A computer science student is behind a new AI tool designed to track down Redditors showing signs of radicalization and deploy bots to “deradicalize” them through conversation.  First reported by 404 Media, PrismX was built by Sairaj Balaji, a computer science student at SRMIST in Chennai, India. The tool works by analyzing posts for specific keywords and patterns associated with extreme views, giving those users a “radical score.” High scorers are then targeted by AI bots programmed to attempt deradicalization through engaging the user in conversation.  According to the federal government, the primary terror threat to the U.S. now is individuals radicalized to violence online through social media. At the same time, fears around surveillance technology and artificial intelligence infiltrating online communities pose an ethical minefield.  Responding to concerns, Balaji clarified in a Linkedin post that the conversation part of the tool has not been tested on real Reddit users without consent. Instead, the scoring and conversation elements were used in simulated environments for research-purposes only.  “The tool was designed to provoke discussion, not controversy,” he explained in the post. “We’re at a point in history where rogue actors and nation-states are already deploying weaponized AI. If a college student can build something like PrismX, it raises urgent questions: Who’s watching the watchers?” While Balaji doesn’t claim to be an expert in deradicalization, as an engineer, he is interested in the ethical implications of surveillance technology. “Discomfort sparks debate. Debate leads to oversight. And oversight is how we prevent the misuse of emerging technologies,” he continued.  This isn’t the first time Redditors have been used as guinea pigs in recent months. Just last month, researchers from the University of Zurich faced intense backlash after experimenting on an unsuspecting subreddit.  The research involved deploying AI-powered bots into the r/ChangeMyView subreddit, which positions itself as a “place to post an opinion you accept may be flawed”, in an experiment to see if AI could be used to change peoples’ minds. When Redditors, and Reddit itself, found out they were being experimented on without their knowledge, they weren’t impressed.  Reddit’s chief legal officer, Ben Lee, wrote in a post that neither Reddit nor the r/changemyview mods knew about the experiment ahead of time. “What this University of Zurich team did is deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level,” Lee wrote. “It violates academic research and human rights norms, and is prohibited by Reddit’s user agreement and rules, in addition to the subreddit rules.”  While PrismX is not currently being tested on real unconsenting users, it piles on the ever-growing question of the role of artificial intelligence in human spaces. 

Who says that virtual reality (VR) is limited to gaming? Not Cas and Chary. Our team had the absolute pleasure of collaborating with the renowned duo on the Unity-sponsored YouTube video, AWESOME things to do in VR that’s NOT gaming.More than virtual reality’s reigning cutest couple, Cas and Chary are deeply passionate about showing how technology can improve our lives today – and shape the future. Here are just a few applications of Unity mentioned in the video that demonstrate how.During Cas and Chary’s segment on how VR can change the way we travel, they explored the Great Pyramids of Giza in Emissive’s Horizon of Khufu. This experience was designed in partnership with Peter Der Manuelian, professor of Egyptology and his team at the Giza Project at Harvard University. On the experience, CEO of Emissive Fabien Barati shared, “We are thrilled by the success of Horizon of Khufu. Both entertaining and educational, it shows how VR can be appealing to a wide audience.”With several years of research and data collected onsite, they managed to produce an immersive VR landscape that allows you to freely roam and discover one of the Seven Wonders of the World. A small group of us at Unity actually had the opportunity to try it at a pop-up in New York City, and we can confirm that it’s as magical as it sounds.“We are thrilled by the success of Horizon of Khufu. Both entertaining and educational, it shows how VR can be appealing to a wide audience.” – Fabien Barati, CEO of EmissiveTo quote Cas in the video, “You want a window that looks out to the universe? Done. You want five TVs instead of one? Done!” That’s where Custom Home Mapper comes in.It takes a one-to-one map of your home and brings it into the metaverse in three simple steps:Trace out the perimeter of your home.Mark out large objects, such as your couch or bed.Set your anchor, and you’re ready to start customizing your home for VR mini golf, or just about anything else you can imagine!The solo developer behind this SideQuest project, Ryan, explains why he created the app: “To help people experience real freedom of movement in VR. It was a joy to try and solve these unique, creative problems of multi-room gameplay and social home interactions.”Ryan acknowledges “The tremendous amount of support received from enthusiastic users who wanted to see the same dream realized… Couldn’t have asked for a more interesting project to keep busy with during Covid lockdowns!”We’ve been fans of Rezzil for a while now and couldn’t wait to introduce the app to Cas and Chary. Rezzil uses a VR headset with both eye- and feet-tracking to register a player’s skill level in a particular sport.Rezzil’s suite of drills helps athletes achieve excellence in specific modalities they need to improve. And it doesn’t end there: Rezzil puts players back into past matches so they can understand where there’s room to improve their performance. Top clubs like Manchester United F.C. and the Atlanta Falcons of the NFL are using the app, and while the team at Rezzil can’t say who, we know that at least five World Cup teams took the app with them to the competition.Our friends at Cause + Christi XR worked with six-time Emmy Award winner, Baobab Studios, to build a custom social VR world for the red carpet premiere