California has finally done it. For the first time in six years, the "glory hole" has been activated, .Please, people. There's no innuendo here. We're, of course, referring to the iconic and distinctly designed spillway in the North Bay's Lake Berryessa, a reservoir next to the Monticello Dam."It's called a glory hole spillway. That's really what the engineers called it and we shortened it to glory hole," local historian, scientist, and journalist Peter Kilkus told CBS. "Some people say, 'Oh, that's really beautiful.' Some people say, 'That's frightening.'"The drain's actual name is no less suggestive: the Morning Glory Hole spillway.But what's the deal with this thing? In a nutshell, it's an enormous 70-feet wide drain or "passive spillway," in the technical nomenclature. Whenever the water levels in the dammed-off lake exceed 440 feet, the water spills into the drain, directing overflow into an underground discharge channel.While in action, the "glory hole" looks almost otherworldly, like some portal to a magical aquatic realm or maybe a glitch in our ever-crumbling reality simulation. There's not supposed to just be a hole in the middle of water, damn it!It's not something you see every day, in other words. "Yeah, it's a big tourist draw," Kilkus,who runs the site Lake Beryessa News, told CBS. "In fact, on a heavy day on the weekend, you can't even park here."And it's rarely used. Before winding back up in February, the drain last saw action in 2019 and 2017, the Los Angeles Times reported. Before that, it was unused since 2005, Chris Lee, general manager for the Solano County Water Agency, told the newspaper.The hole and its home's histories are intertwined. Lake Berryessa was created with the construction of the Monticello Dam in 1957 (grimly burying a small community that existed there, according to Kilkus) and the hole was the only solution that could make it work. Typically, dams have spillways built into them, or right beside, churning out towering cliffs of water. But in the canyon that the dam's saddled between, there's no room for such a design. As a compromise, engineers placed a drain in the middle of the lake, plunging the water straight down some 200 feet before making a 90-degree turn and releasing the overflow into Putah Creek."Yes, this is fairly rare,"Kilkus told the broadcaster. "There are only two in California, and there are a couple others in Europe, but they're very rare."More on aquatic curiosities: Iceberg Breaks Off Antarctica, Revealing Tentacled Creatures BeneathShare This Article

That's one way to get people to not vandalize your car.Cyber CilliousInstead of cruising around in a regular old Cybertruck, a Tesla fanboy decided to mash it up with a Model 3 and reader, it's pretty cringe.Unlike the Cybertruck that gave it its distinctive front fender and its cringey name, the "CyberRoadster," vlogger David Andreyev better known by his handle, "Cyber Hooligan" gave his version a shiny red paint job that is, at very least, better looking than the dull metallic silver of the OG.While it luckily manages to look nothing like a Cybertruck, it has some serious Dodge Charger vibes and even if a Charger is less flagrantly annoying these days than a Cybertruck, it's still as basic as the cop favorite cruiser.After nearly three years of work that included at least one scrapped bubblegum pink paint job, Andreyev finally unveiled his final product a few months back. Since then, the self-styled Cyber Hooligan has been relishing the attention he gets driving around Los Angeles in his flashy and freakish car.Looky-LoosIn his latest video, which appears to have been shot entirely in and around malls and shopping centers, onlookers crane their necks, take photos, and even run into things when trying to get a better look at the CyberRoadster. It's unclear, however, if they're marveling in pleasure or, like us, are appalled by the angular creation before their eyes.On the r/TeslaLounge Subreddit, one user suggested that the onlooker reactions we see in Cyber Hooligan's videos are legit."Hes in my area and Ive seen it roll through our outdoor mall," the user wrote of the "gorgeous" CyberRoadster. "The crowd it draws is crazy, looks like really nothing else, he did a great job.""I love it," another declared before, hilariously, admitting that they also love "Grand Theft Auto."Love it or hate it, Andreyev's Franken-car certainly is eye-catching and it probably doesn't draw as much ire as an OG Cybertruck would, either.Share This Article

Image by Getty / FuturismOn both sides of the East River, well-heeled New Yorkers have for a few years been shelling out for the tranquility promised by Bathhouse, a high-concept spa company that boasts thermal pools heated by Bitcoin mining.As Curbed reports, however, visitors and former employees at both of the spa's two locations claim to have experienced everything from mold and vermin on pipes and floors to unidentifiable "black particles" in pools and post-bath urinary tract infections.The latest fracas regarding the "evil crypto baths," as local outletHell Gate called Bathhouse last year, began earlier this month when a Reddit user claimed that they got a UTI after going into two "kinda dirty and gross"-looking tubs at the company's location in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood."I thought it would be fine," the user wrote, "but then I ended up with a UTI."Days prior, the poster claimed, another friend went to Bathhouse's other location in Manhattan and "also ended up with a UTI." In response, another, since-deleted user claimed that they too had gotten the same infection within 48 hours of their last time at the Williamsburg location which, it bears noting, has been the subject of 17 calls to New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene since 2022."I'm sure that it came from [B]athhouse," the responder wrote. "The water just felt ick to me, especially that lukewarm pool. Maybe they aren't using enough chlorine or something?"After that, the Bathhouse floodgates opened in kind. From complaints about hair floating in pools and fellow visitors' "horrible" hygiene exacerbated, no doubt, by many of them not showering to a secondhand claim about a friend who got ringworm after going to the Williamsburg spa, it seemed that the only thing dirtier than Bathhouse was the rumor mill surrounding it.As these things tend to go, the gossip made its way to TikTok, where Justine Smith, a woman who claims to be a former "body scrubber" at the Williamsburg location, had mold problems and had photos to back up her accusations. In an interview withCurbed, Smith said that the issue was so bad, she and her coworkers would try to cover the smell with essential oils. It didn't always work, the woman said, and sometimes she'd catch customers making sour faces "because there's a stench in the room."Another former employee, whose name was not shared, showedCurbed videos of wormy-looking insects crawling around the brick walls and floor tiles. Those videos, the employee claimed, were shot in one of the rooms that houses the spa's steam baths.NYC's health department toldCurbed that it's investigating the recent claims six of those 311 calls were, notably, made in the last week and has, per records the website viewed, sent Bathhouse a letter about a mold complaint.As for Bathhouse itself, it says these many allegations of grossness at its facilities are little more than gossip."The health and safety of our customers is our number one priority and always has been," the company told Curbed in a statement. "These rumors are blatant and defamatory lies which seem intended to harm our business."Share This Article

Sharks have long been believed to be silent, stalking their prey and wolfing them down without comment. They're ruthless and efficient.But a team of marine biologists in New Zealand are challenging that assumption. In a new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers report that they've recorded the first ever instance of a shark actively producing a sound, in the form of sharp, abrupt clicks.The sharks that produced the noise were rig sharks, a species which are common to the coastal waters of New Zealand. Locals often refer to the relatively small sharks, which grow up to five feet long, as "lemon fish" (not to be confused with much more formidable lemon sharks) or simply "rigs."Lead author Carolin Nieder said that she made the discovery while handling the rig sharks during her research into their hearing capabilities."At first we had no idea what it was because sharks were not supposed to make any sounds," Nieder, who works at the famed Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told Scientific American. "I remember coming home and just thinking more and more about how weird those sounds were."To confirm it wasn't a fluke, Nieder and her colleagues gathered ten juvenile rig sharks, separately placing them into tanks equipped with microphones. As the sharks were either being gently held or transferred between tanks, all of them emitted the high frequency, sub-second clicks, the researchers found.The clicks occurred underwater, and almost always as the sharks were moving their body in some way. Brief as the clicks were, they reached anappreciable volume of 156 decibels.Some species of fish use their swim bladders to generate noise by vibrating them. Marine mammals like whales use vocal cords. But sharks don't possess a specific organ for making sounds. In the rigs' case, it appears that they're making the noise by snapping together their dense rows of flattened teeth, which are specialized to chomp through shells.Notably, the sharks didn't produce the clicks while swimming or feeding. Their high frequency also puts the sounds outside the rig shark's limited hearing range, making it unlikely that they use the noises to communicate."I think it's more likely that they would make those noises when they get attacked," Nieder told the New York Times. Other fish snap their teeth or jaws in an attempt to ward off predators, she added.To be sure, the circumstances that the recordings were made in raise questions about whether these are sounds that the sharks would produce in the wild. But the fact that they were made at all warrants further investigation."This study opens up the possibility of these smaller sharks 'sounding the alarm,'" Neil Hammerschlag, president of Atlantic Shark Expeditions and executive director of the not-for-profit Shark Research Foundation, ."While we really don't know if the sound produced by the rig sharks was simply a byproduct of being handled... it does open up some new questions, possibilities and avenues for future research."More on marine life: Behold Rare Footage of What Narwhals Actually Use Their Tusks ForShare This Article

