Startup Mocked for Charging $5,000 to "Edit" Book Manuscripts Using AI

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Danzig

Startup company Spines wants to publish 8,000 books in 2025 by using AI. Before that can happen, Spines should stop embarrassing itself.

Let Him Book

A startup called Spines apparently wants to use AI to edit and publish 8,000 books in 2025 — though no word on whether they'll be any good.

There are several issues with the premise. First, AI is a notoriously untalented wordsmith. It will undoubtedly struggle with the myriad tasks Spines assigns to it, including "proofreads, cover designs, formats, publishes, and... distributing your book in just a couple of weeks," according to the venture's website.

Oh, and then there's the issue of Spines embarrassing itself publicly.

"A great example of how no one can find actual uses for LLMs that aren't scams for grifts," short story writer Lincoln Michel wrote of the flap on X-formerly-Twitter. "Quite literally the LAST thing publishing needs is... AI regurgitations."

Author Rowan Coleman agreed.

"The people behind Spines AI publishing are spineLESS," Coleman posted on the same site. "They don’t care about books, don’t care about art, don’t care about the instinctive human talent it takes to write, edit and produce a book. They want the magic, without the work."

Feral Page

Spines CEO and cofounder Yehuda Niv told The Bookseller, a UK book business magazine, that Spines had already published seven "bestsellers." But when Spines was pressed to provide sales numbers, a company representative claimed the "data is private and belongs to the author." Hm, suspicious.

Niv also promised The Bookseller that Spines "isn't self-publishing, is not a traditional publisher and is not a vanity publisher." That's despite the fact that Spines' website, which sells publishing plans from between $1,500 to $4,400, advertises to customers who are clearly looking to team up with an inexpensive vanity publisher.

"I sent my book to 17 different publishers and got rejected every time, and vanity publishers quoted me between $11,000 to $17,000," said on Spines' website the author of Spines' "Biological Transcendence and the Tao: An Exposé on the Potential to Alleviate Disease and Ageing and the Considerations of Age-Old Wisdom," which doesn't currently have a single Amazon review. "With Spines, I got my book published in less than 30 days!"

Hm, interesting. That testimonial makes Spines sound an awful lot like a vanity publisher.

AI startups love to reinvent the wheel and claim it's never been done before. Like an ed tech startup founder who used AI to cover for her run-of-the-mill embezzlement, or a Finnish AI company which put a high tech twist on the common practice of exploiting incarcerated workers.

Will it work for books? We'll be watching.

More on AI: Character.AI Is Hosting Pro-Anorexia Chatbots That Encourage Young People to Engage in Disordered Eating

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Man Renovates Decommissioned Missile Silo Into Delightful Airbnb, Attracts "Swingers"

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Danzig

A man in Arkansas turned a decommissioned missile silo into a lavish Airbnb over ten years, spending $800,000.

Doomsdairbnb

A man in Arkansas turned a decommissioned missile silo into a lavish short-term rental property.

But whether it was a wise long-term investment remains to be seen. As owner GT Hill tells Business Insider, he bought the silo for $90,000 in 2010, and then spent a whopping $800,000 over ten years to convert the space into a unique rental experience.

"Probably 20 percent of my interest was in the doomsday prepper aspect or the idea of preparing to survive in the case of a catastrophe," Hill wrote. "I'm not a full doomsday prepper, but I like the idea of being prepared for the unknown, including having food storage and some survival skills."

The end product, dubbed Titan II, is a 3500-square-foot living space located in the middle of a 200-acre ranch and 150 feet below the ground. Hill says it's already hosted famous YouTubers, bands, birthday parties, and "even some swingers."

And in case the end of the world is nigh, Hill will have the ideal place to seek shelter for himself and his family — as long as it's not already booked up, that is.

"Being underground the place is typically cooler than a normal living space but extra blankets are provided," the Airbnb description reads.

Location, Location

The missile silo itself was decommissioned after Russia and the US signed a treaty in 1979 to limit their nuclear arsenals.

"They actually had to blow up the top of the structure and fill it in," Hill wrote. "So it was an underground structure, but completely buried."

