AI
GPT-6-Astra solves 49 of 50 physics research problems
On the TheoPhysEval benchmark, the AI agent matched leading specialists on unpublished theoretical physics calculations, at roughly $2.40 per problem.
Still
Crunchy.
YESTERDAY, STILL WORTH KNOWING
Thursday's briefs pair a striking AI research result with a graphics card shortage, Windows tuning on two fronts, and a steady drumbeat of security and platform news.
GPT-6-Astra nearly sweeps a physics benchmark
The day's headline result is GPT-6-Astra solving 49 of 50 unpublished theoretical physics calculations on the TheoPhysEval benchmark, matching leading specialists at roughly $2.40 per problem. In some apparent failures, the human reference solutions turned out to be the ones with errors. The researchers still see a gap to genuine discovery, saying physics lacks a breakthrough like those in mathematics because the agents lack what they call taste, though they expect autonomous top-level research soon. They also flag consequences for how young physicists are trained and for fairness across the field.
That result sits neatly beside Nvidia's Nemotron 3.5 Super VL, an open 120-billion-parameter vision-language model aimed at agents that run continuously in the background. It is a Mixture-of-Experts model, meaning only 12 billion parameters activate per token, and Nvidia claims it matches its larger Ultra model's accuracy at a fifth of the size. Two smaller Bolt models ship alongside it for local and voice agents, and the open weights have already attracted Scale AI, Atlassian and CrowdStrike. Efficiency, not just capability, is clearly the competitive front.
The RTX 5090 quietly vanishes from shelves
Micro Center has reclassified the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 as not carried, meaning it has left the retailer's active catalogue rather than merely being out of stock. Partner cards from Asus, MSI and Gigabyte are out of stock at all physical stores, with one exception bundled into an anniversary package priced near $11,000. The reports follow a leaker's claim that Nvidia has stopped producing the GB202 chip for the 5090 and will reserve future supplies for higher-margin workstation cards. Nvidia has not commented, and US prices had already passed $5,000 against a $1,999 list price.
Unverified Reddit comments suggest retailer B&H has told customers the card is discontinued, though its listings still say temporarily out of stock. For now, treat everything short of an Nvidia statement as rumour with unusually consistent supporting detail.
Windows gets tuned, twice over
Microsoft has done substantial groundwork for Nvidia's Arm-based RTX Spark laptops, which pair an Arm CPU with a Blackwell GPU and unified memory for running large AI models locally. A new setup flow gets users to a working AI agent in roughly two clicks, though hands-on testing found OpenClaw needed a reinstall, and large local models respond slowly enough that the reviewer expects to use them overnight. Prism, the emulator that translates x64 apps, has been tuned specifically for the chip, and Surface Laptop Ultra machines can ship with up to 128GB of unified memory.
Separately, Microsoft says Windows 11 itself is now up to 20 percent more responsive, based on comparisons between two specific builds. The gains come mostly from memory management, keeping up to 2GB more active data in memory, with smaller fixes including faster Windows Hello sign-in, quicker AirPods pairing and a taskbar that can finally sit on the sides or top of a screen.
Labels, scams and a demo worth trying
YouTube Music has begun adding a Made with AI label to songs primarily generated or altered by AI, relying on uploader disclosure plus other signals where none is given. Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and Bandcamp are all taking their own approaches, from voluntary labels to an outright ban.
On security, Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency disrupted YAM Store, a marketplace behind more than a billion scam texts and phishing messages since January 2026, disabling over 20,000 accounts and seizing domains. Researchers also detailed UAT-6275, a suspected Kazakhstan-linked espionage group behind eight campaigns against post-Soviet governments, timing some attacks around diplomatic meetings. And Capcom brings Monster Hunter Wilds' free Prologue Demo to Switch 2 on 19 October, complete with local co-op and save transfers, a genuinely useful performance test given the game's rocky launch.