Recent waves of Tesla protests and vandalism have made clear the growing discontent among US taxpayers of all stripes. While Elon Musk and Donald Trump slash through federal government jobs and social welfare programs, voters are demanding accountability and an end to Musk's unchecked rampage.That might be a long way off, if Musk has anything to say about it. And unfortunately for us, he's one of the few who does.In an interview with Fox News, Musk railed against anyone targeting his company, threatening that the government will be investigating the protests."The people pushing the propaganda... those are the real villains here," he seethed in response to a question about what the protests mean to him. "We're gonna go after them, and the president's made that clear, we're going to go after them, the ones providing the money, the ones pushing the lies and propaganda, we're going after them."Musk and his faithful stenographers have repeatedly conflated vandalism and protests against Tesla as "violence," in a rhetorical shift that coincides with federal law enforcement agencies under Trump expanding the definition of "terrorism" to include taking part in peaceful demonstrations and writing op-eds. That has been used to justify a number of extrajudicial kidnappings and deportations, like the unlawful arrest of Columbia PhD student Mahmoud Khalil by plainclothes federal agents earlier this month.Whether Tesla protestors will face the same threat of being disappeared is anyone's guess, but it's a jarring signal given the US state's increasingly cruel stance toward immigrants, students, and critics.Musk's ominous warning also comes days after Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the formation of an FBI taskforce to investigate damage and vandalism done to Tesla vehicles, sparking major concerns that the state is officially acting as the watchdog to an unelected oligarch's profit-driven ventures.For her part, Bondi parroted Musk's more devoted reply guys in claiming that there's an operation "behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes" against Tesla, though she fell short of offering any evidence. So far, the widespread hatred for Tesla and its CEO has shown itself to be totally organic hard earned by Musk's tampering with the federal government, on top of his cryptofascist antics.The now-nationally coordinated Tesla Takedown protests are ramping up, meanwhile, with over 200 demonstrations planned around the world on Saturday. Whether Musk likes it or not, taxpayers are finding that Tesla may be the only avenue left to seek accountability for the billionaire's actions. It's worked so far a recent survey has found that two-thirds of Americans say they wouldn't drive a Tesla, as Tesla's stocks plummet for the ninth straight week."I think there's some real evil out there, and we have to overcome it," Musk said in his interview. "They're pushing these lies, and why do they push these lies? I think we need to hold people responsible for pushing these lies."More on Tesla protests: Hundreds Protest Outside Tesla Dealership, Storm BuildingShare This Article

More Measles CommitteeMar 29, 9:45 AM EDT/byVictor TangermannGovernment Hires Crackpot to "Study" Nonexistent Link Between Vaccines and Autism"If you are worried about vaccine-preventable disease, this is such a clear setback."Mar 29, 9:45 AM EDT/Victor TangermannImage by Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesDevelopmentsDespite a mountain of scientific evidence concluding there's no link between autism and vaccines, noted anti-vaccine figure and health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. is trying to double down on the long-debunked theory.As the Washington Post reports, fellow anti-vaccine crackpot David Geier who has published articles claiming that mercury in vaccines is tied to autism, and was previously reprimanded by state authorities in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license is joining Kennedy's department as a "senior data analyst" to work on a study once again examining the topic of autism and vaccines.It's yet another sign that the Trump administration is chasing conspiracy theories to undermine the country's vaccination efforts, a dangerous game that could result in an escalation of health crises down the road.The optic are particularly poor given the ongoing outbreak of measles in numerous states, an extremely preventable respiratory disease for which we've had highly effective vaccines for decades. Kennedy had already misled parents into overusing Vitamin A, leading to liver damage and yellowed skin in children.Geier's reported involvement with the health department has terrified public health experts."If we increase vaccine hesitancy and immunization rates go down further, we will see more vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks," Duke Global Health Institute director Christopher Beyrer told the New York Times. "Thats how it works."Meanwhile, Kennedy described the fellow anti-vaxxer, who holds a bachelor's degree in biology and no medical degree, as a "brilliant, extremely knowledgeable researcher with deep expertise on mercury."The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been ordered to kick off a large-scale study to reexamine long-debunked links between vaccines and autism. To experts, that's a massive waste of resources that flies in the face of scientific evidence.Despite Kennedy endorsing Geier's research for many years, scientists have long discredited his findings, as the NYT reports. To date, there simply isn't any convincing scientific evidence linking vaccines and autism."The committee concludes that the evidence favor rejection of a causal relationship between [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccine and autism," the Institute of Medicine wrote in a 2004 review of a purported link between vaccines and autism.In short, Geier isn't just a poor pick for the job; he could prove extremely dangerous with any meaningful amount of influence inside the federal government."To me, the big shame is that with budget cuts, we are not ramping up research into what is actually causing autism," former head of the Washington office of the CDC Edward Hunter told the NYT. "And if you are worried about vaccine-preventable disease, this is such a clear setback."Share This ArticleImage by Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesRead This Next

Memory BoostMar 29, 6:45 AM EDT/byVictor TangermannNew "Brain Cleaning" Technique Improves Memory in Aging MiceIt's an "exciting new frontier in the treatment of brain disorders."Mar 29, 6:45 AM EDT/Victor TangermannImage by Getty / FuturismNeuroscience/Brain ScienceA team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that accelerating the brain's waste removal system could have tremendous implications for our memory.As detailed in a study published in the journal Cell last week, the team found that by boosting the natural process of the brain cleansing itself of waste, they were able to improve memory in older mice.Around a decade ago, scientists found that as the brain ages, a network of vessels surrounding it, known as the meningeal lymphatics, starts to slow down.The system drains fluid and waste into the body's lymph nodes, where immune system cells constantly monitor for signs of disease or infection. But when it's impaired enough due to old age, the brain's resident immune cells, called microglia, have to jump into action instead, which can tax and overwhelm the brain.By targeting the meningeal lymphatics, the researchers are hoping to overcome a major hurdle for other therapies designed to battle age-related cognitive issues and neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Unlike therapies that struggle to get past the blood-brain barrier, this latest approach targets areas outside of the brain to gain access."The physical blood-brain barrier hinders the efficacy of therapies for neurological disorders," said Washington University pathology and immunology professor Jonathan Kipnis in a statement about the research. "By targeting a network of vessels outside of the brain that is critical for brain health, we see cognitive improvements in mice, opening a window to develop more powerful therapies to prevent or delay cognitive decline."In an experiment, the team placed two identical black rods in a cage with old mice to let them play with them. On the next day, the same mice received one of these rods, as well as a silver rectangular prism. The idea is that older mice will spend roughly the same amount of time playing with either type of object, while younger mice will be more drawn to the novel trinket.The team then used a treatment to boost the growth and function of the lymphatic vessels in some of the old mice. As a result, the researchers observed that they were spending more time playing with the shiny new object suggesting their memory had improved, compared to other old mice that didn't receive the treatment."A functioning lymphatic system is critical for brain health and memory," said first author and Washington University postdoctoral fellow Kyungdeok Kim in the statement. "Therapies that support the health of the bodys waste management system may have health benefits for a naturally aging brain."The team suggests that the meningeal lymphatics treatment led to a reduction in the production of an immune protein called interleukin 6 (IL-6), which has previously been shown to affect brain health.While plenty of work remains before we can demonstrate that the same approach could work in humans as well, the researchers are hopeful of discovering new ways to slow down the naturally aging brain."Targeting the more easily accessible lymphatic vessels that are located outside the brain may prove to be an exciting new frontier in the treatment of brain disorders," Kipnis said. "We may not be able to revive neurons, but we may be able to ensure their most optimal functioning through modulation of meningeal lymphatic vessels."More on neurodegenerative diseases: Ozempic-Style Drug Slows the Progression of Alzheimer's Disease, Experiment FindsShare This ArticleImage by Getty / FuturismRead This Next

One of the men in charge of running America's money had a Venmo account so publicthat reporters were able to track his payments going back years including the one marked only with an eggplant emoji.In the aftermath ofThe Atlantic's revelation that its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been accidentally added to a Signal groupchat by national security adviser Mike Waltz, reporters around the world have gone digging to see just how bad the Trump administration's operations security practices really are.As it turns out, incredibly sloppy. It's been easy to find all kinds of data about the people running this country including, asWired reports, their Venmo accounts.After breaking news that Waltz's Venmo had been public, the magazine revealed that other officials had seemingly also not locked down their accounts on the payment app. In fact, at least four of the men whose Venmo accounts were openly available had also been in Waltz's "Houthis PC small group" chain.Among them was Dan Katz, the Treasury Department's chief of staff. The accountWired believes to be Katz's not only had its contact list visible, but was also linked to the official's wife.The strangest part, however?A 2018 payment sporting an eggplant emoji in its "note" section.As anyone who has used Venmo can attest, putting silly emojis and other goofy missives on payments to friends is par for the course. It's far more likely that Katz was just messing around than that he was paying someone for their "eggplant" though of course, it wouldn't be the first time a prominent politician had been caught in such a predicament on Venmo (in fact, just-retired president Joe Biden had his own Venmo embarrassment a few years back.)Regardless of the meaning behind the emoji, however, it's absolutely unreal that a ranking official in the department that's quite literally is in charge of America's money had his own financial transactions public and visible like that. It's bad enough that all these national security and military guys are getting caught with their pants down, so to speak but for a Treasury official to do so as well suggests a staggering degree of recklessness in the highest echelons of the government.That department and the others implicated in the story didn't respond toWired's attempts to talk, so we can't know with 100 percent certainty that the account was really Katz's. If we had to place a bet on it, however, we'd wager it was legit.If this scandal has taught us anything, it's that these people don't know how to use their privacy settings.More on the Signal debacle: Pentagon Issued Warning About Signal Messaging One Week Before Its Head Was Caught Using ItShare This Article