The ten years of hard work Hill put into the property included pumping out a tidal wave of water that had accumulated in the space.

"The place had asbestos and methane gas at the top of the control center, where the crew quarters were," Hill wrote. "I recorded videos of the whole process, and you can actually hear my voice change because of the methane in the air."

"After spending $800,000, we're probably netting $80,000 a year in revenue from the place now that I rent it out on Airbnb," he added.

In short, "it's not a great way to spend time or money," Hill admitted.

More on Airbnb: Airbnb Apologizes After Allowing Listing for "1830s Slave Cabin"

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Woman Annoyed When She Gets on Wegovy and It Does Nothing

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Danzig

For some, the issue with GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy isn't getting access to these game-changing medications, but having them not work.

The fever-pitch hype around GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro makes them sound like game-changing medications, and for many they are — but for other patients, the experience is totally underwhelming.

In an interview with the Associated Press, 38-year-old Danielle Griffin said that although she was able to get a prescription for Novo Nordisk's weight loss shot Wegovy — and even got it covered by her insurance, which is still often a struggle — the medication just didn't work for her.

"I have been on Wegovy for a year and a half," Griffin said, "and have only lost 13 pounds."

Despite doing "everything right," including dieting, exercising, and drinking lots of water, she's had "no success" with the popular weight loss injectable.

"It’s discouraging," Giffin said.

While there's been scrutiny on a laundry list of side effects that can come with glucagon-like peptide-1 drugs, which seem to work by mimicking the body's feeling of fullness, non-responsiveness of this sort hasn't captured much attention.

Obesity experts told the AP, however, that up to 20 percent — or one in every five patients — may not lose weight on the drugs at all.

Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity expert at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the news wire that because "different people have different responses," these drugs won't work the same for everyone who takes them.

From medications that stymie weight loss to differences in brain and gut chemistry, lots of factors influence how people metabolize GLP-1s, the Mass General doctor said.

"[Obesity] is a disease that stems from the brain," Stanford said. "The dysfunction may not be the same."

Endocrine specialist Jody Dushay of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said that she's also seen people have issues losing weight with GLP-1s — though generally, she and her patients are able to tell whether they're going to work within a few weeks.

Between non-responsiveness and undesirable gastrointestinal side effects like vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea, those who run into issues with drugs like Wegovy often feel at wit's end, Dushay said. There are plenty of other options, however, including switching to a different GLP-1.

"I tell them: it's not game over," the endocrinologist said.

Indeed, Griffin told the AP that she eventually switched over to Zepbound, a similar drug made by Eli Lilly — and that within just three months, she'd lost seven pounds.

"I’m hoping it’s slow and steady," the woman said.

More on GLP-1s: The Diet Industry Is Reportedly in Total Meltdown Over GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs

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Cybertruck Owners Actually Love the Fact That Their Car Could Fly Apart at Any Moment

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Danzig

The reason that people keep buying the Cybertruck is that they actually like the dangerous appeal of its shoddy construction.

Just twelve months since it began shipping out to customers, the Cybertruck is now on its sixth recall — this time for turning into a seven-thousand pound paperweight while driving.

And yet, people keep buying the Tesla pickup. Its owners have adopted a siege mentality against the onslaught of bad press, and perhaps against the world, which isn't very kind to the stainless steel behemoths.

What draws someone to dump $100,000 on a vehicle that reportedly bricks after going through a car wash? One explanation is that it's a sign of the extreme loyalty that Elon Musk inspires in his fans.

But there could be more to it. As an automotive expert suggests, the Cybertruck's shoddiness may actually be what endears it to its edgy buyers.

"The people drawn to [the Cybertruck] don't have quality of construction or safety at the top of mind," Ivan Drury, director of insights at the automotive inventory company Edmunds, told Wired. "That this could be a dangerous vehicle to drive is key to its appeal."

Cybertruck buyers are people "who think 'I don't care if I kill people when I drive this thing down the street,'" he added.

As of October, Tesla has sold over 28,250 Cybertrucks, according to Kelly Blue Book, making it one of the best selling EVs in the country (though this is still a far cry from the 250,000 per year that Musk once estimated).