of Baba Yaga. Daisy Ridley and Jennifer Hudson brought some star power to the virtual event and even took photos with fans in AltspaceVR.As Cas points out, doing premieres this way is fun and gives anyone with internet access and a headset the chance to join in. That’s our kind of guest list.BraVeR is doing something pretty spectacular. With intentionally designed VR spaces, this team is working to help people overcome their fears. All of the levels and tasks in BraVeR are tested by experts and users alike, and based on proven methods and studies to help people cope with their anxieties. Each of BraVeR’s unique spaces centers on a fear to offer a mutually challenging yet enjoyable experience.In the words of Moshe Radman, CEO of BraVeR, “I saw that there is a huge technological change coming at us and decided to use this change for good. Mental health is a great place to start. As I dug in more and more, I found out that this is an inefficient and overloaded market. But VR can radically help take the load off and make mental health-related solutions more accessible.”“VR can radically help take the load off and make mental health-related solutions more accessible.” – Moshe Radman, CEO of BraVeRWe can’t wait to see how extended reality (XR) will shape the future of product design and prototyping. One of the apps that gets us super excited about this is ShapesXR. Gabriele Romagnoli and his team created a product that’s intuitive to use, even for beginners in the XR space.Visualizing your thoughts with 3D sketching enables you to communicate in a way that isn’t really possible with traditional methods. Safe to say that Cas and Chary are thrilled with the app.“We’ve been in the XR space since 2015 and have seen that creatives still have a hard time contributing their skills and knowledge to this new world. We created ShapesXR with the mission to empower designers and any non-developers to ideate, design, and prototype immersive apps,” states Gabriele Romagnoli, Founder of ShapesXR.“Some of our users call us ‘the Figma for 3D and immersive’ and it is actually very spot on. ShapesXR is, in fact, easy to pick up, and you can mock up interactions in a way that is fully collaborative. We strongly believe that working together and being able to effectively communicate your ideas in real-time is the key to success.”For the construction folk among us, it’s impressive to see how Arkio has made it so much easier to design interiors, sketch buildings, and craft environments with our hands.As Cas says in the video, “It supports the right tools for the industry and it’s really, really powerful.” With Arkio, the only limit is your imagination.Transfr trains people for well-paying careers in high-demand fields. It enables learners to find secure jobs currently available and facilitates their upward mobility thanks to immersive, hands-on VR training.With complete VR courses, tailored to audiences at diverse educational institutions and companies, Transfr puts participants in simulations that teach real-world skills relevant to their career paths. They even include tests that are reviewed by instructors in specific fields. When Cas gave it a try, she had a blast learning about autobody tools.“There is so much undiscovered and underdeveloped talent in our world. These high-potential individuals are often passed over because they lack access to the training needed for well-paying careers at great companies,” says Bharani Rajakumar, CEO of Transfr.“VR allows us to deliver on-the-job training at a massive scale to support the economic development needs of different communities, so that employers get what they want, a highly skilled workforce – and we get what we want, a pathway to upward mobility. By working with everyone in the ecosystem, from customers to technologists, we are creating pathways, from classroom to career, that can help workers and learners access new skills and a better quality of life.”We’d like to see more XR experiences created for younger generations. After all, they hold the future of these technologies.That’s why the Kai XR platform is so exciting. Created by educators, it provides students with the ability to explore the world of immersive tech. Schools, libraries, and extracurricular programs like summer camps across the United States are using the platform to show students what’s possible with XR.According to Kai XR CEO Kai Frazier, “Kai XR works with a wide variety of students ranging from those at juvenile detention centers to charter schools. Some students are expert coders while others don’t know what coding is. From working with a range of experiences, I wanted to create a makerspace that lets all students dive into their imaginations, and doesn’t limit them due to schools lacking the tools or experience to create. All of their ideas are valuable and it’s great to see what they create in our drag-and-drop Metaverse Makerspace, Kai XR Create.”“I wanted to create a makerspace that lets all students dive into their imaginations, and doesn’t limit them due to schools lacking the tools or experience to create.” – Kai Frazier, CEO of Kai XRThe combined forces of Varjo Technologies and Volvo have done some stellar work with Unity. The two companies first came together to create a digital twin of the entire car factory – Volvo’s own metaverse. Engineers and designers can now show each other exactly what they envision in VR with an interactive 3D model.As Cas states in the video, this has resulted in improved collaboration, faster design iteration, and accelerated development. Working together in the metaverse, from start to finish, has been beneficial for Volvo, and it could not have happened without the incredible people at Varjo.And now, it’s time to enjoy more awesome things you can do in VR outside of gaming. Let Cas and Chary take it away.Are you using Unity for something other than games?If you’re using Unity for a unique project, give us a shout on social media.Follow Unity for Digital Twins on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. For more on Unity for Digital Twins, check out our recent demo or our new kickstarter package.