NASA and Boeing are still working to get the aerospace giant's plagued Starliner spacecraft back off the ground.It's been just over half a year since Boeing's issues-riddled shuttle came back from its journey to the International Space Station. Due to technical problems, NASA decided Starliner wasn't safe enough for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to be on board, leaving them stranded in orbit.In a Thursday update, NASA revealed that NASA and Boeing are "making progress toward crew certification of the companys CST-100 Starliner," with teams "working to resolve Starliners in-flight anomalies and preparing for propulsion system testing in the months ahead."But when or if Starliner will make its next launch attempt, with or without a crew on board, remains to be seen."Once we get through these planned test campaigns, we will have a better idea of when we can go fly the next Boeing flight," said NASAs Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich in the update. "Well continue to work through certification toward the end of this year and then go figure out where Starliner fits best in the schedule for the International Space Station and its crew and cargo missions.""It is likely to be in the timeframe of late this calendar year or early next year for the next Starliner flight," Stich added.As part of its Commercial Crew program, NASA tapped both Boeing and SpaceX to come up with entirely separate spacecraft that can launch astronauts to the space station and back.Over the last five years, SpaceX has run circles around its competition with its Crew Dragon spacecraft, and has completed a dozen successful trips to the ISS.Despite pouring billions of dollars into the development of Starliner, Boeing has far less to show, including a failed launch attempt in 2019 and a litany of issues during its first crewed attempt last year.According to NASA, teams are working hard to test Starliner's offending thrusters and the surrounding "doghouse," the part of the module where the thrusters are located. Investigations revealed that the doghouse overheated during repeated thruster firings, causing Teflon seals to bulge, thereby affecting the flow of propellant.The space agency is now looking at "thermal protection system upgrades," including "barriers within the doghouse to better regulate temperatures and changing the thruster pulse profiles in flight to prevent overheating."But whether these changes will be enough to reassure all stakeholders is an open question. Boeing has already lostover $2 billion on the project since it began, and still doesn't have a single successful mission under its belt.That, however, hasn't dissuaded the aerospace giant."Boeing, all the way up to their new CEO, Kelly [Ortberg], has been committed to Starliner," Stich said during a briefing last week, as quoted by SpaceNews. "I see a commitment from Boeing to continue the program."More on Starliner: NASA Planning Another Test Flight by Boeing's StarlinerShare This Article

OpenAI's extremely popular AI chatbot tool ChatGPT caught a huge wave this week when untold numbers of users started using it to generate images evoking the style of animation legend Hayao Miyazaki's work at Studio Ghibli.The trend quickly took on a life of its own. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took to X-formerly-Twitter to joke about being turned into a "twink ghibli style."OpenAI has since started cracking down on the trend, implementing a confusing range of changes that now often refuse requests to generate images in Ghibli's style.The viral trend, and OpenAI's chaotic response, reignited a heated debate surrounding copyright and the use of generative AI directly undermining the work of human artists and publishers including the extremely talented animators at Ghibli.And according to former general counsel at the TV channel Showtime and AI expert Rob Rosenberg, Ghibli may actually be able to take legal action against OpenAI over the situation.While it's a "complex question" whether the Japanese animation studio would have enough grounds, the company "might have the ability to claim OpenAI has violated the Lanham Act which provides the basis for claims related to false advertising, trademark infringement and unfair competition," Rosenberg, now the founder of Telluride Legal Strategies, told Futurism.The Lanham Act, which was enacted in 1946, is the primary federal statute governing trademark law in the US, and establishes a national system of trademark registration that allows owners to pursue infringement lawsuits."Ghibli could argue that by converting user photos to 'Ghibli-style,' OpenAI is trading off the goodwill of Ghiblis trademarks, using Ghiblis identifiable style and leading to a likelihood of confusion among consumers that this function is endorsed or licensed by Studio Ghibli," Rosenberg argued.OpenAI could also be sued for "training its large language models on Studio Ghiblis copyrighted works," he added.OpenAI is already facing several lawsuits over its approach to scouring the internet for training data for its models, including plenty of copyrighted material.Just this week, a federal judge rejected OpenAI's request to throw out a copyright lawsuit filed by the New York Times. The newspaper alleged in late 2023 that the Altman-led company infringed its copyright by using its material without permission to train its AI models.Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has also been accused of illegally downloading pirated books to train its AI models.But so far, there isn't any legal precedent to determine whether OpenAI broke US copyright law. The company has maintained that "training their models is a fair use under copyright law," Rosenberg explained, "and therefore an exception to infringement."The "fair use doctrine" has been core to the ongoing debate surrounding whether AI companies like OpenAI are breaking copyright law. It's a legal framework allowinglimited access to copyrighted materials without prior permission for quotations and other non-infringing usages.Whether Ghibli will actually make any legal moves is anyone's guess. On Friday, the company told Japanese news outlet NHK that a viral legal document, which claimed to be a cease and desist letter sent by the studio, was fake."As most courts have not yet ruled on the strength of similar copyright claims, it is unclear whether they would prove successful or not," Rosenberg told Futurism. "If OpenAI were marketing its platform as a place where consumers could go to turn their photos into 'Ghibli-style' anime, that fact would weigh more strongly in favor of a court finding that OpenAIs conduct violated the Lanham Act."If the courts were to rule in favor of OpenAI, determining that training AI models on copyrighted material does indeed fall under fair use, we could be heading "toward a system where the AI developers will need to compensate copyright holders, and credit them where their content is used in producing output," Rosenberg said.Aside from questions regarding the possible infringement of copyright, OpenAI could be robbing Ghibli of other ways to monetize."If Studio Ghibli ever wanted to launch its own tool allowing fans to transform photos into its signature style, OpenAIs update has essentially taken that business opportunity away," Rosenberg said. "Worse, this technology could lead to people generating entire animated projects in the Ghibli style and falsely presenting them as authentic.""Its similar to asking AI to rewrite a short story in the style of JK Rowling and then posting it online as a lost Rowling work," he added, "blurring the line between homage and outright misrepresentation."More on AI copyright: Cool Site Shows Exactly Which Books Zuckerberg's Minions Illegally Downloaded to Train Meta's AIShare This Article

Remember the potential "city killer" asteroid we were all freaking out about, 2024 YR4? Initially predicted with a small but unsettling chance of hitting our planet seven years from now, astronomers eventually ruled out that apocalyptic outcome once they were able to get better observations.But the saga's not over. 2024 YR4 will be back for another pass, Athabasca University astronomer Martin Connors writes in an and there'll be others like it.As Connors explains, YR4 exhibits what's known as "orbital resonance" with Jupiter, meaning that it moves at a multiple of the speed of the gas giant. While Jupiter takes roughly 12 years to orbit the Sun, asteroids like YR4 only take four, putting it in a 3:1 resonance.The upshot, in an "Armageddon" context, is that resonant asteroids close enough to cross Earth's orbit will have multiple attempts to hit the bullseye."Among asteroids, we must pay special attention to resonant ones, such as 2024 YR4, because eventually, they'll be back," Connors wrote.The 3:1 resonance with Jupiter is special, because for a century it appeared that there were no asteroids in the asteroid belt that exhibited this pattern, as well as at other seemingly arbitrary resonances like 5:2 and 7:3.Astronomers began to pull back the curtain on this phenomenon, dubbed Kirkwood gaps, in the 1970s. Any asteroids that ventured into these specific resonances, they determined, would either crash into an inner planet like Earth or be booted out by flying too close to them, giving the appearance of a "gap."As it turned out, the Kirkwood gaps weren't completely empty. A whole classification of asteroids called "Alindas" was recognized for objects in a 3:1 resonance with Jupiter, Connors wrote. They're named after the absolutely enormous asteroid 887 Alinda, first discovered in 1918. At roughly 2.5 miles across, 887 Alinda would cause an extinction-level catastrophe if it struck Earth. In January, it menaced us with its closest approach in one hundred years.Not all Alindas are aligned to cross paths with our planet, however. "A limiting factor is how tilted their orbits are: if they are quite tilted, they are not often at a 'height' matching Earth's, so are less likely to hit," Connors explained. "The bad news about that is that both Alinda and 2024 YR4 are very nearly in the plane of Earth's orbit, and are not tilted much, so are more likely to hit."Fortunately, it'll be a long, long while before Alinda will have a chance of nearing Earth not for another 1,000 years, according to Connors.As for 2024 YR4, it'll whiff its chance to take a city off the map in 2032. And after it does, it'll be nudged out of its Alinda orbit that is, its 3:1 resonance with Jupiter and 1:4 resonance with Earth by passing too closely. That means it won't be haunting us every four years anymore. But humiliation is often the stuff that forges a villain, and it'll still come back. Just not as often.More on asteroids: First-Ever Asteroid Mining Mission Loses Contact With EarthShare This Article

In Egypt's Red Sea, a crew on a sightseeing submarine tour managed to escape when the vessel began sinking even though some of the tourists on board were not so lucky.As theBBC reports, authorities are questioning the crew of the Sindbad submarine after it foundered during a coral reef tour near the beach town of Hurghada in southeastern Egypt.Of the 45 passengers on board the vessel, six tourists including two children died during the sinking, and nine more were injured. When authorities came to rescue the sinking sub, 39 people and five crew members were saved, the report notes. Two of the tourists who died were a married couple of doctors, and their daughters, devastatingly, are in the hospital in critical condition.According to statements from Red Sea governor Amr Hanafy, the Sindbad's crew were all Egyptian and its passengers hailed from India, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. Somehow, only Russians died during the incident, and it remains unclear what happened.Unlike the Oceangate debacle from nearly two years ago, the Sindbad Submarines company seemingly had a strong reputation, and had been in operation in the Red Sea resort town for years. According to Hanafy, the sub was licensed and its head crew member had gotten all the right certificates to operate it which makes the tragic incident all the stranger.Tragically, this is not the first maritime tragedy to strike the Red Sea in recent months.In late November, the BBC notes, the "Sea Story" tourist yacht capsized with more than 40 people on board while sailing near the resort town of Marsa Alam located about 200 miles up the coast from Hurghada. As Dive Magazine noted, it took 36 hours to rescue the yacht's surviving passengers, and four bodies were pulled from the wrecked yacht. Seven are still missing, and presumed dead.Between the orca attacks and the headlines about ships and subs sinking, it's a wonder that anyone who doesn't have to is taking to the sea but then again, flying's not much better lately, either.More on seafaring: Dolphins Appear as Astronauts Splash Down in OceanShare This Article