Its selling points are varied. It's hyped as "bullet-proof" and "apocalypse proof," though your results may vary; Tesla also claims it can off-road and tow and be an all-around workhorse.

For many owners, the reality has been soberingly different. Sloppy construction, discolored body panels and getting stumped by normal truck stuff have all come to define the vehicle since its launch. There have even been reports of brand new Cybertrucks suddenly breaking down.

It's not surprising, then, that the Cybertruck has been recalled at an average of once every two months. If anything, it's surprising it hasn't been recalled more.

But that amount is already alarming. Harl Brauer, an executive analyst at iSeeCars, estimates that the Cybertruck's tally of six recalls make it "worse than 91 percent" of all other 2024 vehicles.

"We aren't comfortable making [lifetime recall] predictions on the Cybertruck at this very early stage," Brauer told Wired. "But so far it isn't doing very well."

Yet according to Drury, Cybertruck owners don't pay attention to details like that. In fact, you can more or less sum up their ethos as a giant "fuck you" to sound car-buying wisdom.

"Cybertruck customers are in it for the stares and glares — they don't care about how many times [this vehicle is] going to be recalled over 30 years," Drury told Wired. "They're buying this car for now, with zero thought to the future."

"A standard auto customer wants to know if a car will last 10 years or will be ongoing good value for money," he added. "A Cybertruck customer doesn't care about any of that. Owning a Cybertruck isn't practical; it's a boast. A boast that 'I have so much discretionary income I can afford to waste it on an impractical car.'"

More on Tesla: Warning! Do Not Expose Cybertrucks to Common Magnets

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Tesla Factories Caught Spewing Toxins Into Air, River, Sewer

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Danzig

Tesla's plant in Austin, Texas is leaking huge amounts of hazardous wastewater into the city's sewer, violating local environmental guidelines.

Tesla's plant in Austin, Texas has been leaking huge amounts of hazardous wastewater into the city's sewer, violating local environmental guidelines.

As detailed in public records obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the Elon Musk-led company also allowed a massive casting furnace to spew toxins into the air after its door refused to shut.

These environmental problems continued to be a problem for months. While Tesla bosses were aware of them, they forced employees to come up with short-term fixes, according to the report, all in an effort to avoid slowing down production.

The news once again highlights Musk's disregard for environmental regulations. Now that he's aligned himself with president-elect Donald Trump, Musk has vowed to "delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good" as part of his so-called "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE.

In short, Tesla's egregious environmental shortcomings underscore the conflict of interest as the mercurial CEO attempts to dismantle the environmental rules by which his companies currently have to abide.

It also marks a turning point for a billionaire who once was seen as a pioneer in renewable energy and an ally of environmental causes.

According to the WSJ, Tesla's factory in Fremont, California has gotten more warnings for air pollution rule violations than almost any other car plant in the state. Over just the past five years, the factory violated air pollution permits 112 times and failed to address shortcomings with equipment designed to minimize emissions.

Meanwhile in Austin, employees were afraid to speak up over environmental concerns, citing fears of being fired.

"Tesla repeatedly asked me to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls," one environmental compliance staffer said, according to a 2024 memo obtained by the WSJ.

The EPA's criminal-enforcement division has since opened an inquiry into the staffer's allegations.

While production was ramping up at the Texas factory, a massive six-acre pond of wastewater was slowly being directed into Austin's sewer system, without Tesla ever getting permission.

During rainstorms, Tesla even dumped chemicals into the nearby Colorado River, turning it an alarming shade of brown.

After the unnamed environmental compliance staffer refused a Tesla executive's request to lobby Austin's water regulator to downplay its frequent violations of chemical limits, the staffer was abruptly fired.

It's a sad reality for a company that was once hailed as popularizing the answer to gas-guzzling combustion engines.

In his 2006 "Master Plan," Musk promised to help "expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution."

Any references to the plan were quietly deleted from Tesla's website in August — highlighting the EV maker and its CEO's newfound disregard for the environment and the rules that were created to protect it.

More on Tesla: Tesla Deletes Elon Musk's "Master Plan"

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An AI Company Published a Chatbot Based on a Murdered Woman. Her Family Is Outraged.