Image: MarvelousHaving trouble deciding who to romance in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma? Well fear not, as Marvelous has a solution for you — timeline and world hopping (thanks Siliconera!). No, we're not joking; the official Rune Factory PR account announced that you can date and marry multiple different characters in the upcoming Rune Factory game by using the "Technique to Travel Between Worlds". The mechanic doesn't have a name in English just yet. This mechanic lets you jump to an alternate timeline without consequence, meaning your family, partner, and everything else remains in-tact in the real world. You can have up to 30 different timelines active, and that's more than enough to explore all 12 romance options in the main game. Phew!Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube813kWatch on YouTube Other similar games usually have consequences for attempting to date multiple characters, or just straight-up won't let you do it without ending your current relationships. Some titles, like Rune Factory 2, have rival marriages, but rarely do you have this freedom of choice. We've seen the phrase "interdimensional adultery" being thrown around here and, uh... yeah? You might see this a few times, then... — Image: Marvelous Who is the producer's favourite romance option in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, though? Well, he loves all of them — which is a good thing given that you can smooch all of them! Are you getting Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma or Switch or Switch 2? Let us know in the comments below. Okay... what? "If I'm forced to say..." [source x.com, via siliconera.com] Related Games See Also Share:0 0 Alana has been with Nintendo Life since 2022, and while RPGs are her first love, Nintendo is a close second. She enjoys nothing more than overthinking battle strategies, characters, and stories. She also wishes she was a Sega air pirate. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment... Related Articles 27 Upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 Games We're Excited For In 2025 The very best Switch 2 games coming soon Nintendo Unveils Diddy Kong's Brand New Design Cap's off Shigeru Miyamoto Explains Why Donkey Kong Has Been Redesigned You want expressive? You got it Nintendo Apologises For "Error" With Mention Of Switch 2 VRR TV Support "The incorrect information was initially published" Round Up: The First Impressions Of Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time Are In Here's what players are saying

On Thursday evening, the Supreme Court handed down a brief order, which temporarily permits President Donald Trump to fire two federal officials who, by law, are shielded from being summarily terminated. That, in itself, is not particularly significant because, on April 9, Chief Justice John Roberts acted on his own authority to temporarily permit Trump to fire the same two officials. So the practical effect of Thursday’s order in Trump v. Wilcox is simply to maintain the status quo.That said, the Thursday order does contain some important new information from the Court’s Republican majority. While the Republican justices have signaled for quite some time that they are eager to give the president broad authority to fire officials that Congress intended to insulate from presidential control, the order includes a paragraph signaling that they will not allow Trump to fire members of the Federal Reserve.From a legal perspective, the paragraph is difficult to parse. And, as Justice Elena Kagan writes in a dissenting opinion, is not supported by the legal authority it cites. But it is likely to reassure investors that, while the Supreme Court does appear eager to expand Trump’s authority over previously independent parts of the federal government, it won’t permit him to disrupt the Fed’s ability to make technocratic decisions about interest rates. The immediate stakes in Wilcox involve a former member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which enforces labor laws and adjudicates union-related disputes, along with a former member of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which hears disputes claiming that a civil servant’s employment protections were violated. Trump fired both shortly after taking office, despite the fact that federal law only permits them to be fired for some sort of neglect or malfeasance.The NLRB and the MSPB, moreover, are just two of an array of “independent” agencies led by multi-member boards, whose members all enjoy similar employment protections – agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Reserve.For at least 15 years, when the Court handed down Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Board (2010), a majority of the justices have signaled that they are eager to strip Congress of its authority to create such independent agencies, and give the president full authority to fire these agencies’ leaders at will. Many economists and investors, meanwhile, have warned that it would be particularly dangerous to strip the Federal Reserve — which is supposed to set interest rates based on delicate economic calculations and not based on what will benefit the sitting president — of its independence, as doing so could throw the US economy into chaos.Thursday’s order is a clear signal that the Court has heard these concerns and does not intend to eliminate the Fed’s independence. It is unlikely to satisfy many constitutional scholars, as its explanation for why Federal Reserve leaders should be treated differently than the leaders of any other independent agency is so baffling that it appears contrived. Regardless of the underlying reasoning, however, the order does strongly suggest that this Court will not give Trump full control over the Fed.The “unitary executive,” briefly explainedTrump v. Wilcox is the culmination of a longstanding grudge many Republican legal elites hold against Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court case establishing that Congress may create independent agencies whose members may only be fired for cause. Though the leaders of these agencies are typically nominated by the president for a term of several years, and confirmed by the Senate, Humphrey’s Executor explained that laws protecting them from being fired while in office are supposed to ensure that they “act with entire impartiality,” and “exercise the trained judgment of a body of experts.”All six of the Court’s Republicans, however, have made it clear they believe in a theory known as the “unitary executive,” which is incompatible with Humphrey’s Executor.The Constitution provides that “the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” In a 1988 dissenting opinion, which many legal conservatives now treat as if it were a holy text, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that “this does not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power.” And thus, if a federal official is charged with executing federal laws in some way, they must be fully subject to presidential control.If you take this unitary executive theory seriously, then there should be no doubt that Federal Reserve governors may be fired at will by the president. The Fed’s authority over interest rates, after all, derives from federal statutes instructing it to pursue the dual goals of “maximum employment” and “stable prices.” So the Fed is charged with executing federal laws.But the consequences of stripping the Fed of its independence could be catastrophic. In 1971, President