Image by Greg Baker / AFP via Getty / FuturismGeneticsThat rogue scientist who created HIV-resistant designer babies is apparently gearing up for more human gene-editing research.In an interview with theWall Street Journal, He Jiankui said he wants to conduct human trials on his next big project: encoding genetics to prevent Alzheimer's disease, a heritable illness, in future generations.He identified South Africa, where the government declared in 2024 that it's open to the "significant potential" of genetic editing, as a good place for those trials to take place. Before that, He wants to send two Chinese colleagues to the US to conduct trials on mice and monkeys. As the controversial researcher told the WSJ, he can't go himself because his home country, which imprisoned him in 2019 for scientific misconduct and fraud over his gene-hacking experiments on human fetuses that were subsequently born, won't renew his passport.Aside from the broad strokes of a comeback, which seem to be more logistical in nature than anything else, we don't know almost anything else about how He plans to start up again.The self-styled "Chinese Darwin" has declined to identify his financial backers and doesn't, as the WSJ notes, have any affiliations with any academic institution. When the newspaper tried to figure out who he may be working with in the US, it was unable to do so, and South Africa's health department didn't respond to requests for comment from WSJ reporters.Lofty promises and opaque funding are, of course, nothing new to science. But He is no normal scientist, and as the newspaper notes, his reputation as "China's Frankenstein" has followed the 41-year-old gene-hacking pioneer even after his release from prison last year. It's no wonder he doesn't want to reveal who's funding him: they could, conceivably, be ostracized for doing so.It also probably doesn't help that He regularly posts photos of himself in his mysterious lab which the Chinese government would not, the scientist insisted to the WSJ, allow foreign visitors to enter without permission alongside cryptic declarations, including his claim that ethics are "holding back" science.For all that creepiness, however, He clearly has heart. Peppered between self-aggrandizing posts are a number of shockingly egalitarian claims, including an insistence that "health is the universal human right" and that "'Survival of the fittest' is unfair for the people born with genetic disadvantages.""No one," He wrote in the latter post, "should be left behind."That ethos in particular seems to be related to the seemingly personal inspiration behind the scientist's latest avenue of research: his mother, who is in her late 60s, has Alzheimer's that has progressed far enough that she no longer recognizes her infamous son.If he can get human trials up and running, He wants to see if he can mimic a genetic mutation found in Icelanders who appear to have a protein that protects them against the debilitating cognitive disease. That's a far cry from the admittedly reckless experiments he conducted on embryos and it seems far less ethically dubious, too.And what of the children born of those experiments? Their real identities aren't know, but according to He, they're healthy now."I will apologize only if the children have any health issues," the scientist said. "So far, I dont need to apologize to anyone."Share This Article

Tesla is really starting to feel the hurt in large part due to Musk's self-inflicted wounds. Despite a share price that's slowly recovering from a disastrous year so far, the company has seen sales fall off a steep cliff in key markets, including Europe, China, and its home turf in the US.As Forbes reports, the walls are only beginning to close in as Tesla's competitors in China are starting to make significant moves, leapfrogging the company not only in terms of sales and revenue but technology as well.Earlier this week, news emerged that Chinese EV maker BYD had crushed Teslaby passing the $100 billion mark in revenue last year. That's in comparison to Tesla's $97.7 billion in revenue over the same period.BYD is also working on software directly competing with Tesla's misleadingly-named Full Self-Driving system, called "God's Eye." The top-end version of the software will make use of laser and LIDAR sensors, which Tesla infamously ditched in favor of an exclusive reliance on cameras.And the competition in China is only growing."People in the West are starting to pay attention to BYD, but there's this whole gaggle of other [Chinese] EV makers they have no idea about," consultancy Sino Auto Insights managing director Tu Le told Forbes."Many have out-Tesla-ed Tesla in software, range and in intelligent driving and are making Tesla look like the laggard," he said. "Its in serious jeopardy of becoming an EV manufacturer that builds in the three largest passenger vehicle markets while simultaneously each market slowly slips out of its hands due in part to self-inflicted mistakes and laser-focused competition."All eyes will be on Tesla when the company announces its new quarterly results early next month. And analysts are expecting the worst in light of a surge in anti-Musk sentiment driving the company's sales down, a lack of tempting new product offerings, and a massively damaged brand."Tesla sales are going to take a hit in Q1," AutoPacific industry consulting firm chief analyst Ed Kim told Forbes."The irony is that the most important company for climate and the environment in the world is now being treated like a pariah because of Elon. Its crazy," longtime shareholder and wealth management firm executive Ross Gerber told the publication."The worst part is that in China they dont care about the politics," he added. "In China, theyre down because of actual competition."Share This Article

Sam Bankman-Fried the disgraced crypto bro convicted for playing ringmaster to a multi-billion dollar fraud scheme no longer shares a prison block with Sean "Diddy" Combs.Instead, he's being relegated to the flat lands of Oklahoma, at least for the time being, after appearing in an unapproved video interview with Tucker Carlson.The 33-year-old SBF famously went from trading billions of dollars' worth of cryptocurrency to peddling commissary ramen packs after a massive federal investigation uncovered rampant fraud perpetuated by his blockchain company, FTX. His sentence is 25 years followed by three years of supervised release, which began in March of 2024.TheWall Street Journalreports that SBF was awakened at 3 am from his cot in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Correctional Center and carted off to a facility in Oklahoma City, which typically serves as a holding place for incarcerated people in transit to their long-term destination.Whether the change of scenery was a punishment for the Carlson appearance or a coincidence isn't yet known. Prior to SBF's arrest, he had scrawled a fallout plan with contingencies like "come out as extremely pro crypto, pro freedom," and "go on Tucker Carlsen [sic], come out as [R]epublican." He seems to be pushing that latter vision hard lately, in a possible bid to get the attention of president Donald Trump, whose second term is coming with a slew of crypto-friendly policies and pardons.In the Carlson interview, SBF pushed a narrative familiar to the second Trump administration, claiming he was punished harshly because of his donations and growing ties to the GOP in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election."One fact that might be relevant is, in 2020 I was center-left, and I gave to Biden's campaign," SBF told Tucker. "I spent the next few years in DC a lot. I made dozens of trips there, and was really, really shocked by what I saw there, and not in a good direction. By late 2022 I was giving privately to Republicans privately, as much as Democrats, and that started becoming known right around FTX's collapse."SBF had previously used his social media account via posts "shared with a friend" to send his sympathies to Elon Musk's DOGE as it rips through the federal government to the widespread ire of taxpayers."Firing people is one of the hardest things to do in the world," he wrote. "It sucks for everyone involved... but theres no point in keeping them around, doing nothing."Where SBF ends up now is anyone's guess. People close to him have previously told CNN they believe he's being sent to Mendota, California, a close drive to his parent's home in Stanford, where Bankman-Fried grew up.Until then, he'll have plenty of time to reflect on his crimes from within the sixth-poorest state in the country. If nothing else, maybe they can school him on some of that middle-American work ethic.More on crypto tycoons: Jack Dorsey's Flailing Crypto Business Is Laying Off More Than 900 EmployeesShare This Article