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

This one's nasty — in one of the more high-profile, macabre incidents involving AI-generated content in recent memory, Character.AI, the chatbot startup founded by ex-Google staffers, was pushed to delete a user-created avatar of an 18-year-old murder victim who was slain by her ex-boyfriend in 2006. The chatbot was taken down only after the outraged family of the woman it was based on drew attention to it on social media.

Character.AI can be used to create chatbot "characters" from any number of sources — be it a user's imagination, a fictional character, or a real person, living or dead. For example, some of the company's bots have been used to mimic Elon Musk, or Taylor Swift. Lonely teens have used Character.AI to create friends for themselves, while others have used it to create AI "therapists." Others have created bots they've deployed to play out sexually explicit (or even sexually violent) scenarios.

For context: This isn't exactly some dark skunkworks program or a nascent startup with limited reach. Character.AI is a ChatGPT competitor started by ex-Google staffers in late 2021, backed by kingmaker VC firm Andreessen Horowitz to the tune of a billion-dollar valuation. Per AdWeek, who first reported the story, Character.AI boasts some 20 million monthly users, with over 100 million different AI characters available on the platform.

The avatar of the woman, Jennifer Crecente, only came to light on Wednesday, after her bereaved father Drew received a Google Alert on her name. It was then that his brother (and the woman's uncle) Brian Crecente — the former editor-in-chief of gaming site Kotaku, a respected media figure in his own right — brought it to the world's attention on X, tweeting:

The page from Character.AI — which can still be accessed via the Internet Archive – lists Jennifer Crecente as "a knowledgeable and friendly AI character who can provide information on a wide range of topics, including video games, technology, and pop culture," then proffering her expertise on "journalism and can offer advice on writing and editing." Even more, it appears as though nearly 70 people were able to access the AI — and have chats with it — before Character.AI pulled it down.

In response to Brian Crecente's outraged tweet, Character.AI responded on X with a pithy thank you for bringing it to their attention, noting that the avatar is a violation of Character.AI's policies, and that they'd be deleting it immediately, with a promise to "examine whether further action is warranted."

In a blog post titled "AI and the death of Dignity," Brian Crecente explained what happened in the 18 years since his niece Jennifer's death: After much grief and sadness, her father Drew created a nonprofit, working to change laws and creating game design contests that could honor her memory, working to find purpose in their grief.

And then, this happened. As Brian Crecente asked:

It feels like she’s been stolen from us again. That’s how I feel. I love Jen, but I’m not her father. What he’s feeling is, I know, a million times worse. [...] I’ll recover, my brother will recover. The thing is, why is it on us to be resilient? Why do multibillion-dollar companies not bother to create ethical, guiding principles and functioning guardrails to prevent this from ever happening? Why is it up to the grieving and the aggrieved to report this to a company and hope they do the right thing after the fact?

As for Character.AI's promise to see if "further action" will be warranted, who knows? Whether the Crecente family has grounds for a lawsuit is also murky, as this particular field of law is relatively untested. That said, the startup's terms of service have an arbitration clause that prevents users from suing them, but there doesn't seem to be any language about this particularly unique stripe of emotional distress, inflicted on non-users, by its users.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for a sign of how these kinds of conflicts will continue to play out — which is to say, the kinds where AIs are made against the wills and desires of the people they're based on, living or dead — you only need look as far back as August, when Google hired back Character.AI's founders, to the tune of $2.7 billion. Founders, it should be noted, who initially left Google after the tech giant refused to release their chatbot on account of (among other reasons) its ethical guardrails around AI.

And just yesterday, the news broke that Character.AI is making a change. They've promised to redouble efforts on their consumer-facing products — like the one used to create Jennifer Crecente's likeness. The Financial Times reported that instead of building AI models, Character.AI "will focus on its popular consumer product, chatbots that simulate conversations in the style of various characters and celebrities, including ones designed by users."

More on Character.AI: Google Paid $2.7 Billion to Get a Single AI Researcher Back

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Researchers Force Grumpy Cats to Wear Adorable Wittle Wool Hats — for Science

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Veterinary researchers have devised a solution to head off feline resistance to brain scans: hiding the electrodes underneath crocheted hats.

