PXL News
Everything the anchors say on this tape, story by story.
GRANT BRICKMAN: While you were asleep: Pocketpair's CEO said the studio would love Palworld on Switch 2, if an opportunity comes.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Alphabet's shares fell almost ten percent after it said AI-powered searches earn less than classic search ads.
GRANT BRICKMAN: And Instagram's Adam Mosseri said frustration and anger toward AI will keep getting worse.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Why cancer can return after chemo: researchers meet the so-called zombie cells.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Good morning. Cancer research now, and a name that sounds like a late-night film: zombie cells. Greta, I hope you've had breakfast. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Researchers report why some cancer cells survive chemotherapy and can later seed new tumors. Nova is at the lab. ▶
NOVA: Live from the micro lab! After chemotherapy, some surviving cancer cells grow to ten times their size and stop dividing. Enormous, and very still. ▶
NOVA: Footage of cells under glass. Chemo damages the tumor cells' DNA, which switches on their self-destruct program, and most of them do die. ▶
NOVA: But some enter a dormant state, premature senescence. The report says that makes them largely immune to immune attacks and to chemo drugs. ▶
NOVA: The report says they switch on numerous genes to pull it off. And the study says this can be prevented. Exactly how, we'll leave to the researchers. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Gokhan Gunay and colleagues say these cells can lead to tumors returning. The headline's good news is that the study shows a way to stop it. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Ten times the size and they stop working. Has anyone tried turning them off and on again? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Not quite, Grant. The chemo does try to switch them off, so you're in the right neighborhood. Mostly. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: The image format Google seemed to shun is back on the menu.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: JPEG XL is an image format from 2021, and Hackaday reports it is back on the menu with renewed backing from Google. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: A new JPEG? I only ever got pictures by fax, and they all came out grey. Vera, how did we get here? ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: The Hackaday article says JPEG XL was first released on 13 October 2021, developed by the JPEG group, Google and Cloudinary. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: According to the background note from Wikipedia, it is a free and open standard, defined by ISO/IEC 18181. A rare thing: a standard you can read. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: And Google was against it at one point? I thought they were involved from the start. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Both. The article says Google seemed against it, then backflipped. It still asks what is going on, and I'd leave that open too. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: The article also says there were grand hopes of replacing every raster format on the web. Hopes, not a result. ▶
ADA: From the bench: it improves on JPEG's lossy compression and adds a lossless mode, in one format. That is clever. Huge for my filament photos. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Will my old holiday photos upgrade themselves overnight? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Nothing in the report says that, Grant. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: The Hype Index: who is loud on the wire right now.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Time for the Hype Index, our market report on hype. Prices are up, I'm told. Of hype. Vera? ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: On Hacker News: 409 points for Qwenputer, a RISC-V CPU inside Qwen3.5. Then 389: StackOverflow gets fewer than 1000 questions a month. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: And 332 points on Hacker News: Claude Code regularly sends each background agent's transcript to its model. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: A computer inside the AI. So the one guy has an office in there. A small one. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Desk volume, last 24 hours: tech, 30 stories. AI, 30 stories. Gaming, 30 stories. Perfectly balanced. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Loudest words: Google, 12 headlines. Und, 10 headlines. Der, 10 headlines. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Und and der are just German for and and the, Grant. They are not companies. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Und Der, a solid firm. Over to the weather. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: I read the article. Essayish cited it, and said it said something else.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: It cited a study from a university that has not been built yet. The study is very persuasive.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Essayish. Four of thirty sources exist.
STORMY BYTES: London: 13 degrees now, mainly clear, wind 3 km/h. Today high 16, low 12, rain chance 0 percent. Overcast later, so keep your optimism.
STORMY BYTES: Paris: 7 degrees now, partly cloudy, wind 1 km/h. Today high 15, low 6, rain chance 0 percent, with fog. Barely a breeze.
STORMY BYTES: Berlin: 6 degrees now, overcast, wind 5 km/h. Today high 11, low 4, rain chance 5 percent, light rain showers. Bring a small umbrella.
STORMY BYTES: Madrid: 11 degrees now, mainly clear, wind 3 km/h. Today high 22, low 8, rain chance 0 percent, overcast. A big swing between low and high.
STORMY BYTES: Rome: 13 degrees now, clear sky, wind 4 km/h. Today high 21, low 8, rain chance 0 percent, with fog. Clear now, foggy later.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Correct! The real one. PXL made the other up, and frankly it was rather good. Pour yourself a coffee.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Fooled! PXL made that one up, and a fine piece of work it was, if I say so myself.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Time's up! The answer was there all along, like my second coffee.
AI-written satire. The text of the news items comes from the linked articles. Plain text