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Beginners in AI
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Health workers in Congo used a Google AI tool to find more than 45,500 people at risk of Ebola in a few minutes, a search that usually takes weeks. I'll walk through how it works and what Google hasn't shown yet, and today's Try This Prompt builds a free planner so your own home is ready when everyone gets sick. As always, every story here is human picked and edited.
THE FRONT PAGE
Google's AI Helped Find 45,500 People at Risk of Ebola in Minutes
TLDR: Google says its Earth AI tools helped the World Health Organization find more than 45,500 people at risk of Ebola in Congo in minutes, a search that normally takes weeks.
The Story:
In a post on Tuesday, Google Research's Shravya Shetty and Google Health's Monica Bharel described how WHO's Africa office used Google's mapping AI. The tools mix satellite images, data on how people move around, and population maps. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the WHO team pinpointed 48 exposed settlements along remote mining routes and located more than 45,500 people at risk.
Local responders used the results to send mobile labs and watch border crossings. Google says the same tools helped WHO flag cholera-prone health zones up to eight weeks ahead. Researchers at Oxford and Mexico's Tecnológico de Monterrey used them to forecast dengue across Mexico, and NYU Langone tested them on heart disease deaths.
Its Significance:
Outbreaks are a race. A team that knows where to send tests a week early can keep a few cases from becoming a few thousand. These numbers come from Google and its partners, and the post doesn't say how often the forecasts missed, so I'd call this promising, not proven. Researchers can apply for free access and nonprofits can get Google Earth credits, which matters more to me than any benchmark.
Download the skill file and your AI(I used Claude for this one) will be able to follow the instructions to copy my recent build. This one takes inbound calls, gets a name, email address and puts the booking on your calendar. Can be modified for most businesses.
QUICK TAKES
The story: France's Mistral released Mistral Large 4 in preview on Tuesday and says the open weights come within about three weeks, after safety testing. The API costs $1.36 per million input tokens, and Mistral says it scored 49.8% on a coding agent test, ahead of DeepSeek V4 Pro.
Your takeaway: Open weights mean a company or school with enough servers can run it in-house and keep its data there. Mistral says training is still running, so expect the scores to move.
The story: Tap "Get the Guide" on a hairstyle, hair color or nail Pin and Pinterest's new Beauty Guides tells you what to ask for in salon terms, how long it takes, a price range and the upkeep. It launched Tuesday in the Pinterest app.
Your takeaway: Fewer "that's not what I meant" haircuts. The prices are estimates, so confirm with your salon before you book.
The story: Amazon blocks Meta's Muse agent, and Delta, United, eBay and Yelp restrict agents too, TechCrunch reports. Meta, Walmart, Stripe and five other companies are building an open standard so stores and agents can talk directly.
Your takeaway: If your AI agent can't book a flight, the airline may be blocking it on purpose. For now, finish big purchases yourself.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🗺️ CoMaps Free and Open Source: Offline maps with turn-by-turn directions and hiking trails that work with no signal, a free Google Maps swap.
💾 Kopia Free and Open Source: Schedule encrypted backups to the cloud storage you pick; like LibreOffice in Trending, it keeps your files yours.
🧭 Zen Browser Free and Open Source: A Firefox-based browser with vertical tabs and workspaces for people who always have too many tabs open.
🏋️ wger Free and Open Source: Log workouts and meals with a big exercise library and ready-made routines, a free swap for MyFitnessPal and Strong.
🎙️ Wispr Flow* Freemium: Talk instead of typing in any app on Mac, Windows, iPhone or Android; Pro adds unlimited dictation for $12 a month.
🔊 ElevenLabs* Freemium: Turn any text into natural-sounding speech, free for 10,000 credits a month, handy for listening to long reports.
✂️ Opus Clip* Freemium: Cut a long video into short social clips automatically; the free plan gives 60 credits a month with a watermark.
TRENDING
LibreOffice Says Having No AI Is a Feature. The Document Foundation says the free office suite won't add AI features for the foreseeable future, so your documents stay on your computer. You can still add extensions that connect to AI models running on your own machine.
Brett Adcock's Hark Releases an AI Assistant That Works Your Computer for You. Hark Pro answers email, books flights and approves expenses by working through websites while you watch. There's a free version, the company says it won't sell ads, and it plans its own device for 2027.
Anthropic Gives Startups a Free Year of Claude Team. Companies founded in the last five years, or funded in the last two, can get up to 5 seats free for a year plus $1,000 in API credits. Anthropic announced it at SF Tech Week.
Anthropic Says Security Teams Found 129,000 Software Flaws Through Its Program. Anthropic folded Project Glasswing into a three-tier Cyber Verification Program for vetted security teams. It says partners found at least 129,000 verified vulnerabilities from April to July, a count no outside group has checked.
Lambda Is Raising $4 Billion After a $35 Billion Deal With Anthropic. The AI cloud company is raising at a $14.5 billion valuation, led by Coatue and Blackstone, ahead of a planned 2027 IPO. Its customer backlog jumped from $15 billion in June to $50 billion in September, mostly from that one deal.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
🩺 Sick Day Ready Plan for the week when everyone at home is sick, before it happens.
Build a single-file HTML app called Sick Day Ready in vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No API key needed, and everything runs in the browser.
I enter how many adults, kids under 12 and adults over 65 live in my home, pick 3, 7 or 14 days, and tick boxes for a baby, a dog, a cat, someone on daily prescriptions, or a neighbor who lives alone.
The app works out a shopping list with real quantities, using Ready.gov's one gallon of water per person per day and three meals per person per day, plus tissues, wipes, a thermometer and pet supplies. Add a short plan (a sick room, a healthy helper, refill early) and a fill-in list of who to call. Every item gets a checkbox, with a progress bar and a print button. No medical advice.
Style: near-black background, mint and apricot accents, Fraunces and Literata fonts.What this does: Enter who lives in your home and how many days you want to cover, and the app builds a shopping list with real amounts, using Ready.gov's guide of a gallon of water per person per day. It adds a short plan (a sick room, a healthy helper) and a list of numbers to fill in, all with checkboxes and a print button. Everything runs in your browser and nothing gets sent anywhere. It's a planning list, not medical advice.
Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads
Blu Dot used Roku Ads Manager to drive incredible results for its furniture sales event. Its strategy hinged on custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.
“Roku has been a top performer,” said Blu Dot’s Claire Folkestad. “We have seen…CPMs lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Find tens of thousands of at-risk people across remote areas in minutes by reading satellite and movement data, as WHO did for Ebola in Congo.
❌ Still Can't: Show how often those outbreak forecasts are wrong. Google's post shares the wins but no error rates.
✅ AI Can Now: Run at 1 trillion parameters while using only 49 billion for each word, which is how Mistral keeps Large 4 cheap to serve.
❌ Still Can't: Fit a model that size on a home computer. Even with open weights, it needs data-center hardware.
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
🎬 Contagion (2011) - Movie
Steven Soderbergh's thriller follows a new virus from a single cough to a worldwide outbreak, told through the disease trackers racing to map where it goes next. That mapping work is exactly what today's lead says AI is speeding up. It came out in 2011, and the health experts who advised on it got a lot right, which makes it a useful, if tense, way to picture why a few weeks of warning matter.
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-James
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