Hide and Seek

Veterinary researchers have devised an ingenious solution to head off feline resistance to brain scans: hiding the electrodes underneath custom-fit crocheted caps.

In a press release about this fascinating and adorable discovery, the University of Montreal boasted that its scientists figured out the system that helps keep the brain scanners on cats who are given chronic pain tests.

When administered while felines are awake, brain scans meant to detect pain conditions like osteoarthritis are often annoying to the cats in question. The animals often end up chewing on wires and trying to shake off the sensitive electrodes of the electroencephalogram (EEGs).

Vets generally sedate cats when giving them EEGs to avoid such a scene, but in their new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods, the UdeM researchers are proposing their novel knitted approach.

In interviews with the New Scientist about their methodology, the researchers said that they came up with the solution after becoming frustrated with cats they were doing brain scans on constantly throwing off their electrodes.

"When you spend more time putting electrodes back on than you do actually recording the EEGs, you get creative," explained PhD student and study coauthor Aliénor Delsart.

Getting Creative

When trying to find solutions to this feline conundrum, the researchers stumbled upon a YouTube tutorial for crocheted cat hats. The team leads had a grad student make the cats' beanies and were pleased to discover that it helped keep the electrodes in place — though there's little doubt that the cats were none too pleased by their new accessories.

With the crocheted beanies secured as a novel solution to the pissed-off cat problem, UdeM team lead Éric Troncy said in the press release that they're looking for government funding to expand their research into chronic feline pain.

"We now plan to obtain [Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Alliance] funding, in partnership with private companies, to enable us to establish a genuine EEG signature for chronic pain," Troncy said, "and many other applications that will enable us to automate chronic pain detection in the future."

Necessity is, as they say, the mother of invention — and in this case, it may end up helping all of felinekind.

More on cats: Research Finds That Cats Feel Grief When Their Fellow Pets Die... Even Dogs

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Elon Musk Has Been Throwing Tens of Millions of Dollars at Republicans for Way Longer Than We Thought

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Though he's been very active in support of Donald Trump in 2024, it appears that Elon Musk has been donating big to GOP candidates for years.

Donation Station

Though he's been very active in support of former president Donald Trump during this election cycle, it appears that multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk has been donating heavily to GOP candidates for years now.

As sources close to the billionaire revealed to the Wall Street Journal, Musk has been quietly donating tens of millions of dollars to Republican candidates and causes since as early as 2022.

He donated so much, in fact, that he became one of the biggest conservative donors — all without anyone knowing.

During the 2022 midterm election cycle, the 53-year-old entrepreneur donated $50 million to a political action committee (PAC) called Citizens for Sanity. Started by ex-Trump aide Stephen Miller, the group's main focus aligns heavily with Musk's: lobbying against undocumented immigrants and transgender healthcare for children.

Though the exact dates of that donation were not included in the WSJ's reporting, the timing is nevertheless salient given that the SpaceX and Tesla CEO's daughter, Vivian Wilson, came out as trans in 2022 and moved to have her last name changed to her mother's to distance herself from him.

Murkey Money

Musk's donations to the PAC, which was incorporated in Delaware earlier in 2022 and listed employees from Miller's nonprofit American First Legal, were verified by tax filings and people who spoke with the WSJ about them. The billionaire donated to Miller's PAC through a "dark money" group called Building America’s Future, which allowed him to do so without his name being disclosed.

Along with spending big in the midterms, Musk also donated $10 million to Florida governor Ron DeSantis' presidential bid in 2023 — a sum that made him one of the Republican's biggest backers. Using a group called Faithful & Strong Policies, over half of the money from Musk's donations to the former presidential candidate ended up with a pro-DeSantis PAC called Never Back Down.

Beyond highlighting how easy it is for the rich to donate huge sums of money to candidates and causes through "dark money" groups without the public learning of it, these previously unreported donations also show that Musk has been quietly maneuvering in conservative politics for longer than most people knew.

