Fungi are fascinating lifeforms that defy conventional notions of animal intelligence. They don’t have brains, yet display clear signs of decision making and communication. But just how complex are these organisms and what can they tell us about other forms of awareness? To begin investigating these mysteries, researchers at Japan’s Tohoku University and Nagaoka College conducted a straightforward test to observe the decision-making prowess of a cord-forming fungus known as Phanerochaete velutina. According to the team’s study published in Fungal Ecology, their findings indicate fungi can “recognize” different spatial arrangements of wood and adapt accordingly to make the most of their world.
Although many people only recognize fungi by their aboveground mushrooms, those formations are just the outermost display of an often vast network of underground threads called mycelium. These interconnected webs are capable of relaying environmental information throughout an entire system that can stretch for miles. But mycelium’s growth doesn’t necessarily extend in every direction at random—it appears to be a calculated effort.
Fungal mycelial networks connecting wood blocks arranged in circle (left) and cross (right) shapes. Credit: Yu Fukasawa et al.
To demonstrate this ability, researchers set up two 24-cm-wide (9.44-in-wide) square dirt environments and soaked decaying wood blocks for 42 days in a solution containing P. velutina spores. They then placed the blocks in either a circular or cross-shaped arrangement inside the box, and let the fungi go about its business for 116 days. If the P. velutina grew at random, then it would indicate a lack of basal cognition decision-making—but that’s not what happened at all.
At first, the mycelium grew outward around each block for 13 days without connecting to each other. About a month later, however, both arrangements displayed extremely tangled fungi webs stretching between every wood sample. But then, something striking occurred—by day 116, each fungal network had organized itself along much more deliberate, clearly defined pathways. In the circle setting, P. velutina displayed uniform connectivity growing outward, but barely grew into the ring’s interior. Meanwhile, the cross fungi extended much further from its four outermost blocks.
Researchers theorized that, in the circular environment, the mycelial network determined there was little benefit to expend excess energy into a region it already occupied. In the case of the cross scenario, the team thinks that the four exterior post’s growth areas served as “outposts” for foraging missions. Taken together, the two tests strongly suggest networks of brainless organisms communicated between each other through the mycelial networks to grow according to the environmental situations.
“You’d be surprised at just how much fungi are capable of. They have memories, they learn, and they can make decisions,” Yu Fukasawa, a study co-author at Tohoku University, said in the paper’s announcement on October 8th. “Quite frankly, the differences in how they solve problems compared to humans is mind-blowing.”
While much remains to be understood about these often overlooked organisms, researchers believe continued experimentation and analysis may lead to a better understanding of the broader evolutionary history of consciousness, and even chart a path towards advanced bio-based computers.
[…] when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke at the dev day, he touched on potential earning opportunities for developers.
“Revenue sharing is important to us,” Altman said.” We’re going to pay people who build the most useful and the most-used GPTs a portion of our revenue.”
[…]
Books GPT, which churns out personalized book recommendations and was promoted by OpenAI at the Store’s launch, is his most popular.
But 10 months after its launch, it seems that revenue-sharing has been reserved for a tiny number of developers in an invite-only pilot program run by OpenAI. Villocido, despite his efforts, wasn’t included.
According to Villocido and other small developers who spoke with WIRED, OpenAI’s GPT Store has been a mixed bag. These developers say that OpenAI’s analytics tools are lacking and that they have no real sense of how their GPTs are performing. OpenAI has said that GPT creators outside of the US, like Villocido, are not eligible for revenue-sharing.
Those who are able to make money from their GPTs usually devise workarounds, like placing affiliate links or advertising within their GPTs. Other small developers have used the success of their GPTs to market themselves while raising outside funding.
[…]
Copywriter GPT, his GPT that drafts advertising copy, has had between 500,000 and 600,000 interactions. Like Villocido’s Books GPT, Lin’s has been featured on the homepage of OpenAI’s Store.
But Lin can’t say exactly how much traction his GPTs have gotten or how frequently they are used, because OpenAI only provides “rough estimations” to small developers like him. And since he’s in Singapore, he won’t receive any payouts from OpenAI for the usage of his app.
[…]
the creator of the Books GPT that was featured in the Store launch, he found he could no longer justify the $20 per month cost of the ChatGPT subscription required to build and maintain his custom GPTs.
He now collects a modest amount of revenue each month by placing ads in the GPTs he has already created, using a chatbot ad tool called Adzedek. On a good month, he can generate $200 a month in revenue. But he chooses not to funnel that back into ChatGPT.
Police officers in Portland, Oregon, stopped a car Tuesday night when they noticed a bag inside that said “Definitely not a bag full of drugs”. It, in fact, was – full of drugs: 79 blue fentanyl pills, three fake oxycodone tablets and 230g of methamphetamine, to be exact.
It’s scary to think about how many games in your backlog will never get played; scarier, still, to think about how you don’t, in most real senses of the word, own any of them.
Now Valve, seemingly working to comply with a new California law targeting “false advertising” of “digital goods,” has added language to its checkout page to confirm that thinking. “A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” the Steam cart now tells its customers, with a link to the Steam Subscriber Agreement further below.
Credit: Kevin Purdy
California’s AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer “permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.” Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms “buy, purchase,” or related terms that would “confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good.” And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that “the digital good is a license” and link to terms and conditions.
Which is what Valve has now added to its cart page before enforcement of these terms was due to start next year.
Sony has indefinitely decommissioned the PlayStation 4 servers for puzzle platformer LittleBigPlanet 3, the company announced in an update to one of its support pages. The permanent shutdown comes just months after the servers were temporarily taken offline due to ongoing issues. Fans now fear potentially hundreds of thousands of player creations not saved locally Read more about Sony Shuts Down LittleBigPlanet 3 Servers, destroying Fan Creations – don’t trust the cloud[…]
Windows 11 24H2 users are finding there is undeletable data that remains on their devices after installing the recently released feature update.
The known issues list has not grown in the days since the rollout on October 15, however, for many users – this writer included – attempts to clean up the detritus after the update has left 8.63 GB of disk space occupied by “Windows Update Cleanup.”
Having file remnants after a Windows update is not unusual, and, according to Microsoft, “Windows keeps copies of all installed updates from Windows Update, even after installing newer versions of updates.” Space taken up by the old versions can be reclaimed – at least that’s the idea.
The Windows Settings application or the delightfully retro Disk Cleanup tool can be used to clear the temporary files from storage.
However, that 8.63 GB of data appears to persist regardless of how often a user attempts to delete it or restarts Windows 11. A scan of Microsoft’s Feedback Hub confirms numerous users are affected.
the mouse pointer disappeared when they clicked in text fields in certain apps, notably Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Slack, and Spotify.
The common theme here? These are pieces of software that leverage Chromium (it’s the web engine that Chrome is actually built on, and Edge too, as well as some of the other best web browsers out there).
[…] Provided you don’t update to the 24H2 version of Windows 11 and remain on version 23H2, you’ll still be able to play SteamVR content through November 2026. After that, WMR headsets will no longer receive security updates, non-security updates, bug fixes, technical support, or online technical content updates, Microsoft said.
While many users of first-gen WMR headsets have likely moved on, the latest addition to the platform, HP Reverb G2, was released in 2020 as a competitor to Oculus Rift S and Valve Index, noted at the time for its impressive display clarity and improved tracking capabilities over other WMR headsets.
This comes amid Microsoft announcing it’s deprecating its other big XR hardware platform, HoloLens 2, which is now discontinued, offering security patches until December 31st, 2027.