Richard Nixon pressured Fed chair Arthur Burns to lower interest rates in advance of Nixon’s reelection race — the idea was to juice the economy right while voters were weighing Nixon’s record — and Burns complied. In the short term, this worked out great for Nixon. The economy boomed in 1972, and Nixon won reelection by a historic landslide. But Burns’s action is often blamed for years of “stagflation,” slow economic growth combined with high inflation, in the 1970s.The Fed, in other words, has the power to effectively inject cocaine into the US economy – giving it a temporary boost that can be timed to benefit incumbent presidents, at the cost of much greater economic turmoil down the road. It’s not hard to see how presidents could abuse their power if they can fire members of the Federal Reserve who refuse to give the economy such a temporary and costly high.One might think that these risks would be enough to caution the justices against overruling Humphrey’s Executor. But the Republican justices appear quite committed to the unitary executive theory, and they have been that way for quite some time. (If you want to know more about why they feel this way, I can refer you to three separate explainers I’ve written on this subject.)And so those justices spend the bulk of Thursday’s Wilcox order laying out the process they are likely to use to formally overrule Humphrey’s Executor. The order announces that the Trump administration is “likely” to prevail in its bid to fire NLRB and MSPB officials, and it temporarily blocks lower court decisions that reinstated the two officials at issue in this case. But the Court puts off the question of whether to formally repudiate Humphrey’s Executor until after the ordinary appeals process plays out and the justices receive full briefing and oral argument on whether to do so — which could happen as soon as the Court’s next term.The Wilcox order’s language protecting the Fed is gobbledygookEmbedded within all this language laying out the process to challenge Humphrey’s Executor is the paragraph indicating that the Fed is safe. While the two fired officials “contend that arguments in this case necessarily implicate the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors or other members of the Federal Open Market Committee,” the order states, “we disagree.”The justices who joined the order then offer a single sentence explaining why: “The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”It’s certainly possible to parse the components of this sentence. The description of the Fed as a “quasi-private entity,” for example, may refer to the fact that much of the Fed’s authority is wielded through regional entities, which are themselves controlled by board members who are mostly selected by commercial banks. But it is hardly unusual for members of the private sector to be given a formal role within government — just ask Elon Musk. Indeed, the Supreme Court heard at least two cases this spring involving the role experts from the private sector may play in setting government policy.The “First and Second Banks of the United States” are 18th- and early 19th-century predecessors to the Fed. The Supreme Court upheld Congress’s power to create national banks in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), but the nation abandoned national banking under President Andrew Jackson, setting off a period of economic turmoil, including an economic depression shortly after Jackson left office.But it’s unclear what any of this has to do with the president’s powers as outlined in the Constitution. If the theory of the unitary executive is correct, then no entity — regardless of whether it is “quasi-private” or is part of a “distinct historical tradition” involving banks — may execute federal laws, unless that entity is controlled by people who are themselves under presidential control. As a legal matter, the Court’s explanation of why the Fed is special is nothing more than word salad.The only legal authority that the Wilcox order cites to support its claim that the Fed is special is a footnote in its pro-unitary executive decision in Seila Law v. CFPB (2020). But nothing in that footnote provides any support for this claim.As Kagan points out in her dissent in Wilcox, the only relevant language in that footnote is a throwaway line responding to her partial dissent in Seila Law. Kagan had argued that “federal regulators” historically have enjoyed some insulation from the president. The footnote dismisses this argument, stating that even “assuming financial institutions like the Second Bank and the Federal Reserve can claim a special historical status,” the agency at issue in Seila Law does not qualify.The Court, in other words, waved away Kagan’s argument that institutions like the Fed should be shielded from presidential control in Seila Law. Now, however, the justices in the majority appear to be signaling they believe there is some merit to Kagan’s argument.If the Court does formally overrule Humphrey’s Executor in the coming months, the justices in the majority will likely elaborate on why a different rule should apply to the Fed. The best reading of the Wilcox order’s one paragraph about the Fed is that a majority of the justices have already decided that they want to protect it, and they would now like some smart lawyers to file briefs coming up with an argument for that position — one that uses terms like “quasi-private” and that refers to the early history of national banking.Of course, this is not how the law is supposed to work — judges are not supposed to start with the outcome that they want and then invite members of the bar to explain how to get there. But this also will hardly be the first time that the Roberts Court started with its intended outcome and reasoned backward to get there. It’s just being more transparent this time around.See More:

Hello, Proxies! Greetings from the Zenless Zone Zero dev team. I’m Zhenyu Li, the producer of Zenless Zone Zero. As we approach the game’s first anniversary, I’m thrilled to share with you that Zenless Zone Zero Version 2.0 “Where Clouds Embrace The Dawn” will launch on June 6 — a significant update and a milestone moment marking the beginning of Season 2 for Zenless Zone Zero. Hereby, I’d love to take the opportunity to share a glimpse into the exciting new content and optimizations coming soon to New Eridu. An exhilarating new adventure awaits in Waifei Peninsula After joining forces with the Mockingbird to quell the Sacrifice crisis, Proxies will head to Waifei Peninsula — a remote but charming district far from the urban heart of New Eridu — and embark on an exciting new chapter at the request of New Eridu’s Mayor. Guided by Yixuan, the High Preceptor of Yunkui Summit, Proxies will gradually uncover the enigmatic power hidden within the protagonists to harness the force of Ether and unlock new gameplay elements to explore the Hollows. As a major city in Waifei Peninsula, Failume Heights nestles next to the Lemnian Hollow and has flourished with its thriving market for the rare resource Porcelume. The city also features unique local teahouses, pawnshops, and dessert stalls — perfect spots for Proxies to unwind during their downtime. In addition to continuing the management of Random Play, Proxies will also get to simulate the management of Suibian Temple here. By dispatching Bangboo, completing commissions from NPCs, and gathering resources from the Hollows, players can gradually level up the temple to unlock new interior designs and earn a wealth of in-game