More on Musk: Elon Musk Pretends Not to Know About the Horrible Accusations Against His "Good Friend" Puff Daddy

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No, Donald Trump Isn’t Wading Through Hurricane Floodwaters, You Absolute Morons

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

No, Donald Trump didn't wade through Hurricane Helene-caused flooding in blue jeans. That

Get Your Waders

An image depicting former president Donald Trump wading through floodwaters alongside a fellow disaster responder went viral on social media this week.

But there's one tiny problem: the image is an AI-generated fake, as multiple publications have confirmed.

The image, which shows Trump wearing a lifejacket and blue jeans as he marches through thigh-high waters, first picked up steam on Facebook last weekend.

And it doesn't hold up to virtually any degree of scrutiny. Trump's right hand is distorted, and the lettering pictured on either man's clothing is completely illegible.

The former president has visited some areas impacted by the storm, but there are no credible reports of the candidate physically going into floodwaters in blue jeans, making it only the latest instance of highly politicized AI slop ahead of the presidential elections next month.

Slop Flood

As of publishing this article, the image has garnered over ten thousand likes on Facebook.

"I don't think FB wants this picture on FB," the poster wrote in a caption, implying the social media giant may have been removing the post for political reasons. "They have been deleting it."

Despite alleged censorship, the image was shared roughly 160,000 times in just two days, according to a fact check from USA Today. (The photo is still live on Facebook, though has been flagged with an "altered photo" warning and a link to an independent, third-party fact check.)

The image quickly spread to other corners of social media, where users captioned the synthetic image with notes about how "they don't want you to see this side of Trump" and messages to leaders to "not tell me how much you care about Americans... show me though [sic] your actions."

The fake image of Trump is one of many AI-generated fake photos to circulate in the wake of the deadly storm, which wrought extensive damage throughout parts of Appalachia.

Further and Further Apart

Other AI-generated images of alleged hurricane devastation have depicted scenes like flooded homes, abandoned, sad-looking dogs on roofs, and men in knee-high water barbequing.

Most notably, a widely-shared AI image showing a crying young girl clutching a puppy while evacuating in a canoe has made its rounds on X-formerly-Twitter, where it's been repeatedly shared by right-wing influencers and close Trump allies.

As far as the health of our information world goes, the apparent believability of these images is troubling. The fact that so many netizens are taking clearly AI-generated images at face value is a damning indictment of the extent of media illiteracy plaguing the US today.

More on AI and misinformation: Facebook Is Being Flooded With Gross AI-Generated Images of Hurricane Helene Devastation

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Haunted Woman Calls the Cops After Discovering a Rug Mysteriously Buried in Her Backyard

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

No Diggity

After digging up a weird rug buried in her backyard, an Ohio woman began experiencing some unexplained goings-on — and eventually decided to bring in the cavalry.

As People reports, Columbus local Katie Santry discovered the buried and rolled-up rug when she and her boyfriend were digging to build a fence. Videos of her experience immediately went viral on TikTok, with readers immediately jumping to some wild conclusions.

Soon after the digging commenced, the 34-year-old mother walked into her home office to find her laptop screen shattered and her desk items strewn about. Santry accused everyone in the house, from her boyfriend Brandon and his two kids to her own son, of breaking the computer. But they all said that they hadn't even been near the room where it happened and that the doors were closed.

Suddenly, a macabre thought occurred to her, as relayed to People: "Is there a dead body in that rug? Or is it the ghost of the rug’s past?"

Santry took to TikTok to discuss her conundrum, querying followers in a now-viral initial post in which she asked "What on earth happened? Is there a ghost breaking my stuff?"

As she told People, Santry decided after the whopping response to that first video, which garnered five million views and thousands of comments, to literally keep digging. The woman, her boyfriend, and her kids soon found, however, that the ground was too dry to dig with their normal shovels due to Columbus' recent drought conditions.

At an impasse, Santry said her kids lost interest soon lost interest, but she became worried about the potential spirit whose soul may have been encased in the rug.

"What if there really is a body?" she asked herself, as recounted to People. "How could you not help that person find peace?"

Official Backup

Two days after that first post went viral, the woman decided to call the police, who arrived within 15 minutes only to tell her that it would take a full canvass of the yard to assess whether or not any human remains were buried there.

