Just two weeks after launching Gemini 4 Argon, Google has announced a better-performing version of the model that it will sell for the same price, at least temporarily. Koray Kavukcuoglu, SVP at Google DeepMind and chief AI architect at Google, said Gemini 4 Carbon represents the company's strongest model yet, particularly in terms of cybersecurity and long-running tasks. There's some irony in the name "Carbon", given the Chocolate Factory plans a carbon-dioxide-free future. Given Google's political timidity when it comes to names on maps, Gemini 4 Americium might be more representative of management's worldview. Gemini 4 Silicon is another missed opportunity — the chemical symbol is Si, a bobbleheaded nod to "Super Intelligence." Priced initially at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, Gemini 4 Carbon sells for the same amount as its predecessor Argon during an indeterminate introductory period. When that period expires, Google will lift prices to $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. That's the same as Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5, which Google clearly sees as Carbon's competition. Last month, Google's ability to compete in the wake of the leadership change at its DeepMind AI subsidiary looked less certain. But Carbon has posted impressive benchmark scores, taking the lead in SEC-bench Pro, ExploitGym, and CWE-bench, while landing at fourth place on WebDev Arena, behind Opus 5.5, GPT-6.1 Astra, and Sonnet 5.5. Carbon currently ranks second, behind Opus 5.5, in Arena.ai's leaderboard for Best Overall Agent. Model ratings biz Artificial Analysis says Google's new model tops its newly formulated Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5 and comes in second to Claude Code Opus 5.5 on its Coding Agent Index. Kavukcuoglu emphasized Carbon's cybersecurity capabilities, which will be available this week to an unspecified set of cybersecurity defenders and more eventually through the company's Fairwind access program. "On internal benchmarks, Carbon achieves more than 2x uplift in success rate for generating secure code over Argon," he wrote. "As another example, the Chrome team has reported that Carbon performed more than 10x better than another lab's large frontier model when generating high quality patches." "Gemini 4 Argon and Carbon are now leading at the frontier," said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, in a statement [PDF] accompanying Alphabet's Q3 2026 earnings. "Overall, our first-party model APIs are now processing nearly 32 billion tokens per minute, more than four times what we processed a year ago." While Google may hope to surpass Anthropic and OpenAI in terms of model performance and usage, it's already ahead in revenue. Pointing to the company's strong Q3 earnings, Emarketer principal analyst Nate Elliott in a statement told The Register, "In a sly nod to the way AI-only companies talk about their revenue, Google bragged about its half-trillion dollar run rate – almost ten times more than either OpenAI or Anthropic." Google will release Carbon this week to select cybersecurity defenders. The company aims to make the AI model more broadly available "as soon as possible." ®

A scientist working on data gathered by the Rubin Observatory has found a strong candidate for our solar system’s sixth known dwarf planet. The Observatory is run by the USA’s National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, who built it on a remote hilltop in Chile and equipped it with the 3200-megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera, which came online in June 2026. As explained in a Tuesday announcement, Rubin Operations team member and project contributor Matthew Holman, of the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) at Harvard & Smithsonian, used search code he developed with CfA colleague Kevin Napier to analyze data captured before LSST operations commenced. The Observatory says Holman’s and Napier’s code “is built to look at billions of detections of moving objects, compare them, and find the detections that correspond to the same object.” On October 13, the code spotted an object so bright and distant that it is likely unusually large. “My first reaction was one of excited disbelief,” Holman said. “Objects like this are very rare, so I immediately started checking whether I or the code had done something wrong.” Other astroboffins sprang into action, dug into other records, and soon found ten years’ worth of relevant data. Once they all checked their sums, the Minor Planet Center reviewed their work and announced the discovery of the romantically named 2026 ED138 and published lots of data about its orbit, which is at around 46 astronomical units (au). A single au is the distance from Earth to the Sun, and Pluto’s orbit averages 40 au. Rubin Observatory revealed its part in the effort and declared that 2026 ED138 is a good candidate for certification as a dwarf planet. The 2026 International Astronomical Union defines a dwarf planet as “an object in orbit around the Sun that is large enough to pull itself into a nearly round shape but has not been able to clear its orbit of debris.” The Union’s definition of a full planet includes having “an important influence on the orbital stability of the other objects in its neighbourhood.” Dwarf planets whirl about the solar system in relatively close company with many rocky and/or icy objects that orbit under the influence of other bodies, not the nearby dwarf planet. Rubin boffins think ED138 is between 600 and 1500 kilometers across. If the lower number is correct, it’s the smallest dwarf planet yet observed. Should the larger number be correct, it would be smaller than Pluto, Eris, and Haumea, but larger than Makemake and Ceres. Scientists at the observatory think ED138 has evaded detection to date because it was found in a region of sky close to the plane of the Milky Way — meaning observers had to pick it out from light cast by billions of stars. “Rubin Observatory’s regular and continuous monitoring of the entire Southern Hemisphere sky, combined with powerful algorithms that sift through millions to billions of points of light to identify those corresponding to small moving objects, enabled the team to spot ED138 within the crowded field,” the facility boasted. ®

