Work Billionaire Steven Cohen Sold Point72's Entire Stake in Supermicro and Is Piling Into This Game-Changing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Instead  Billionaire Steven Cohen Sold Point72's Entire Stake in Supermicro and Is Piling Into This Game-Changing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Instead was originally published by The Motley Fool |
| Work OpenAI's o1 model sure tries to deceive humans a lot | TechCrunch  Behind the releases of big new AI models, there’s a lot of work that OpenAI does internally to measure the safety of its models. Reports suggest there’s a proportionally smaller team at the company doing this safety work than there used to be, and the team may be getting less resources as well. However, these findings around o1’s deceptive nature may help make the case for why AI safety and transparency is more relevant now than ever. |
| Work MobiKwik's IPO will value it at $250M, 73% less than its last private valuation | TechCrunch  The 15-year-old startup operates one of the most widely used mobile wallet apps in India. But it has struggled to maintain relevance after a government-backed protocol, UPI, saw broader adoption. The company has raised more than $268 million to date. |
| Work How Shopping Malls Are Being Transformed Into Apartments In The U.S.  While many U.S. malls face anchor store closures and empty parking lots, some are finding new life by becoming housing. Real estate developers are building housing inside of or next to shopping malls as department stores like Macy's, JCPenney and Sears shrink or cease to exist. At least 192 U.S. m |
| Work Senior Biden aide commits to giving Ukraine avalanche of military assistance  These meetings carry heightened urgency, particularly after House speaker Mike Johnson blocked a vote on $24bn in additional aid to Ukraine. The Pentagon has nonetheless committed to sending $725m in military assistance this week, the largest shipment since April. |
| Work California school shooter identified as police call childrena??s survival a??miraclea??  "Here we are again in Butte county dealing with another major incident, major tragedy," Honea said. "This community has endured so much in the last three years, it's hard to believe we're back here again." |
| Work Biden wishes US a??light of libertya?? during last White House Christmas tree lighting  That tree came from a farm in Newland, North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene struck earlier this year. The Cartner's Christmas Tree Farm, which had stood for decades, lost thousands of trees to a mudslide. |
| Work Trump picks venture capitalist David Sacks as AI and crypto a??czara??  Rodney S Scott, the former chief of the US Border Patrol and a border-wall advocate, was picked for US Customs and Border Protection commissioner. Caleb Vitello, who currently serves as assistant director of the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs was selected as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). |
| Work Average UK house price hits record A?298,083, says Halifax  "Homes that are well-priced and well-presented continue to sell relatively quickly. Buyers may pause to assess the financial implications of a purchase but high-demand areas are likely to retain interest into the new year and beyond." |
| Work Struggling Thames Water receives A?5bn buyout offer from Covalis  Existing investors in Thames Water, which include the pension funds Omers and USS, as well as Chinese and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, have said they believe the business is "uninvestable". |
| Work Keir Starmer dismisses approval ratings slump, saying a??all that mattersa?? is delivering change by next election a?? UK politics live  I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can't promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog. |
| Work Sale of the Observer to Tortoise Media agreed in principle  Lambert said: “The Observer matters. In a noisy marketplace, it has an independent and progressive voice, covering ideas and stories that don’t get proper attention elsewhere. Its editorial comments are shaped by its journalists rather than by other interests. These values must be supported, and I’m keen to do anything I can to help.” |
| Work National Rail says a??nationwide faulta?? disrupting trains across Britain a?? live updates  National Rail advised that trains across the network are having to start journeys later because "of a nationwide fault with the onboard 'GSMR radio system that allows communication between train drivers and signal operators" |
| Work Dona??t expect better public services a??by Christmasa??, Starmer says  Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, sought to defuse the row on Friday morning, telling LBC Radio: "We have to take the civil service with us on a journey to do government in a slightly different way ⦠I haven't experienced any particular civil servant in a tepid bath of declinism - they share our ambition." |
| Work Middle East crisis live: thousands flee Homs in central Syria as rebel forces push on  Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said that he plans to hold talks on Friday with Turkish and Iranian officials on the situation in Syria. On Thursday, Lavrov said Moscow was “very much concerned” with a recent escalation of violence in Syria. |
| Work Marles rejects Netanyahua??s criticism of Australian governmenta??s UN vote on Palestine  "There are in fact many resolutions in the UN around Israel and Palestine. In terms of how we vote in the whole suite of those, we do so really trying to give expression to a view that we very much support Israel, but we support a two-state solution and that ultimately does mean the establishment of a Palestinian state," he told Radio National. |