rewards. Team up With the Grandmaster to face greater foes Despite being a key source of Porcelume，the Lemnian Hollow is shrouded in perilous Miasma. In Version 2.0, fearsome enemies will enter a Miasmic Field state under certain conditions, gaining shields and enhanced abilities. But fear not — powerful and trustworthy allies are on the way. The Grandmaster Yixuan will join the combat as an S-Rank Agent. Her unique Attribute Auric Ink and Specialty Rupture will bring Void Hunter-tier prowess to your squad. Joining Yixuan is Ju Fufu, the senior disciple of Yunkui Summit, who will debut as an S-Rank Fire Stun Agent. Wielding her mighty weapon Hu Wei, she will fight alongside Proxies in Version 2.0, bringing ferocity and flair to the battlefield. A panda who can’t fight is no good in the kitchen — and Yunkui Summit’s A-Rank Physical Defense Agent, Pan Yinhu, is here to prove just that with his formidable strength in combat. Meanwhile, Yunkui Summit’s exclusive S-Rank Bangboo Belion is also ready to join the fray. Proxies’ old friends Astra Yao and Caesar will also be making their return in the Version 2.0 banners. Optimized game experience with enhanced convenience With the expansion of New Eridu and the introduction of larger, more open Hollows in Version 2.0, Zenless Zone Zero will introduce a brand-new 3D map and enhanced navigation features. Proxies will be able to explore with greater freedom and efficiency, using Fissure Beacons within the Hollows to restore HP, revive downed Agents, and quickly teleport to key locations, streamlining combat and traversal like never before. To help new Proxies quickly dive into the story of Season 2, players will be able to unlock and switch to Version 2.0’s main storyline as soon as they complete Chapter 2 Interlude. Additionally, Hollow Zero: Lost Void will be updated with new commissions and the option to equip multiple Gears to different Agents, adding more strategic options to battles. ​​ Irresistible anniversary celebration rewards In addition to the thrilling game content updates, we’ve also prepared a generous selection of anniversary rewards for all Proxies as a token of our gratitude for your continued support. After the Version 2.0 update, Proxies can select one S-Rank Agent and one S-Rank W-Engine for free from the Stable Channel, receive 1,600 Polychromes, and claim an anniversary-exclusive title and avatar simply by logging into the game. On top of that, players will be able to receive a variety of in-game rewards, including 20 Encrypted Master Tapes, 10 Boopons, an A-Rank W-Engine, and protagonists’ new Outfits after completing specific commissions or event challenges. Thank you for an incredible year Before we wrap up, I’d like to take a moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of our players. It’s been an incredible year, and we’re excited to continue exploring the world of New Eridu together with you. With the upcoming Version 2.0 and everything we have planned for the future, we promise to keep delivering experiences and content that will surprise and entertain you. Thank you all once again for being part of this remarkable adventure. We’ll see you in Waifei Peninsula on June 6!

Is President Donald Trump leading a vanguard of right-wing populist world leaders, working together to lay waste to the liberal international order while consolidating power at home? Possibly — but based on his recent foreign policy actions, he doesn’t appear to think so. Establishment-bashing politicians around the world, from Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro to the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte to the UK’s Boris Johnson, have drawn comparisons to Trump over the years. Some, notably Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Argentina’s Javier Milei, have cultivated ties to the Trump-era American right, becoming fixtures at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and making the rounds on US talk shows and podcasts. In Romania’s recent presidential election, the leading right-wing candidate somewhat confusingly described himself as being on the “MAGA ticket.”Trump himself has occasionally weighed in on other countries’ political debates to endorse right-wing politicians like France’s embattled far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Some of Trump’s senior officials have spoken openly of wanting to build ties with the global right. In his combative speech at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Vice President JD Vance described what he sees as the unfair marginalization of right-wing parties in countries like Romania and Germany as a greater threat to Europe’s security than China or Russia. Trump ally Elon Musk has been even more active in boosting far-right parties in elections around the world. But just because Trump and his officials like to see politicians and parties in their own mold win, that doesn’t mean countries led by those politicians and parties can count on any special treatment from the Trump administration. This has been especially clear in recent weeks.Just ask Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent years cultivating close ties with the US Republican Party, and with Trump in particular, and has followed a somewhat similar path in bringing previously marginalized far-right partners into the mainstream. All that has been of little use as Trump has left his Israeli supporters aghast by carrying out direct negotiations with the likes of Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran and being feted by Gulf monarchs on a Middle East tour that pointedly did not include Israel. India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, has likewise been compared to Trump in his populist appeal, majoritarian rhetoric, and dismantling of democratic norms. Trump has cultivated a massive coterie of fans among Hindu nationalist Modi supporters as well as a close working relationship with Modi himself. But after Trump announced a ceasefire agreement in the recent flare-up of violence between India and Pakistan, Trump enraged many of his Indian supporters with remarks that appeared to take credit for pressuring India to halt its military campaign and drew equivalence between the Indian and Pakistani positions. Adding insult to injury, Trump publicly criticized Apple for plans to move the assembly of American iPhones from China to India, a move that in other administrations might have been praised as a victory for “friendshoring” — moving the production of critical goods from adversaries to allies — but doesn’t advance Trump’s goal of returning industrial manufacturing to the US. Even Orbán, star of CPAC and favorite guest of Tucker Carlson, has appeared frustrated with Trump as of late. His government has described its close economic relationship with China as a “red line,” vowing not to decouple its economy from Beijing’s, no matter what pressure Trump applies. Orbán’s simultaneous position as the most pro-Trump and most pro-China leader in Europe is looking increasingly awkward. Overall, there’s simply little evidence that political affinity guides Trump’s approach to foreign policy, a fact made abundantly clear by the “Liberation Day” tariffs the president announced in April. Taking just Latin America, for example, Argentina — led by the floppy-haired iconoclast and Musk favorite Javier Milei — and El Salvador — led by Nayib Bukele, a crypto-loving authoritarian willing to turn his country’s prisons into an American gulag — might have expected exemptions from the tariffs. But they were hit with the same tariff rates as leftist-led governments like Colombia and Brazil. Ultimately, it’s not the leaders who see eye to eye with Trump on migration, the rule of law, or wokeness who seem to have his fear. It’s the big-money monarchs of the Middle East, who can deliver the big deals and quick wins he craves. And based on the probably-at-least-partly Trump-inspired drubbing inflicted on right-wing parties in Canada and Australia in recent elections, it’s not clear that being known as the “Trump of” your country really gets you all that much. Whatever his ultimate legacy for the United States and the world, he doesn’t seem likely to be remembered as the man who made global far-right populism great again, and he doesn’t really seem all that concerned about that. See More:

