Retail
Travel ancient Rome's 186,000 miles of roads in new online atlas
Itiner-e suggests the empire's routes were almost double previous estimates. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The Roman Empire paved the way for many modern advancements--including streets themselves. At its apex during the second century CE, the vast empire encompassed more than 55 million citizens living between present-day Britain to the west and as far east as Syria. But after almost 2,000 years, today's historians still lack a complete understanding of the empire's myriad routes.
Best Home Depot Black Friday Deals
Black Friday lasts a month this year at The Home Depot, including half off select tools and tool sets. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Or at least, The Home Depot Black Friday deals have slipped all customary bounds of the calendar: Online deals have already started as of Wednesday, November 5, and will go all the way to December 3. This includes some very steep discounts on flagship tool brands like Milwaukee, Ryobi, and Dewalt tools--by which I mean half-off and buy-one-get-one steep.
Ride on a humpback whale with little sucker fish
New POV video shows a mutually beneficial relationship between remoras and the gentle giants. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. In addition to its pod, the sizable cetacean generally hosts dozens of remoras. Also known as a suckerfish, these evolutionary wonders in the family hitch rides on whales in order to make a meal of the sea lice and other crustaceans that also make a home on the marine mammal's skin. To accomplish this, the remora possesses a distinctive, oval dorsal fin that functions like an adapted suction cup.
Japan deploys army to fight bears
Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Japan is calling in its army to wrestle its ongoing bear problem . Last month, the country's Ministry of the Environment reported that Asian black bear or moon bear () and brown bear () populations have attacked over 100 people since March. With at least 10 fatalities among the tally, the government announced on November 5 that it is stepping up control efforts by deploying soldiers to Akita prefecture on the island of Honshu in northern Japan. In a statement to reporters, Akita's Governor Kenta Suzuki called the situation "desperate," noting that sightings and attacks are now occurring daily.
The Home Depot's early Black Friday Ryobi sale: Get two batteries and a power tool for just 99
Gear Home The Home Depot's early Black Friday Ryobi sale: Get two batteries and a power tool for just $99 The free tools include popular options like impact drivers, reciprocating saws, yard tools, and more. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Right now, if you buy a pair of Ryobi batteries (with a charger) from The Home Depot, you can get a free tool worth up to $99 to go with them. You can choose from essential power tools, including a reciprocating saw, a 1/2-inch impact, or even a string trimmer . You can never have too many batteries.
New species looks like a fuzzy pink hermit crab wig
Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Humans don't need to blast off into space to find some truly alien-looking wonders. The deepest depths of our ocean are like another planet, teeming with the charismatic "Casper" octopus, the carnivorous (aka the flying spaghetti monster), and even some sharks . A team from Kumamoto University in Japan recently uncovered a deep-sea anemone that has a tight bond with hermit crabs. These wispy pink invertebrates build shell-like "homes" for the crabs.
Why some scientists say our universe is Sad Millennial Beige
Plus loud rats and other weird things we learned this week. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. What's the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you'll have an even weirder answer if you listen to's hit podcast . It's your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of can muster.
2025 holiday gift guide: 30 editor-approved presents for everyone on your list
Whether you're shopping for your closest friend who has everything or a grumpy family member who criticizes every gift you've ever given, we have the best suggestions for you. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Your friends and family deserve the best possible gifts. But, shopping can be tricky. You don't want to give them something impersonal, like a gift card, but you also can't resort to drawing them a card with a Christmas tree on it again. It's our job to find the best products and deals, so we've spent way too much time digging up a ton of products that pretty much anyone would like.
Graph-Attentive MAPPO for Dynamic Retail Pricing
Amma, Krishna Kumar Neelakanta Pillai Santha Kumari
Dynamic pricing in retail requires policies that adapt to shifting demand while coordinating decisions across related products. We present a systematic empirical study of multi-agent reinforcement learning for retail price optimization, comparing a strong MAPPO baseline with a graph-attention-augmented variant (MAPPO+GAT) that leverages learned interactions among products. Using a simulated pricing environment derived from real transaction data, we evaluate profit, stability across random seeds, fairness across products, and training efficiency under a standardized evaluation protocol. The results indicate that MAPPO provides a robust and reproducible foundation for portfolio-level price control, and that MAPPO+GAT further enhances performance by sharing information over the product graph without inducing excessive price volatility. These results indicate that graph-integrated MARL provides a more scalable and stable solution than independent learners for dynamic retail pricing, offering practical advantages in multi-product decision-making.