A training-free method called ledger-based zero-shot self-orchestration lets fresh instances of one model coordinate through a shared filesystem. On 100 hard LiveCodeBench problems, orchestrated Qwen3.8 Flash Next hit 93.0% pass@1 versus Fable 5's 90.4% at 9% of the cost, and Qwen3.8-27B rose from 66.8% to 92.4%, though some models saw no gain or got worse.

— via Hacker News (top 30), rzk

A car entered the Muni Metro tunnel at Embarcadero on Saturday afternoon, closing the Market Street subway between Van Ness and Embarcadero for the night for inspection and repairs. SFMTA turned trains back at Church Station and ran shuttles, while commuters were left confused.

— via Mission Local, Andrea Jiménez and Marina Newman

A hands-on look at the iPhone Duo, Apple's $2,000 foldable, argues its appeal grows through developers who tailor apps to its two screens and hinge positions. Netflix, Deck-Man, TypeDraw, Wakeout and Flighty are among the favorites, while many mainstream apps remain unoptimized.

— via TechCrunch, Sarah Perez

The Justice Department sent letters to at least 18 California counties demanding, within 48 hours, voter information on suspected noncitizens and the sequestering of ballots whose citizenship cannot be verified. California officials oppose the demand, arguing the data is unreliable and could delay certification and disenfranchise citizens.

— via PBS NewsHour, Safiyah Riddle, Associated Press

Zelenskyy said Ukraine's Starlink and Starshield speeds are back to pre-restriction levels after more than a week of disruption that hampered drones and front-line logistics. Questions remain over who ordered the limits, amid renewed US-brokered diplomacy and a localized ceasefire near Oleshky.

— via PBS NewsHour, Susie Blann, Associated Press

A 63-patient trial (SCRATCH-HTN) of a self-administered ear-clip device delivering mild electrical pulses found it safe and practical at home. It did not significantly lower blood pressure overall versus a sham device, though patients with more severe hypertension showed a greater reduction, which needs confirmation in larger studies.

— via ScienceDaily

Google ran Gemini 4 Argon unattended for 11 hours against its 200k-line Agent Development Kit codebase. Two optimizations were accepted, cutting session-preparation overhead by about 40% and package import time by 21%, while four other changes were rejected in review.

— via InfoQ, Sergio De Simone

An NBER working paper analyzes more than 20,000 calendar entries from Fed Chairs Bernanke, Yellen and Powell. All spent over 30% of documented meetings with Fed staff, media contact grew, and Powell met lawmakers notably more often than his predecessors.

— via Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen

Luke Glendening, a 37-year-old veteran of 934 NHL games, debuted for the Rangers in a 7-4 loss to the Senators after converting a tryout into a one-year, $850,000 deal. Coach Mike Sullivan also said rookie goalie Dylan Garand will get some rest after seven straight starts.

— via NY Post, Mollie Walker

A paper by Louis Henderson and Jane Humphries estimates the value of unpaid breastfeeding relative to national income across five centuries. Maternal nursing mattered more economically in the past, likely being the largest human capital investment in early modern England, and breastfeeding rates probably fell as incomes rose.

— via Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen

PingCAP, the company behind the TiDB database, confirmed unauthorized access to internal systems and theft of source code and customer-related data. Extortion group FulcrumSec claims 10.6 TB was taken, but these claims are unverified, and PingCAP says it has no evidence that data stored in TiDB was affected.

— via InfoQ, Renato Losio

OneBC interim leader Dallas Brodie lost badly in Vancouver-Quilchena, with preliminary Elections BC results showing 803 votes against 10,913 for Conservative Carson Binda. Brodie won the riding in 2024 as a Conservative, was ousted in 2025 by John Rustad, and co-founded OneBC with Tara Armstrong.

— via Daily Hive Vancouver, DH Vancouver Staff

Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson won a strong majority in British Columbia's election, vowing to boost investment, expand natural gas output and cut taxes. Outgoing Premier David Eby accepted responsibility for the NDP's defeat and announced he is resigning as party leader.

— via Daily Hive Vancouver, Kenneth Chan

David Ellison's Skydance has closed a $110bn merger of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery, leaving staff bracing for restructuring as it aims to cut $80bn+ in debt and find $6bn in savings within three years. Questions remain over declining cable channels, CNN and CBS editorial independence, and the film output pledge.

— via The Guardian: Culture, Mark Sweney

An NYPD officer shot and wounded a woman in a Queens home on Friday night after she moved toward officers with a knife during a chaotic scene following reports of a home invasion and stabbing. She is in stable condition, police do not believe she was behind the initial stabbing, and the Force Investigation Division is reviewing body-camera footage.

— via Gothamist, Ryan Kost

A columnist who is skeptical of marijuana describes visiting Glass House Brands' 165-acre greenhouse farm in Camarillo, Calif., and a Connecticut dispensary. He argues the roughly $50 billion legal cannabis industry is growing after federal reclassification, even as GLAS shares have fallen over 80% since their July NYSE debut.

— via NY Post, Charles Gasparino

NYU Langone researchers tested transcranial ultrasound stimulation, aimed at a deep brain region called the globus pallidus interna, in 10 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. A single 10-minute session lowered delusion scores by an average of 1.2 points on a 7-point scale, while a sham treatment produced no change; side effects were mild and brief.

— via NY Post, Jeanne Erickson

A fifteenth-century Venetian memorandum estimated how many horsemen and how much revenue dozens of European, North African and Asian states commanded. Its figures are often unreliable or exaggerated, and its dating is uncertain, but it shows how Venice judged rival powers, with Hungary rated highest among Christian kingdoms.

— via Medievalists.net, Medievalists.net

The California condor's recovery from extinction in the wild to over 300 birds was contested at every step, and it frames debates at the 2026 UN biodiversity conference in Yerevan over which species get funded, who bears conservation costs, and what formal role Indigenous peoples and local communities should have.

— via Phys.org

The Archdiocese of New York is nearing an $800 million settlement with 1,300 people alleging abuse by clergy, lay leaders and teachers, with signing expected in early November. Plaintiffs can take a $250,000 quick payment or seek judicial review for a possibly larger sum, and the archdiocese must keep a list of accused priests and eventually release internal files.

— via Gothamist, Arya Sundaram

A Rust community member critiques RFC 3678 on final trait methods, arguing that hard bans on overriding force downstream users to fork libraries when authors fail to foresee needs. They propose a warn-by-default lint with explicit, reasoned opt-outs, reserving strict prohibition for soundness-critical cases.

— via Rust Internals, cyan-river

Starting July 1, 2027, California will cut the Medi-Cal asset limit for seniors and disabled people from $130,000 to $21,000 for an individual and $31,000 for couples. Advocates warn the change could cost people wheelchairs and home caregiving, while the policy has swung repeatedly since 2024.

— via Hoodline, Eileen Vargas

University of Warwick-led researchers modeled 151 white dwarfs within 20 parsecs and found five, about 3.3 percent, glowing yellow or pink rather than white. Dense atmospheres with elements such as carbon appear to shift their colors, defying the simple blackbody picture.

— via Universe Today, Laurence Tognetti, MSc

The Golden Mill food hall in Golden says it never approved or was told about a 400+ person anti-vax dating gathering planned there for Oct. 24 by the Unjected app. The episode echoes May, when Recess Beer Garden shut down a similar event, prompting a pending lawsuit.

— via Westword, Sage Kelley