This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy people. New vaccines will be made available only to the people who are most vulnerable—namely, those over 65 and others with conditions that make them more susceptible to severe disease. Anyone else will have to wait. Covid vaccines will soon be required to go through more rigorous trials to ensure that they really are beneficial for people who aren’t at high risk. The plans have been met with fear and anger in some quarters. But they weren’t all that shocking to me. In the UK, where I live, covid boosters have been offered only to vulnerable groups for a while now. And the immunologists I spoke to agree: The plans make sense. They are still controversial. Covid hasn’t gone away. And while most people are thought to have some level of immunity to the virus, some of us still stand to get very sick if infected. The threat of long covid lingers, too. Given that people respond differently to both the virus and the vaccine, perhaps individuals should be able to choose whether they get a vaccine or not. I should start by saying that covid vaccines have been a remarkable success story. The drugs were developed at record-breaking speed—they were given to people in clinical trials just 69 days after the virus had been identified. They are, on the whole, very safe. And they work remarkably well. They have saved millions of lives. And they rescued many of us from lockdowns. But while many of us have benefited hugely from covid vaccinations in the past, there are questions over how useful continuing annual booster doses might be. That’s the argument being made by FDA head Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Both men have been critical of the FDA in the past. Makary has long been accused of downplaying the benefits of covid vaccines. He made incorrect assumptions about the coronavirus responsible for covid-19 and predicted that the disease would be “mostly gone” by April 2021. Most recently, he also testified in Congress that the theory that the virus came from a lab in China was a “no-brainer.” (The strongest evidence suggests the virus jumped from animals to humans in a market in Wuhan.) Prasad has said “the FDA is a failure” and has called annual covid boosters “a public health disaster the likes of which we’ve never seen before,” because of a perceived lack of clinical evidence to support their use. Makary and Prasad’s plans, which were outlined in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday, don’t include such inflammatory language or unfounded claims, thankfully. In fact, they seem pretty measured: Annual covid booster shots will continue to be approved for vulnerable people but will have to be shown to benefit others before people outside the approved groups can access them. There are still concerns being raised, though. Let’s address a few of the biggest ones. Shouldn’t I get an annual covid booster alongside my flu vaccine? At the moment, a lot of people in the US opt to get a covid vaccination around the time they get their annual flu jab. Each year, a flu vaccine is developed to protect against what scientists predict will be the dominant strain of virus circulating come flu season, which tends to run from October through March. But covid doesn’t seem to stick to the same seasonal patterns, says Susanna Dunachie, a clinical doctor and professor of infectious diseases at the University of Oxford in the UK. “We seem to be getting waves of covid year-round,” she says. And an annual shot might not offer the best protection against covid anyway, says Fikadu Tafesse, an immunologist and virologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. His own research suggests that leaving more than a year between booster doses could enhance their effectiveness. “One year is really a random time,” he says. It might be better to wait five or 10 years between doses instead, he adds. “If you are at risk [of a serious covid infection] you may actually need [a dose] every six months,” says Tafesse. “But for healthy individuals, it’s a very different conversation.” What about children—shouldn’t we be protecting them? There are reports that pediatricians are concerned about the impact on children, some of whom can develop serious cases of covid. “If we have safe and effective vaccines that prevent illness, we think they should be available,” James Campbell, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, told STAT. This question has been on my mind for a while. My two young children, who were born in the UK, have never been eligible for a covid vaccine in this country. I found this incredibly distressing when the virus started tearing through child-care centers—especially given that at the time, the US was vaccinating babies from the age of six months. My kids were eventually offered a vaccine in the US, when we temporarily moved there a couple of years ago. But by that point, the equation had changed. They’d both had covid by then. I had a better idea of the general risks of the virus to children. I turned it down. I was relieved to hear that Tafesse had made the same decision for his own children. “There are always exceptions, but in general, [covid] is not severe in kids,” he says. The UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunology found that the benefits of vaccination are much smaller for children than they are for adults. “Of course there are children with health problems who should definitely have it,” says Dunachie. “But for healthy children in healthy households, the benefits probably are quite marginal.” Shouldn’t healthy people get vaccinated to help protect more vulnerable members of society? It’s a good argument, says Tafesse. Research suggests that people who are vaccinated against covid-19 are less likely to end up transmitting the infection to the people around them. The degree of protection is not entirely clear, particularly with less-studied—and more contagious—variants of the virus and targeted vaccines. The safest approach is to encourage those at high risk to get the vaccine themselves, says Tafesse. If the vaccines are safe, shouldn’t I be able to choose to get one? Tafesse doesn’t buy this argument. “I know they are safe, but even if they’re safe, why do I need to get one?” People should know if they are likely to benefit from a drug they are taking, he says. Having said that, the cost-benefit calculation will differ between individuals. Even a “mild” covid infection can leave some people bed-bound for a week. For them, it might make total sense to get the vaccine. Dunachie thinks people should be able to make their own decisions. “Giving people a top-up whether they need it or not is a safe thing to do,” she says. It is still not entirely clear who will be able to access covid vaccinations under the new plans, and how. Makary and Prasad’s piece includes a list of “medical conditions that increase a person’s risk of severe covid-19,” which includes several disorders, pregnancy, and “physical inactivity.” It covers a lot of people; research suggests that around 25% of Americans are physically inactive. But I find myself agreeing with Dunachie. Yes, we need up-to-date evidence to support the use of any drugs. But taking vaccines away from people who have experience with them and feel they could benefit from them doesn’t feel like the ideal way to go about it. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