With the final count unlikely to shift results significantly, experts say Gadi Eisenkot’s hopes of unseating Benjamin Netanyahu rest on his willingness to work with Palestinian parties

• Full report: Coalition talks loom in Israel

• Analysis: Israel’s choice: Netanyahu remaining in power or a Palestinian-backed coalition

Israel’s elections committee has said it began counting absentee ballots at 1am local time. That count is expected to last until Thursday evening, with an estimated 500,000 ballots from military personnel and diplomats to be tallied up.

They are not expected to significantly change the results.

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Some EU leaders courted the authoritarian Vučić regime – they must offer this reborn democracy a future within the union

As polling stations closed across Serbia on Sunday evening, riot police were deploying around the presidency in Belgrade. Many of us feared the worst: massive electoral fraud, a refusal to recognise defeat or outright violence. After nearly 15 years of Aleksandar Vučić’s increasingly authoritarian rule, a peaceful transfer of power seemed implausible.

I had good reason to feel afraid. I am co-founder of an annual conference on the security and foreign policy challenges shaping the western Balkans, and sit on the international advisory committee of a civil society thinktank, the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. Such work would be uncontroversial in most countries seeking European Union membership. Under Vučić’s regime, it was anything but.

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Chancellor’s ‘new course’ includes a £100 one-off payment, low-carbon upgrade loans and an end to standing charges

John Healey has unveiled a package of support for households being buffeted by “global economic storms”.

“I’m setting a new course to get energy costs down in line with Europe,” the chancellor said in his maiden budget. In the long term, he hopes that changes in how Britain covers the cost of renewables and grid upgrades will “drive down all aspects of energy bills”.

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The star plays a sadistic murderer still pulling the strings from behind bars. With his high-pitched giggles and fatal whispers, it is a perfectly terrifying show for Halloween

It has taken a while, but I think the torch may finally have passed from Anthony Hopkins as the screen’s most profoundly unsettling and instantly-absorbed-by-the-cultural-imagination serial killer. From Hannibal’s hitherto unfailing hands it has been thrown to Stephen Graham, who plays multiple murderer Jurek Walter in the new 10-part psychological thriller Nocturne.

Walter, who draws out the deaths of his victims in order to torture their families as much as the individuals themselves, is incarcerated for life in the bowels of Riverside psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He passes the time by doing push-ups, stashing contraband behind his toilet bowl for as-yet-unspecified purposes, and driving fellow inmates to suicide by whispering to them through the pipes. Graham – muscle-bound, preternaturally still and occasionally emitting a high-pitched giggle – is mesmerising and utterly terrifying.

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Belittled for his speech and looks, and so short of cash he had to sell his dog, Stallone managed to write and star in one of the greatest boxing movies ever. How does Anthony Ippolito feel about playing his hero?

Fifty years ago this December, cinema’s greatest underdog story hit the screen, a tale about a Philadelphia ham-and-egger who takes the world heavyweight boxing champ all the way to the final bell, losing the fight on a judge’s decision but winning the hearts of a nation. That film, of course, was Rocky. Its creation, famously, was no less remarkable an underdog story – one about an out-of-work character actor with the curious name of Sylvester Stallone who wrote his own boxing movie then managed to convince a studio not only to finance it, but also to cast him in the title role. He then went one further than the character he was playing by earning the top prize: a best picture Oscar.

If you thought, half a century on, Rocky’s punching power – its unerring ability to make heroes out of zeroes – has faded, think again. This, after all, is a movie franchise whose stirring qualities are enough to make thousands of people hurtle up all 72 of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s steps every year in homage to its plucky pugilist.

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When Basir Arian was summoned to the Taliban headquarters, he knew he had to go. To defy them meant death. The torture left him devastated and sure he had to leave the country

‘I knew that sooner or later, they would come for me,” says Basir Arian. After the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, he had set up an online English study programme for girls when they were banned from attending school. In May 2022, he was eating lunch in the western city of Herat, when he got a call from an unfamiliar local number. A Talib official told Arian to come to the intelligence directorate within 20 minutes and to bring his phone.

“I’ll never forget that moment,” he says. “If you disobey this order, they will kill you. You have to try not to make them angry.” He told a friend where he was going, and they hurriedly discussed what to do if he didn’t return.

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Once coveted for its clean lines and timeless design, the functional furniture is no longer seen as cool. Anyone for cottagecore and chrome?