Character.AI, the controversial chatbot startup embroiled in two separate lawsuits concerning the welfare of minor users, just rolled out a new "Parental Insights" feature that the company claims will give parents a deeper glimpse into how their kids are using the chatbot platform.In a blog post on Tuesday, the youth-beloved Character.AI characterized the feature as an "initial step" towards developing robust safety and parental control tools. Let's hope so: this tool appears to be absurdly easy for teens to bypass, and it's unclear how much "insight" it will really offer parents.The feature is pretty simple. An underage Character.AI user can switch on Parental Insights by heading to their account "preferences" tab. There, they're prompted to enter one or several emails belonging to parents and guardians, who will receive a weekly email that updates them on their child's "daily average time spent on the platform across both web and mobile"; a list of the "top characters their teen interacted with most frequently during the week"; and the amount of "time spent with each Character," which Character.AI says will give "parents insight into engagement patterns."On its face, there are some limited situations where these emailed updates could be helpful. Character.AI executives have previously claimed that its average user spends about two hours a day on the platform; that's a lot of time, especially for a teen, and it could be legitimately enlightening for a parent or guardian of an active Character.AI user to see how often their kid is really engaging with the site's bots. It's also true that Character.AI has hosted tons of openly nefarious, violent, sexually suggestive, and otherwise dangerous bots that might raise more obvious alarm bells with parents, so a list of "top characters" could prove useful there.Right out of the gate, however, there are enforcability red flags starting with the fact that users control the Parental Insights on-switch themselves.According to Character.AI, parents and guardians will receive notifications sent to their emails if a teen turns the controls off (we tested this, and it worked.)But it's wildly easy to make new Character.AI accounts all you really need is a working email address. And while testing Parental Insights on both web and mobile, we found that we were not immediately notified when our "teen" a decoy minor account we created signed out of the platform and signed into a new, Parental Insights-free account. (On that note, the existing Character.AI age-gating process is limited to simply asking new users to self-report accurate birthdays upon sign-up. Needless to say, kidson the internet have always known they can just lie byinputting anolder birthday.)Over on the r/CharacterAI subreddit, users were doubtful of Parental Insights' efficacy."I sure hope it's only for people with their parents' email or who set their age as a minor," wrote one commenter."Good thing my parents don't know what Character.AI is," added another.What's more, though Parental Insights is designed to show parents how much time minor users are spending on the platform and which bots they're spending that time with, Character.AI has made it clear that it won't be sharing thecontentof teens' interactions in its Insights updates."Enter your parent's email to share your AI journey they'll get weekly stats about your activity," reads the notice that crops up on the screen when a minor goes to switch on Parental Insights. It then provides the disclaimer: "your chat content will stay private."That detail feels significant, given that Character.AI bots' outward-facing personas often don't provide much, if any, insight into the nature of the conversations that users are having with them.In the very active r/CharacterAI subreddit, users have shared stories about turning to bots based on innocuous cartoon characters or even inanimate objects for emotionally and psychologically intimate conversations only for the chatbots to suddenly make sexual overtures, even when unprompted and when the user expressly tries to avoid a sexual interaction. The site's characters are also known to suddenly employ bizarre tactics to develop a sense of closeness with users, like sharing alleged secrets or disclosing made-up mental health woes, which could stand to transform the nature of a user's relationship with even the most anodyne character.In other words, thoughsomeCharacter.AI bots are obviously concerning, they're broadly unpredictable, and a bot's surface-level appearance and description may not necessarily reveal the reality of a user's relationship with it and in fact, could even work to obscure the depth and weight of that relationship. (This is a theme in both lawsuits, which detail multiple minors carrying on explicit conversations about self-harm and suicide, in addition to romantically and sexually intimate relationships, with seemingly innocuous characters based on anime, TV, and real-life celebrities.)Of course, there's a lot of nuance here, and we're not saying that parents should be getting transcripts of their kids' Character.AI interactions. In the case that a minor ishaving intimate conversations with bots sharing secrets or insecurities, engaging sexually, treating a bot like a journal or a therapist it would likely be embarrassing, or even destructive or dangerous, for a parent or other adult to look over their shoulder. But this raises other, larger questions about whether unpredictable Character.AI bots are a reliably safe container for young people to engage in simulated intimacy and emotional support. (Multiple experts have told us they don't think so.)On the one hand, it's good to see Character.AI start to make good on some of its promises to enact safety-oriented change. The company declined to provide us with a statement for this story, but its chief product officer, Erin Teague, toldAxiosthat the new feature "encourages parents to have an open dialogue with their children about how they use the app."Still, Character.AI which has always been open to users 13 and over has repeatedly declined to explain what process, if any, it ever took to determine that its platform was safe for kids that young to begin with, and has continued to be reactive in the face of its many controversies.There was something else that felt notable about the update, too. When we were asked by email to approve our fake teen's Parental Insights request, the message we received noted that, by agreeing to use the parental control tool, we were also agreeing to the Character.AI terms of use and privacy policy. These policies allow for the collection of minor users' data, including the content of their interactions with chatbots, and the subsequent use of that data for future AI training."Click 'Agree' below to start getting these updates," read the email. "This also confirms you're their parent/guardian and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge our Privacy Policy."We asked Character.AI for clarification on whether a parent opting in to Parental Insights means they also acquiesce to the collection of their kids' interactions with Character.AI, and the use of those interactions to further fuel the company's AI models. We also asked whether Character.AI is planning to allow minors to opt out of such data collection in the future. We didn't hear back.More on Character.AI: Did Google Test an Experimental AI on Kids, With Tragic Results?Share This Article

For over a decade, a star system on the verge of unleashing a deadly gamma ray burst appeared to have its guns trained on Earth.The so-called "Death Star," which is also famed for looking like a glowing pinwheel, has caused a lot of lost sleep among astronomers. But now they and the entire planet may finally breathe a sigh of relief.In a recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of researchers at the Keck Observatory in Hawai'i took a closer look at the system, Wolf-Rayet 104, confirming that its unique appearance is the result of its two constituent stars dancing around each other as they each give off a mesmerizing wind of luminous gases.But surprisingly, the astronomers also found that the orientation of the stars' orbits isn't what it was long assumed to be with the optimistic upshot that, when it does explode, the Earth won't be caught in the crossfire. Hooray!"When I started this project, I thought the main focus would be the colliding winds and a face-on orbit was a given," study author Grant Hill of Keck Observatory said in a statement. "Instead, I found something very unexpected. The orbit is tilted at least 30 or 40 degrees out of the plane of the sky."WR 104's primary star is known as a Wolf-Rayet, a type of uber-hot and extraordinarily massive star typically 25 or more times as massive as our own Sun that's quickly dying.In a dramatic prelude to their impending demise, Wolf-Rayets rapidly cast off their outer layers, which get swept up by the star's powerful wind. In WR 104's case, the Wolf-Rayet's wind collides with the wind of its orbital companion, an even more massive star, creating a pinwheel of swirling dust that glows in the infrared spectrum, the astronomers found.The spectacle is soon doomed to end in a supernova, tragically. Wolf-Rayets have lifespans only in the hundreds of thousands of years, opening the possibility that the gamma ray burst it would unleash upon exploding could barrage our planet with deadly radiation in the not-so-distant on a cosmic scale, at least future.It looks like Earth will be spared this fate. Yet the mysteries of the "Death Star" abound. How does this star appear to face us, even though the poles of its axis don't, can't yet be explained."This is such a great example of how with astronomy we often begin a study and the universe surprises us with mysteries we didn't expect," Hill said in the statement. "In this case, WR 104 is not done surprising us yet."More on astronomy: Get Ready to Watch This Star ExplodeShare This Article

Under president Donald Trump and his number one henchman Elon Musk' orders, swathes of NASA are being laid to waste and staffers are fuming.As CNN reports, mass layoffs gutting three offices this year have resulted in employees questioning the space agency's new leadership.Workers affected by the layoffs were only given 30 days' notice instead of 60, as spelled out in federal government guidance and have even been denied time-off awards. Sources told CNN that some affected employees won't receive bonuses, and won't even be able to reapply to other roles in the agency.That kind of disregard for federal workers a key characteristic of Musk's systematic dismantling of the government left them speechless."I think we were targeted," one source told CNN. Denying bonuses in particular came across as "extremely cruel and callous and needless."Why exactly NASA needed to excise its budget in the shortest time frame possible has enraged staff, including those still at the space agency."Everybodys lost confidence," another employee, who has not been laid off, added. "What was the urgency? It just seems cruel."Another employee told the broadcaster that "despite what Trump says, NASA is using a hatchet and not a scalpel" to cut jobs. A source also warned of a "significant brain drain that will affect not only current missions but engineering and science for generations to come."Despite seemingly treating its employees with active disdain, NASA's interim administrator Janet Petro argued that their efforts were still valued."Ive said it before change is never easy, and I know there are a lot of questions about whats ahead," she wrote in a March 14 email obtained by CNN, four days after the layoffs hit. "I want to assure you the NASA workforce and your skills, expertise, and commitment are at the heart of [reduction in force] discussions."It's been an extremely confusing couple of months for the space agency. A massive prior round of layoffs affecting more than 1,000 probationary workers in February was canceled at the very last minute by White House officials.NASA is also anticipating the swearing in of billionaire tech founder andSpaceX space tourist Jared Isaacman to replace Petro. It remains unclear what has delayed that decision for months now. It's possible officials are still evaluating Isaacman's considerable conflict of interest, given his close connection to Musk's SpaceX.In short, NASA has lost a tremendous amount of goodwill among its staff, meaning that Isaacman will ultimately be tasked with picking up the pieces. Whether he'll manage to right the ship and effectively lead an agency that's still planning to visit the surface of the Moon before the end of the decade? That might be a moonshot.Share This Article

The AI industry has been a roller coaster ride, to put it lightly. Selling promises of an automation revolution, startups and established tech giantsearly-adoption disasters, Wall Street burnouts, and a huge drop in support for AI from businesses around the globe.Now, the sector faces its toughest challenge yet: the first ever pure-play AI startup to go public, CoreWeave.Once an unknown player in the AI space, CoreWeave's basic pitch is to provide processing infrastructure to AI companies. The startup rose to prominence on the back of deep-pocketed tech investors like Mark Klein, whose $25 million stake started an avalanche of investments from tech firms, hedge funds, and venture capitalists.To those financiers, CoreWeave represents the "picks and shovels of the AI universe," making this IPO a bellwether for future AI public offerings, as well as the health of the turbulent tech market more broadly. Though investors hope CoreWeave is to the AI revolution what Levi's jeans were to the gold rush, the reality is looking closer to the disastrous WeWork IPO.Initially meant to go public last week at a valuation of $35 billion, CoreWeave has since stalled its bid and signaled interest in dramatically scaling back its value. It's now cutting its share prices down to the tune of a $23 billion valuation, according toSemafor, which notes that the company's stock will begin trading tomorrow.However, a quick peek under the hood reveals a company that's far from ready for an IPO, let alone one this size, let alone one with the future of an entire industry riding on it. As tech critic Ed Zitron notes, the company's form S-1 something of a body cavity searchexplosive growth" in the AI industry, and whose present is propped up by a single customer."CoreWeaves S-1 tells the tale of a company that appears to be built for collapse, with over 60percent of its revenue dependent on one customer, Microsoft," writes Zitron.Though that kind of tie-in with a tech monopoly could have benefits for a young company like CoreWeave, it also comes with huge risks, not least of which is that Microsoft cancels its contract and leaves it for dead.That risk looked a little too real earlier this month, when theFinancial Times reported that Microsoft had withdrawn from a number of formal agreements with the AI infrastructure company due to delivery problems and missed deadlines. CoreWeave has since denied that the tech giant reneged on any of its contracts, though that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft is slashing data center leases across the US and Europe.Any hope investors have for CoreWeave's longevity is now riding on a recent OpenAI partnership and an eleventh-hour cash injection by Nvidia the microchip giant that desperately needs this IPO to work to stay afloat long enough for the "AI revolution" to play out.How it all goes tomorrow is anyone's guess. As Zitron notes, the entire venture is built on the dream that generative AI will become both a massive, profitable industry, and one that depends on massive data processing centers to thrive. That dream is looking more elusive by the day, as China's DeepSeek model squashes support for the kind of AI development CoreWeave represents, and AI profits largelyremain a fantasy.With everything riding against it, CoreWeave should applaud itself for getting this far. As Zitron puts it: "if this company was in any other industry, it would be seen as [utterly rancid]. Except, its one of the standard bearers of the generative AI boom, and so, it exists within its own reality distortion field. "Share This Article