May 23, 20255 min readThe Creepy Calculus of Measuring Death RiskMeet micromorts and microlives, statistical units that help mathematicians to calculate riskBy Manon Bischoff edited by Daisy Yuhas M-SUR/Alamy Stock PhotoPeople are generally bad at assessing probabilities. That’s why we have irrational fears and why we overestimate our odds of winning the lottery.Whenever I have to travel by plane, for example, my palms sweat, my heart races and my thoughts take a gloomy turn. I should be much more worried when I get on my bike in Darmstadt, Germany, where I live. Statistically, I’m in much greater danger on the road than in the air. Yet my bike commute doesn’t cause me any stress at all.Recently, a friend told me about a concept within decision theory that is supposed to help people get a better sense of hazards and risks. In 1980 electrical engineer Ronald Arthur Howard coined the micromort unit to quantify life-threatening danger.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.One micromort corresponds to a one-in-a-million chance of dying during a certain activity. Do you want to run a marathon? The risk is seven micromorts. Are you going under general anesthesia? That’s 10 micromorts. To arrive at these figures, you first need detailed statistics. How many people engaged in these activities and died in the process? And the results depend heavily on the group of people being studied (their age, gender, and so on), as well as the geographic location.Better Living through StatisticsSurprisingly, the history of statistics doesn’t go back very far. In the 17th century, British demographer John Graunt pioneered mortality statistics by analyzing records of deaths and baptisms. But it would take another 200 years for society to recognize the social benefits of these approaches.Today the utility of this mathematical subfield is undisputed. Insurance companies and banks use statistics to carry out risk assessments. Statistical surveys make it possible to investigate psychological and sociological phenomena. Physical research would be unthinkable without statistics.Thanks to Howard and the micromort, the risks in our everyday lives can also be estimated with the help of statistics. By examining the proportion of people who die while undertaking a particular activity, he was able to create a general mortality risk for those activities.But more recently, mathematician David Spiegelhalter noticed something missing in Howard’s analysis: the micromort unit merely indicates how likely it is that a very specific action will kill us. This may make sense for a one-off activity such as climbing a mountain. But for long-term habits, such as regularly eating fast food, the measure is of only limited use.For example, smoking a cigarette causes just 0.21 micromort and would therefore be significantly less risky than getting out of bed in the morning at the age of 45 (which results in six micromorts). Smoking, however, has long-lasting negative consequences for the body that getting up in the morning does not. The long-term risk is therefore not recorded.So Spiegelhalter introduced the “microlife” measure to take into account the long-term effects of different activities. This quantifies how much life you lose on average by carrying out an activity. Each microlife that is lost reduces your life expectancy by half an hour. Two hours of watching TV each day might cost one microlife, for instance.One of the most significant differences between micromorts and microlives is that one of the two types of units compounds over time, and the other does not. If I survive my morning bike ride to the Darmstadt train station, my micromort count for that ride drops back to zero. The next day I start the journey again with the same risk.It’s different with microlife data: if I smoke a cigarette and then a second one an hour later, the time I’ve lost adds up. And of course, the mere ticking of the clock also shortens my available years of life. Every day 48 microlives are lost.But unlike micromorts, I can regain microlives. For example, a 20-minute walk provides me with around two microlives—that is, an extra hour of life expectancy. And eating a healthy diet with fruits and vegetables could gain you four microlives daily.Reality CheckAll these facts and figures are entertaining to read about and can make for interesting conversation starters—“Hey, did you know that this beer shortens your life by about 15 minutes?”—at least with the right crowd. But how do you calculate the microlives you lose as a result of an action?First, you have to compare the life expectancy of different people. For example: How does the life expectancy of smokers and nonsmokers differ? By taking this difference and dividing it by the average number of cigarettes smoked, we can calculate the average amount of time that each cigarette robs us of.This result is clearly inexact. The difference in life expectancy will also depend on factors such as a person’s gender, place of residence and age. These data can still be captured, but when it comes to general lifestyle factors, things get complicated. For example, studies show that many smokers generally have an unhealthier lifestyle and exercise less.Such correlations cannot always be calculated and accounted for. When it comes to smoking, however, there have been long-term studies that followed many people, some of whom stopped smoking at some point in their life, over several decades.These data make it easier to isolate the effect that smoking has on a person’s life expectancy. Such research suggests that a single cigarette is likely to rob a person of slightly less than the originally calculated 15 minutes of life if they have the other lifestyle habits of a nonsmoker. So should we be consulting statistics at the start of every day to maximize our lifespan? Perhaps we should be studying these analyses to engage in activities with as few micromorts as possible and try to gain, rather than lose, microlives?Not exactly. Micromorts and microlives can help you better assess risks. But you shouldn’t attach too much importance to them. After all, our world is complex. You may gain back two microlives during a walk, but you could also get in an unlucky accident along the way and be hit by a car. Ultimately, micromorts and microlives are just too simple a tool to evaluate the full range of consequences associated with an action. Exercise can improve your state of mind, which has a positive effect not only on your quality of life but also on your lifespan.That said, it can still be a source of comfort to turn to statistics—particularly when we want to understand if our fear is rational or not. For my part, I will try to remind myself of how few micromorts are associated with flying. Maybe that will help.This article originally appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission.