“I definitely don’t think it is cringe,” says Laura Budds, a vintage furniture dealer based in Norfolk. “But I do think we have reached the peak, and we’re on the descent.” Budds is talking about mid-century modern furniture, which has recently come under fire from younger generations for being – like so many things, including trainer socks and high-waisted jeans – a deeply millennial aesthetic. As the Wall Street Journal declared: “Midcentury modern design has met the fate of pumpkin spice lattes, cocktails in mason jars, no-show socks, leggings and other aspects of millennial culture: it has become cringey.”

Budds, 44, is resigned to the fact that she is a “mid-century millennial”. She’s even made a career out of it: she sells furniture and vintage clothes at Williams & Parfitt, a modern antiques centre in Wymondham, Norfolk. But she says she has had to diversify in recent years to cater to changing tastes among younger customers, who are moving away from the “wall-to-wall mid-century” look beloved by the generation above them. She says of gen Z: “I don’t think they are so bound by the eras or designers – they just buy what they like. They aren’t afraid of older antiques and will have a bit of whimsy or taxidermy.”

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Campaigners say costly new funds will lead to higher bills, which company denies

A group of creditors to troubled Thames Water are poised to vote on whether to grant an emergency £2.4bn loan to keep the company afloat, as campaigners raise concerns it could add £40 to each household’s bills in interest alone.

A consortium of creditors, called London & Valley Water, will vote on Thursday on whether to increase a funding facility for the debt-laden utility company to £5.4bn to keep it operating to autumn 2027.

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Writers are being bombarded daily with invitations from fake book groups and offers to publicise their work. For the scamming industry, aspiring authors can be a soft touch

• This piece first appeared in the Dial

‘Hello Professor Snigdha Poonam,” the email began. I read that again. Nobody has ever called me “professor” for the obvious reason that I am not a professor. Bracing myself, I read on. The email was from Timothy Firth, organiser of a Seattle-based life-drawing community with 1,943 members that regularly has “thoughtful discussions inspired by creative works”. A recent inspiration was my first book, Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World. The group wanted to discuss it, the email said, at one of its upcoming meetups. Attendees would be encouraged to post reviews on Goodreads and Amazon after.

I looked up CAM Life Drawing and found an events page and an Instagram account. The latter had some photos of Timothy Firth – white, male – as well as testimonials from members who said he worked “day and night to create more community space”. Something told me this wasn’t the man who had reached out to me.

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The 29th season has begun to slightly spin its wheels, but this poo-splattered episode suggests an imminent story arc: the release of Grand Theft Auto VI

Are record beef shortages simply not that rich a topic for South Park to riff off? The show’s 29th season had its first outright middling episode this week with a zigzaggy outing that gestured vaguely toward the performative eating of particular foods, nodded slightly at a father-son story development, and wound it all up by repeating and amplifying a funny season-long running gag that increasingly seems like it will actually serve as a makeshift story arc.

But let’s jump back to the beginning, perhaps the most laugh-out-loud moment of the episode: Cartman in a fugue of delight over the impending meal of sloppy joes at the school cafeteria, to which he forms a tribute in the form of a sloppy-joe-themed version of Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part Two – a music clearance reaffirming that Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t care if a song choice might make people tut-tut (because the singer is a serial sex offender) or just annoyed (because that song sucks). Cartman’s infectious glee is short-lived, however, when he’s informed that the lunch special for the day isn’t a sloppy joe after all, or anything beef-related, but cuy – Guinea Pig on a stick.

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Bereaved families have urged the publisher of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to remove a clip from the game that shows a figure performing CPR and bodies lying in the street

Bereaved families in South Korea have demanded that the makers of Call of Duty remove harrowing footage of the deadly 2022 Seoul crowd crush from the latest instalment of the video game.

The clips, which are seconds-long, appear in the opening moments of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and are used to represent a scenario of civilian casualties during a fictional North Korean invasion.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from TechCrunch: In an email blast to customers titled "Protecting your finances in the Al World," Bank of America urged customers to never share their username and password with another person or an outside service, "including an Al-enabled tool or agent that offers to act on your behalf." [...] A spokesperson for Bank of America confirmed the authenticity of the bank's email that was posted to social media. But heed the bank's warning, for if things go wrong, it's on you. Account agreements at most banks hold customers responsible for anyone they give their log-in to. "If you do share your credentials," its email reads, "keep in mind that you're responsible for activity resulting from that access."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

El Niño, het weerfenomeen dat het wereldwijde klimaat ontregelt, is dit jaar sterker dan ooit. Dat gaat leiden tot droogte én zware regenval. Waar zijn de grootste extremen te verwachten?

Het karakter van natuurbranden is de laatste decennia veranderd. De Catalaanse brandweerman Marc Castellnou bestudeert de rook hoog in de atmosfeer. En hij waarschuwt Nederland.

Een hogedrukgebied bepaalt het weer de komende dagen en dat betekent in onze regio rustig en droog weer met soms ook ruimte voor de zon.

Parker Posey is interviewed by Mo Rocca on CBS Sunday Morning. They've known each other since 1985 when they both attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.