We're on week two of the fallout from the Signal group chat scandal and apparently, there's a lot more where that came from.Reporters at Germany'sDer Spiegel have, as the newspaper reported, uncovered private contact information for defense secretary Pete Hegseth, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Donald Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz the same guy who added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to that damningly insecure groupchat where plans to bomb Yemen were discussed.ThoughSpiegel newspaper didn't publish any of the information, its reporting indicates that their phone numbers, emails, and even some of their passwords were pretty easy to find. And they didn't have to go particularly deep, either:the reporters used a popular "people search" engine they didn't identify which, but PeopleFinders.com is a big name in that shady game and leaked password databases.As the paper notes, Hegseth's data was by far the easiest to access, though Waltz was apparently an easy second. After engaging the people search site, the reporters were sent cell phone numbers and email addresses for the two officials, and cross-references on leaked file databases revealed that both of their passwords had been exposed repeatedly in hacks that were later made public.The reporters were also able to connect the phone number provided for Hegseth they were provided to a WhatsApp account. Though it had recently been deleted, a profile photo wasstill visible, and it showed a shirtless man that is almost certainly the defense secretary.Though Gabbard's information was more locked down than her colleagues,Spiegel was still able to find her email address on WikiLeaks and Reddit. That same address was contained in at least ten leaked data caches that also included a partial telephone number purportedly linked to a WhatsApp and Signal account for the director of national intelligence.Representatives for both Waltz and Gabbard told Spiegel that the information contained in the leaked databases was old and didn't reflect any of their active accounts. When reporters attempted to contact the officials on the messaging apps, however, confirmation functions showed that the missives had been delivered suggesting at very least that the accounts associated with their alleged phone numbers were still active. The Pentagon did not, the paper noted, respond to any requests for comment.On one level, this story is a chilling reminder of how easy it is to get anyone's information with a bit of money and elbow grease. If overseas reporters were so readily able to access the emails, phone numbers, and passwords of the highest-ranking American national security officials, how easy must it be to find out private information about regular people?On another, however, it underscores the resounding sense that of all the people, members of the national security council including the one who oversees all of our spies should know better. Did they not conduct a thorough sweep of leaked data before entering office? Is the entire US defense and intelligence apparatus not a match for sketchy data broker sites? Has anyone else gotten this information or worse, used it?"Their personal phones are all hackable," one former White House official told Politico of the debacle. "Its highly likely foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the shit out."Thus far, there hasn't been any public response from the Trump administration about this latest egregious security hole discovered by gumshoe reporters. Given the nothingburger response to the Signal story, however, we don't expect there to be any accountability.More on the groupchat heard 'round the world: Before He Sent War Plans in a Non-Secure Groupchat, the Head of the Pentagon Said People Who Did That Should Be FiredShare This Article

Standup comedian Bill Burr has turned the press tour for his latest Hulu special into a massive roast of Elon Musk and he isn't pulling any punches.Given the comedian's prominence, it's yet another sign that anti-Musk sentiment is reaching new heights as the CEOattempts to dismantle the federal government and makes plenty of offensive comments, sparking discussions about a coup and a surge in fascism in the United States.Now open derision for Musk is earning major applause and air time, both in progressive circles and Burr's more working class fan base as well.Last week, Burr accused the richest man in the world of dressing "like he just got out of a Hot Topic," during an interview with Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show.""Like you were a f*cking nerd, nobody banged you and now you have hair plugs in your laminated face," he said. "Everybody is afraid of these nerds, I don't get it. They're horrible, heartless people."Burr also accused Musk of wanting to leave the Earth behind while ignoring the existential threats humanity is facing back home a common criticism lobbied at the entrepreneur."And I think Elon has got the rockets going because they realize there's other earths out there," he said on The ViewDuring an NPR radio appearance earlier this month, the standup took aim at the mercurial CEO for inciting a surge in far-right extremism with two Hitler salutes during Trump's inauguration celebration."Like, I just refuse to believe that it was an accidental two-time Seigheil," he said. "And he does it at a presidential inauguration."Burr then accused liberals of opting to flee the country instead of fighting back."I'm just like, you're going to leave the country 'cause of one guy with dyed hair plugs and a laminated face who... makes a bad car and has an obsolete social media platform?" he fumed on NPR. "You're going to leave this why doesn't he leave? Why isn't he stopped? What are we so afraid of this guy who can't fight his way out of a wet paper bag?"Burr has had it out for the one percent for years. In January, he went viral after shouting "free Luigi" during a late-night appearance, referring to Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO and millionaire Brian Thompson.In December, Burr called Thompson a "gangster" during a podcast appearance."And then one of them gets whacked or something and [the media are] like 'Oh my god, he was such a good guy," he said.Meanwhile, Burr's latest tirade against Musk proved extremely unpopular on the latter's social media platform X-formerly-Twitter, with users accusing him of "going woke" and "pandering to the racist pigs on 'The View.'"Others made distasteful comments about the appearance of his wife.A quick search on Bluesky, however, leads to largely flattering discussions of Burr's Broadway debut."I love Bill Burr," one user wrote. "Hes like if my uncles werent racist.""Bill Burr seems happier than Elon Musk to me," another user argued.While it's certainly not resonating with every American, Burr's comments highlight a visceral disdain toward Musk's most recent actions and a greater disillusionment with having a tiny number of highly influential "broligarchs" running the country."These super rich people want to keep the water boiling, which I don't think is what we need right now," Burr told the Boston Globe last week."This is such a great country," he added. " Are we really going to ruin it because five guys are competing to be the first trillionaire?"Share This Article

Right after OpenAI debuted its new GPT-4o image generation capabilities, tech bros flooded the internet with AI-made cartoons memes imitating the style of the iconic Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli.The wave of ersatz Ghibli art was inescapable in AI spheres. One particularly viral example depicted JFK's assassination. Many have uploaded personal photos to be redrawn into a still from a Ghibli movie.Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman join in on the fun, tweeting a joke about the trend and changing his profile picture to a Ghibli-style image of what appears to be himself, done up to look like one of the young, wide-eyed protagonists in the studio's movies.Then came the minor setback in the plot. Despite the trend seemingly getting Altman's personal blessing, it appears that ChatGPT has started refusing requests to generate images in Ghibli's style, Business Insider reports.This was joined by widespread user complaints on social media that the AI platformis no longer playing along with their prompts to ape the animation studio.There is significant ambiguity, however, over whether this was an intentional intervention by OpenAI.With its latest GPT-4o powered image generator, OpenAI has emphasized its robust guardrails around depicting real people. In regards to style, however, it takes a more laissez-faire stance."Our goal is to give users as much creative freedom as possible," an OpenAI spokesperson . "We continue to prevent generations in the style of individual living artists, but we do permit broader studio styles."The Studio Ghibli trend greatly challenges this stance. In one sense, its distinct visual mode falls under a "broader studio style." But what people widely understand to be the Ghibli aesthetic was pioneered by animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, who directed and animated the vast majority of Ghibli's most well-known films and is very much a living artist.In light of the reports that ChatGPT has started refusing Ghibli prompts, we reached out to OpenAI seeking clarification on whether it implemented additional guardrails.An OpenAI spokesperson responded with the same statement the company had provided to other outlets, which we quoted above. The spokesperson didn't address if OpenAI had instructed the chatbot to refuse Ghibli requests.In our own tests, when queried if GPT-4o has restrictions on generating images in the style of Studio Ghibli, ChatGPT replied: "Yes, GPT-4o has restrictions on generating images in the style of Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli's art style is copyrighted, and I can't create images that explicitly mimic it. However, I can generate images inspired by similar themes."Separately, an update Altman shared online today suggested that this is all some sort of mix-up, saying that "we are refusing some generations that should be allowed; we are fixing these as fast we can."Again, no direct mention is made of the Ghibli trend. More than a few of the replies to Altman's update are from fans inquiring about using Ghibli's style.In any case, the dust is yet to settle. The Ghibli trend has provoked nearly as much backlash as it has inspired eager participation. The effrontery of the rampant AI imitations is heightened by Miyazaki's personal views on the use of AI in art he famously called it an "insult to life itself.""Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted," Miyazaki said in a 2016 documentary. "If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."By now, Miyazaki's stance on the technology is well-known in both tech and art circles. And so is his dedication to environmentalism, which generative AI, with its gruesome carbon footprint and excessive water wastage, is virtually the antithesis of. It's likely that many who are gleefully peddling facsimiles of his life's work are aware of this. After all, that is what generative AI excels at: imitating.Share This Article