This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy people. New vaccines will be made available only to the people who are most vulnerable—namely, those over 65 and others with conditions that make them more susceptible to severe disease. Anyone else will have to wait. Covid vaccines will soon be required to go through more rigorous trials to ensure that they really are beneficial for people who aren’t at high risk. The plans have been met with fear and anger in some quarters. But they weren’t all that shocking to me. In the UK, where I live, covid boosters have been offered only to vulnerable groups for a while now. And the immunologists I spoke to agree: The plans make sense. They are still controversial. Covid hasn’t gone away. And while most people are thought to have some level of immunity to the virus, some of us still stand to get very sick if infected. The threat of long covid lingers, too. Given that people respond differently to both the virus and the vaccine, perhaps individuals should be able to choose whether they get a vaccine or not. I should start by saying that covid vaccines have been a remarkable success story. The drugs were developed at record-breaking speed—they were given to people in clinical trials just 69 days after the virus had been identified. They are, on the whole, very safe. And they work remarkably well. They have saved millions of lives. And they rescued many of us from lockdowns. But while many of us have benefited hugely from covid vaccinations in the past, there are questions over how useful continuing annual booster doses might be. That’s the argument being made by FDA head Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Both men have been critical of the FDA in the past. Makary has long been accused of downplaying the benefits of covid vaccines. He made incorrect assumptions about the coronavirus responsible for covid-19 and predicted that the disease would be “mostly gone” by April 2021. Most recently, he also testified in Congress that the theory that the virus came from a lab in China was a “no-brainer.” (The strongest evidence suggests the virus jumped from animals to humans in a market in Wuhan.) Prasad has said “the FDA is a failure” and has called annual covid boosters “a public health disaster the likes of which we’ve never seen before,” because of a perceived lack of clinical evidence to support their use. Makary and Prasad’s plans, which were outlined in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday, don’t include such inflammatory language or unfounded claims, thankfully. In fact, they seem pretty measured: Annual covid booster shots will continue to be approved for vulnerable people but will have to be shown to benefit others before people outside the approved groups can access them. There are still concerns being raised, though. Let’s address a few of the biggest ones. Shouldn’t I get an annual covid booster alongside my flu vaccine? At the moment, a lot of people in the US opt to get a covid vaccination around the time they get their annual flu jab. Each year, a flu vaccine is developed to protect against what scientists predict will be the dominant strain of virus circulating come flu season, which tends to run from October through March. But covid doesn’t seem to stick to the same seasonal patterns, says Susanna Dunachie, a clinical doctor and professor of infectious diseases at the University of Oxford in the UK. “We seem to be getting waves of covid year-round,” she says. And an annual shot might not offer the best protection against covid anyway, says Fikadu Tafesse, an immunologist and virologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. His own research suggests that leaving more than a year between booster doses could enhance their effectiveness. “One year is really a random time,” he says. It might be better to wait five or 10 years between doses instead, he adds. “If you are at risk [of a serious covid infection] you may actually need [a dose] every six months,” says Tafesse. “But for healthy individuals, it’s a very different conversation.” What about children—shouldn’t we be protecting them? There are reports that pediatricians are concerned about the impact on children, some of whom can develop serious cases of covid. “If we have safe and effective vaccines that prevent illness, we think they should be available,” James Campbell, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, told STAT. This question has been on my mind for a while. My two young children, who were born in the UK, have never been eligible for a covid vaccine in this country. I found this incredibly distressing when the virus started tearing through child-care centers—especially given that at the time, the US was vaccinating babies from the age of six months. My kids were eventually offered a vaccine in the US, when we temporarily moved there a couple of years ago. But by that point, the equation had changed. They’d both had covid by then. I had a better idea of the general risks of the virus to children. I turned it down. I was relieved to hear that Tafesse had made the same decision for his own children. “There are always exceptions, but in general, [covid] is not severe in kids,” he says. The UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunology found that the benefits of vaccination are much smaller for children than they are for adults. “Of course there are children with health problems who should definitely have it,” says Dunachie. “But for healthy children in healthy households, the benefits probably are quite marginal.” Shouldn’t healthy people get vaccinated to help protect more vulnerable members of society? It’s a good argument, says Tafesse. Research suggests that people who are vaccinated against covid-19 are less likely to end up transmitting the infection to the people around them. The degree of protection is not entirely clear, particularly with less-studied—and more contagious—variants of the virus and targeted vaccines. The safest approach is to encourage those at high risk to get the vaccine themselves, says Tafesse. If the vaccines are safe, shouldn’t I be able to choose to get one? Tafesse doesn’t buy this argument. “I know they are safe, but even if they’re safe, why do I need to get one?” People should know if they are likely to benefit from a drug they are taking, he says. Having said that, the cost-benefit calculation will differ between individuals. Even a “mild” covid infection can leave some people bed-bound for a week. For them, it might make total sense to get the vaccine. Dunachie thinks people should be able to make their own decisions. “Giving people a top-up whether they need it or not is a safe thing to do,” she says. It is still not entirely clear who will be able to access covid vaccinations under the new plans, and how. Makary and Prasad’s piece includes a list of “medical conditions that increase a person’s risk of severe covid-19,” which includes several disorders, pregnancy, and “physical inactivity.” It covers a lot of people; research suggests that around 25% of Americans are physically inactive. But I find myself agreeing with Dunachie. Yes, we need up-to-date evidence to support the use of any drugs. But taking vaccines away from people who have experience with them and feel they could benefit from them doesn’t feel like the ideal way to go about it. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.