Ben Judah

🚨 BREAKING: Andy Burnham says he will limit non-compete clauses in employment contracts

"Non-compete clauses will no longer be a barrier to hiring for our most promising start-ups"

EXCL: The government is planning to commit to a ban on "non-compete" clauses that are rife in high-flying tech and City workers' contracts

Ministers think they're a barrier to start-ups. Andy Burnham may announce tomorrow

But govt is set to stop short of confirming the details

Martin Lewis has asked the public for simple, inexpensive and broadly uncontroversial changes that could make Britain work a little better.

What better place to start than with putting an end to street scars?

We can hold utility companies to account for scarring our streets with just a few changes to legislation that will:

🚧Make them put pavements back exactly as they found them and increase the fines for failing to do so.

🚧Require them to pay the full cost of restoring damaged pavements to the original standard.

Find out more...

Compared to the local elections in May, where Greens/CPA had a pact the Labour vote is up and the Green vote is down. Right vote and Liberal Democrat vote down.

Over 1,000 dockless bikes seized in Westminster ➡️ bbc.in/4B2M26q

The Pentagon says it will livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan

apnews.com/article/fort-h…

Western civilization is worth defending.

Berlin-based search engine Ecosia, used by government services, is dropping its French AI partner, Mistral, its CEO told POLITICO.

The company will now bet on open-source models, including those from China.
vist.ly/5mh5y

A newly published paper finds that Gen Z is falling dramatically short of the fertility of all previous generations by age.

Gen Z has both lower fertility preferences and higher rates of fertility impairment. That means American birth rates are likely to fall a lot further. 🧵

my least favourite graph from @nathanbenaich's report.

"Four US hyperscales will spend $733bn in total capex in 2026. Europe commits 1bn"

Read @Douthat60 on making @TheFP the new home for his writing:

thefp.com/p/ross-douthat…

Mark Carney: "In three weeks, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the European Council, António Costa, will be in Montreal. And that is when Canada will launch a new transformative alliance with the European Union."

My Spectator cover piece this week:

spectator.com/article/the-an…

If the government negotiated a deal to rejoin the EU, 64% of Britons say there should be a referendum before deciding whether to do so (including 54% of those who would vote to rejoin) - only 23% think the government should be able to make the decision without a referendum

“okay, so what? it’s just math.”

no, you don't get it.

here’s what OpenAI’s math breakthroughs could eventually help make possible in the real world:

Vlasov–Maxwell → stronger foundations for fusion research, whose ultimate prize is virtually limitless clean energy to power civilization

Calderón’s Problem → portable body scanners using electrical signals, making medical imaging cheaper and easier to access

Maximum-Cardinality Matching → faster searches for compatible kidney swaps across large donor pools, helping hospitals coordinate lifesaving transplants

Inverse Elasticity Problem → scans that map tissue stiffness, helping doctors locate suspicious growths inside the body

Mumford–Shah Conjecture → better tools for spotting tissue changes in brain scans, helping doctors identify signs of disease

Bose–Einstein Condensation → stronger foundations for quantum sensors that could help vehicles navigate without GPS

Simple Stochastic Games → better safety checks for self-driving cars and robots before dangerous mistakes reach the real world

Matrix Multiplication → cheaper AI and bigger scientific simulations using the same computers

Edit Distance → faster DNA comparisons, helping researchers study genetic changes linked to disease

The k-Server Problem → robots that waste less movement and energy, making warehouses more efficient and goods cheaper to move

a reminder that math is the foundation of science.

so accelerating mathematical discovery could compress centuries of scientific progress into years.

insane timeline to be alive for!