The internet has been flooded with pictures modified by OpenAI's new image tool to evoke the style of animation legend Hayao Miyazaki's work at Studio Ghibli.Despite going mega-viral to the point where OpenAI took down the free version of its in-app image generator the trend flies directly in the face of the animator's personal views on the tech. In a 2016 documentary, the filmmaker was shown a demo of an AI-animated 3D model."I am utterly disgusted," he said at the time, arguing that the demo reminded him of a friend with a disability. "If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.""I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself," he fulminated.The latest trend spawned countless images that went viral, from Ghibli renditions of the JFK assassinationto the photo that showed Donald Trump hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein and, of course, 9/11.While it's far from the first time a generative AI-inspired trend has gone viral on the social media platform, the extent to which the Ghibli meme has taken off is notable.Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wasn't spared, complaining in a Wednesday tweet that "no one" cared about his career until you "wake up one day to hundreds of messages: 'look i made you into a twink ghibli style haha.'""My timeline is AGI," Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque quipped with a joke about artificial general intelligence. "All. Ghibli. Images."Even famous retired boxer Mike Tyson uploaded a Ghibli-fied rendition of his own likeness while holding a white pigeon.Besides directly opposing the views and wishes of its creator, the trend also highlights the continued debate surrounding copyright and the overall rights of human artists and publishers.As 404 Media found, it's also trivially easy to generate pictures of far more graphic images in the style of Studio Ghibli movies, demonstrating OpenAI's woefully inadequate implementation of guardrails.It's an unfortunate new reality, greatly denigrating the iconic, hard work of human animators."Imagine being Miyazaki, pouring decades of heart and soul into making this transcendent beautiful tender style of anime, and then seeing it get sloppified by linear algebra," one user tweeted.Other users also pointed out generative AI's infamous strain on the environment ironic, given many of Studio Ghibli's films are about humanity's disregard for the planet and ecosystem."Irony is dead and all but its pretty depressing to see Ghibli AI slop on the timeline not only because Miyazaki famously thinks AI art is disgusting but because hes spent the last 50 years making art about environmental waste for petty human uses," another user tweeted.Share This Article

In recent years, the financial technology sector has been making bank. Between 2018 and 2023, the rapidly growing "fintech" industry rose to over $39 billion in revenue, with projections to hit over $1.5 trillion by 2030.Fintech is a sweeping industry that offers money tech to financial institutions or individual users and increasingly crypto services, itself amulti-billion dollartrade.But with crypto comes risk. Alot of risk. Despite some fintech tycoons'promises that crypto will enable "infinite growth," companies are brushing up against the limits of blockchain hype faster than they anticipated.The latest among them is Block, the financial service conglomerate owned by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey. Block encompasses massive fintech platforms like Cash App and Square, as well as more boutique crypto outfits like Bitkey, a digital crypto wallet started in 2023.Now the company is seeing brutal cuts. In an email titled "smaller block," according to TechCrunch, the company's billionaire CEO announced the layoffs of 931 Block employees, or about 8 percent of the company's total staff."hi all," the hip all-lowercase message opens, dripping in authenticity the way only a CEO's email can. "today well be making some org changes, including eliminating roles and beginning the consultation process in countries where required."Dorsey proceeds to announce immediate layoffs and an overhaul to Block's managerial strategies, including 80 manager layoffs and 193 demotions from manager to "individual contributor roles." It also includes the immediate closure of some 748 open jobs that Block had been hiring for."thank you to all those leaving us," the CEO concludes. "we will continue to honor [your work] by increasing our value to our customers, and therefore to all of our shareholders, including you."Though Dorsey cryptically insists that the layoffs are meant to flatten the "org so we can move faster and with less abstraction," the moves come as Block's ambitions dramatically shift from crypto makework to buy-now-pay-later schemes, a growing trend in the fintech sector. In that sense, the layoffs are probably a sign that the blockchain hype train which Dorsey eagerly jumped aboard back in 2021 was too good to be true.In November of 2024, for example, Dorsey announced he was "winding down" Block's crypto-arm, known TBD, which is now in a permanent state of "wound down," according to its website. It was a telling moment, as Dorsey once hailed TBD as the frontier of decentralized digital currency, drawing investment cash from around the world.Luckily for the remaining Block employees, predatory loans are Dorsey's bread and butter. In 2023, a scathing report by Hindenburg Research claimed that Block had dramatically overhyped its user counts, facilitated fraud, and preyed on low-income users. Though Cash App marketing hailed the platform's "instant deposit" feature as "magic," the report claims it was really a form of predatory payday loan that fueled upwards of 31 percent of the app's revenue."The 'magic' behind Blocks business has not been disruptive innovation," the report reads, "but rather the companys willingness to facilitate fraud against consumers and the government, avoid regulation, dress up predatory loans and fees as revolutionary technology, and mislead investors with inflated metrics."That in mind, maybe the best way to look at Block's layoffs isn't an end to the crypto boom, but a return to a time-tested fintech model.The CEO should be set either way, as the report summarized at the time: "in the meantime, Dorsey and top executives already sold over $1 billion in equity near the top, ensuring they will be fine regardless of the outcome for everyone else.More on FinTech: Elon Searching for Investors Gullible Enough to Pour More Money Into TwitterShare This Article

Sam Altman the Stanford University dropout turned VC-backed tech billionaire just can't catch a break.Though the 39-year-old startup tycoon has multi-million dollar mansions in Hawaii, San Francisco, and Napa, the personal favor of president Donald Trump, and enough luxury cars to make an NBA player blush, he still comes short on the one thing money can't buy: respect.After announcing a ChatGPT update that substantially upgrades the service's image-generating capabilities, Altman posted a semi-ironic status reflecting on the last ten years of his career. When you're Sam Altman, he claimed, "everyone hates you for everything," despite "grinding for a decade trying to help make superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever."It's a tough life for a guy worth about $1.2 billion, enough to give about 417,000 low-income kids healthcare for a year, or cover the rent for nearly 125,000 public housing units.To make matters worse, fanboys are using his AI to sloppify his face into Studio Ghibli-style memes probably ChatGPT's most useful feature so far. When you're Altman, he whines, you "wake up one day to hundreds of messages: 'look i made you into a twink Ghibli style haha [sic].'" Rough break, man.It's not the first time the tech titan has blown off steam on social media. During a public spat with Elon Musk earlier this year, the ChatGPT CEO faced an onslaught of harassment from the world's richest man."Just one more mean tweet and then maybe you'll love yourself," Altman quipped at the time. He later got a little more personal, pining that "probably [Musk's] whole life is from a position of insecurity... I don't think he's a happy person."Dueling egos notwithstanding, there's a certainly a glimmer of irony there. Whether it's enough to offset that gnawing feeling of dread the tycoon feels every day is another story.Broadly speaking, the immense influence of powerful billionaires like Altman is a symptom of growing wealth inequality in the US. But when it comes to tech billionaires, it's evidently not enough to hoard money and influence like a feudal lord they want to be worshipped, too.As tech critic Stephen Moore puts it: "instead of disappearing to enjoy a quiet life sleeping on a mattress of $100 bills, they continue to force themselves into the limelight, desperate to keep themselves relevant, desperate to feel worshipped by the bootlickers... why can't they just make their money and f*ck off?"More on Sam Altman: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Has Run Out of GPUsShare This Article

Six people have been reported dead.Deep DiveYet another submarine has gone missing though this time, it wasn't headed to visit the wreck of the Titanicat the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.This time, a vessel with 45 Russian tourists on board sank off the coast of a tourist resort in Hurghada, Egypt, in the Red Sea. As the BBC reports, at least six of the passengers are feared dead, with nine injured and 29 rescued.According to a Russian official in the area, at least five Russians were killed, two of whom were children. Two municipal officials told the Associated Press that six people had died.The submersible was reportedly organized by underwater tourism company Sindbad Submarines, which has been operating in the area for years. Its vessels can dive to maximum depths of around 82 feet, allowing tourists to "experience the beauty of the Red Seas underwater world without getting wet," per the company's website,which appears to be down following the tragedy.To put that number into perspective, that's orders of magnitude shallower than the approximately 12,500 feet at which the domed OceanGate submersible implodedin 2023.Plenty of questions remain, and an immediate cause for the disaster has yet to be identified. It's nonetheless a terrifying incident, highlighting the dangers of embarking on these kinds of trips and, possibly, lax safety measures that could've prevented it.Sinking ShipsThere have been similar incidents in recent months.In November, 44 people on board a tourist yacht sank near a different Egyptian resort called Marsa Allam. Eleven people were presumed dead, per the BBC.And last month, a different tourist diving boat capsized in rough weather near Hurghada with six people on board.The latest disaster, which happened during light winds and calm waters, has raised concerns over safety standards in Egypt regarding seafaring vessels.The country is facing a "crisis on at the moment, in terms of safety on some of these tourist vessels," Southampton University oceanographer Simon Boxall told the BBC.More on submersibles: The Doomed Subs Final Messages Before Imploding Are Pretty GrimShare This Article

The teenage Department of Government Efficiency employee who goes by the online moniker of no, we are not kidding "Big Balls" once helped out a serious cybercrime ring, .In 2022, when he was still in high school, the now 19-year-old Edward Coristine ran a company called DiamondCDN that provided a type of web service known as a content delivery network. One of its users was a website belonging to a group of cybercriminals known as "EGodly," which openly bragged about trafficking stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent. (DiamondCDN probably attracted the hacking outfit because its website promised it had "no business inspecting user content.")Ruthless hackers they may be, the "EGodly" blackhats were courteous enough to let Coristine know just how much they appreciated his company's help."We extend our gratitude to our valued partners DiamondCDN for generously providing us with their amazing DDoS protection and caching systems, which allow us to securely host and safeguard our website," the cybercriminal ring wrote in a Telegram message, as quoted by Reuters.Coristine, and his irreverent nickname, have become emblematic of Elon Musk's DOGE effort to blitzkrieg the federal government with next to no oversight. Plenty of scrutiny has been cast on the qualifications of its extraordinarily young staff, who are nonetheless being granted alarming access to sensitive federal systems, with high positions in government to boot. Coristine, for instance, is listed as a "senior adviser" at the State Department and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Reuters found.Seemingly, little has been done to vet these arch-auditors. One resigned and then was rehired after his incredibly racist tweets surfaced. Another, it was discovered, professionally sold ketamine. Coristine himself was once fired by a cybersecurity firm for leaking its company secrets.Now you can add another skeleton to Coristine's formidable closet. The cybercriminal group that his firm provided services to, EGodly, has claimed that it's stolen crypto, hijacked phone numbers, and broken into law enforcement email accounts in Latin America and Eastern Europe. These claims couldn't be independently verified by Reuters.What is verifiable, however, was that the group targeted a former FBI agent who it believed was investigating them. It began by digging up and sharig personal information on the agent, like where he lived, according to Reuters. Eventually, one member filmed themselves driving past his house, screaming "EGodly says you're a bitch!"According to the former agent, the FBI was investigating Egodly because of its connection to swatting, or calling in a fake emergency so that law enforcement send a heavily armed team to a location."These are bad folks," the former FBI agent said. "They're not a pleasant group."While it doesn't appear that Coristine was deeply involved with the group, that this suspect part of his history seemingly didn't preclude him from tampering with federal systems should be alarming."This stuff was not in the distant past," Nitin Natarajan, who served as the deputy director of CISA under president Joe Biden, told Reuters. "The recency of the activity and the types of groups he was associated would definitely be concerning."Share This Article

For years now, experts have warned of an AI bubbleset to burst.So far, companies have continued to pour tens of billions of dollars into building out massive data centers to meet the demands of increasingly power-hungry AI models.Whether the sector will continue to grow or find itself in for a rude awakening is anyone's guess. But something striking is that we're starting to see even tech executives worried that the massive spending could collapse under its own weight. Sluggish demand could struggle to keep up with a rapidly rising supply side, a lopsided equation that has executives freaked out.Despite having committed to spend more than $52 billion on AI development over the next three years, Chinese tech giant Alibaba's chairman Joe Tsai is now warning of a potential bubble starting to form in AI data center construction, Bloomberg reports. During an event in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Tsai said that many of these projects are being constructed without clear customers in mind."I start to see the beginning of some kind of bubble," Tsai said, as quoted by Bloomberg.Alibaba shares slid by almost four percent today in response to the news.Perhaps one of the biggest warning signs so far was the explosive emergence of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which left Silicon Valley in shambles after creating a top-tier AI at a tiny fraction of the cost of its Western counterparts.The company's announcement of its reasoning model, which could keep up with OpenAI's most advanced offerings, triggered a more than $1 trillion selloff, with spooked investors wondering whether they had grossly overpaid the likes of OpenAI and Meta for years.Despite the massive shakeup, companies continue to pour astronomical sums into the construction of data centers. Just weeks into his second term, president Donald Trump announced abehemoth $500 billion AI infrastructure project, dubbed Stargate, with significant buy-in from OpenAI, investment company SoftBank, tech giant Oracle, andAbu Dhabi state-run AI fund MGX.Last week, news emerged that the project's first data center complex in the small Texas city of Abilene would have enough space for as many as 400,000 Nvidia AI chips, which would make it one of the biggest known clusters of AI computing power when completed by mid-2026.But to Tsai, it remains to be seen whether that kind of spending is actually warranted."I start to get worried when people are building data centers on spec," he said this week. "There are a number of people coming up, funds coming out, to raise billions or millions of capital."Outside of Trump's Stargate, Amazon committed $100 billion to build out AI infrastructure. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged $65 billion for this year, while Google parent company Alphabet will invest $75 billion.To Tsai, that could be a terrible idea in the long run."Im still astounded by the type of numbers thats being thrown around in the United States about investing into AI," he said at this week's event."People are talking, literally talking about $500 billion, several 100 billion dollars. I dont think thats entirely necessary," he added. "I think in a way, people are investing ahead of the demand that theyre seeing today, but they are projecting much bigger demand."More on AI overspending: Microsoft Backing Out of Expensive New Data Centers After Its CEO Expressed Doubt About AI ValueShare This Article

Tesla is being forced to change the name of its so-called "Full Self-Driving" driver assistance feature in China.As spotted by Electrek, the Elon Musk-led company is now going by the name "Intelligent Assisted Driving" in Chinese on its website.The news comes days after the carmaker abruptly suspended a free trial of its infamous software in China."All parties are actively advancing the relevant process and we will push it to you as soon as it is ready," Tesla's customer support account wrote on Chinese social media platform Weibo, as translated byReuters. "We are also looking forward to it, please wait patiently."Tesla has run into major headwinds while trying to roll out the software in China, where regulators can have a heavier hand than in the United States. Last month, insider sources told the Financial Times that Chinese regulators had informed them that the timeline for FSD approval was "indefinite," despite previously indicating that it would be approved by this spring.The software itself appears to be suffering from some potentially dangerous flaws. Drivers had been testing the software before it was paused on public streets in China, racking up a huge number of fines. Chinese Tesla owners have found that the system is misinterpreting bike lanes as right turn lanes, running red lights, and hogging bus lanes illegally, as Electrek reported last month.The carmaker has already run afoul of regulators for its misleading naming convention after all, as Tesla admits on its website, the "Full Self-Driving" feature doesn't make good on its promise of fully autonomous driving and requires drivers to be ready to take over at all times.In 2022, the California DMV alleged that Tesla put out "untrue or misleading" advertisements on its website in relation to its Full Self-Driving and Autopilot tech. In 2023, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg also called out the company, saying that the name of the system lacks "common sense."However, Tesla still uses both monikers in its marketing materials in the US and many other parts of the world.Besides changing the FSD feature's name tobetter reflect reality, Tesla also removed the word "Autopilot" from the Chinese name, according to Electrek. The entry-level software, which is included in the base price of the vehicle, is now called "Basic Assisted Driving."In short, it's a change that Tesla should've made worldwide years ago. For almost a decade, Tesla has been marketing its driver assistance software using misleading language.That's likely already had severe consequences. US regulators have linked the carmaker's software to hundreds of collisions and dozens of deaths, warning that Tesla's marketing is lulling its customers into a false sense of security.Where that leaves Tesla's attempts to bring its driver assistance features to the Chinese market remains to be seen. There's a good chance the latest name change signifies Tesla falling in line with the demands of Chinese regulators.The company is still committed to rolling out the software in the country, pending regulatory approval but that's turning out to be a lot easier said than done.Share This Article

OpenAI is rolling out brand new image generation capabilities for ChatGPT. And guess what? It finally almost nails text.Until now, the chatbot used the company's separate DALL-E model to dream up pictures. With this latest update, users will be able to access a new feature dubbed "Images in ChatGPT," leveraging OpenAI's flagship GPT-4o model, which has underpinned the chatbot for nearly a year. The upgrade is also available in Sora, OpenAI's video generation tool."This model is a step change above previous models," research lead Gabriel Goh .The most noticeable change is how the model handles text, something that it and its competitors have long struggled with. Words tended to come out looking like gobbledygook, and the text that was legible looked sloppy, filled with formatting errors and misspellings.Not anymore, according to OpenAI. One example shared by the company shows an employee writing out the pros and cons of the ChatGPT image update on a whiteboard, following to the letter what was specified in the prompt; ditto for a four-panel comic strip about a snail all with cleanly rendered text."This was just like a process of iteration that took many, many months to get right," Goh told The Verge. "It's been just many months of small improvements." The model still struggles with very small lettering, but overall, the text quality is consistently usable, Goh said.Unlike image generators like DALL-E, which use a diffusion model, GPT-4o uses an autoregressive approach that produces images from left to right and top to bottom, per The Verge, similar to how text at least in English is written.Beyond improved penmanship, OpenAI says the model will now follow instructions better, as a common issue with older iterations was that they'd ignore certain details in lengthier prompts. It's also been fine-tuned to be able to generate more photorealistic images.There are caveats. For one, it'll take longer to generate the outputs. And like all generative models, it's still prone to making up information, or hallucinating. It also struggles with generating non-Latin scripts, hallucinating characters when trying to write out languages like Korean.With greater capabilities come greater safety and misinformation concerns. To this end, OpenAI stressed that it has particularly "robust safeguards" in place around nudity, violence, and depictions of real people. Moreover, all images that the AI model generates will be embedded with C2PA metadata identifying that it was made with GPT-4o. But this hidden watermark of sorts can easily be stripped in fact, many social media platforms automatically remove an image's metadata once it's uploaded."Ultimately, no system is perfect for this type of thing, but we're continuously improving our safeguards and we think of this as a starting point," ChatGPT multimodal product lead Jackie Shannon told The Verge.For now, GPT-4o image generation is only available to subscribers of OpenAI's ludicrous $200 per month Pro subscription tier, with plans to roll out the feature to Plus and free users in the near future.Share This Article