While waiting for that process to start, Santry decided to do some digital sleuthing of her own and brought her ballooning number of followers along for the ride.

She discovered that only one family had owned the house before her, and that both of the elderly former tenants were still alive and living in a nearby nursing home. After getting in touch, the couple's adult daughter even promised to go speak to them to ask if they knew anything.

In her interview with People, Santry said that although she doesn't "think there's a dead body down there," she's still compelled to find out why the rug was buried in the first place.

"My biggest concern is my computer because, at the end of the day, it shattered for no apparent reason," she continued. "That leaves me with the most question marks."

More on Midwestern mysteries: Scientists Stumped by "Dozens" of Gigantic Holes at the Bottom of a Lake

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Cringey Tech Execs Swoon Over Mark Zuckerberg’s "Cool" New Look

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a newfound sense of, er, style — and his fellow techsters are very into it.

Throwing Fits

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a newfound sense of, er, style — and his fellow tech leaders are very into it.

As the Washington Post reports, the 40-year-old tech mogul's new look features shirts like his flashy "AUT ZUCK AUT NIHIL" one, which he created in tandem with a menswear designer as part of a larger capsule collection.

And his "bro-ified" sense of personal style is capturing all the right attention.

Along with rocking custom tees, the millennial billionaire's grown-out curls and newly-built physique courtesy of his mixed martial arts (MMA) hobby seem indicative not just of a fresh look, but also of a fresh outlook.

That's at least according to other tech execs who are seemingly trying to score points with the billionaire.

"[It’s] resonated with a younger generation in terms of style and presentation," tech investor Brianne Kimmel, the founder of the Worklife Ventures firm, told the WaPo of Zuckerberg's new swag. "There’s a cool factor that didn’t exist before, and now male tech CEOs have a playbook to achieve similar results."

Beyond that new "cool"-ness is, apparently, a new confidence that has become apparent to investors and admirers alike.

"I don’t apologize anymore," an all-grown-up and feisty Zuckerberg said during a lengthy taped discussion of the "Acquired" podcast last month.

"We’ve noticed," one of the hosts responded.

Good Vibrations

Even ex-employees are feeling the allure of Zuck's new vibe.

"Zuckerberg is ruthless as both a leader and an executive, but in his heart, he’s just a start-up guy who wants to be cool with the nerds," a former Facebook executive told the newspaper. "He’s living his best life."

Though the Meta CEO may well have come to this style evolution on his own, WaPo has also uncovered evidence that it could have been steered by none other than former PayPal CEO and billionaire investor Peter Thiel, a trusted mentor and advisor to the younger tech scion.

In a 2020 email disclosed during discovery in a lawsuit filed against Meta by the state of Tennessee, Thiel encouraged Zuckerberg to redo his image to appeal to youthful audiences.

"As the head of the most successful Millennial tech company, it makes more sense for Zuckerberg to present himself as 'Millennial spokesperson,'" rather than "'Mark as a Baby Boomer construct of how a well-behaved Millennial is supposed to act,'" the 56-year-old entrepreneur wrote to his younger protegé.

"Finally, I think there’s also some distinction between me and the company here," Zuckerberg responded. "This is likely particularly important for how I show up because I’m the most well-known person of my generation."

Though it's impossible to say whether that advice is at the heart of the Meta CEO's rebrand, he did seem eager to follow it — and lo and behold, just a few years later, we have a spiffy new Zuck.

More on Meta: Zuckerberg Says It's Fine to Train AI on Your Data Because It Probably Has No Value Anyway

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Mark Zuckerberg Shows Off Bizarre Video of Himself Leg Pressing Chicken Nuggets

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

AI might be worsening carbon emissions, but at least we have this fake video of Mark Zuckerberg leg-pressing chicken nuggets, we guess.

Combo Meal

Meta-formerly-Facebook announced a new suite of AI-powered video-creating and editing tools today, collectively called "Meta Movie Gen."

Longtime CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off the new AI offering in his favorite way to promote anything: by showing off his love for fitness — albeit with some very strange, very AI twists.

In a bizarre Instagram video, Zuck can be seen doing leg presses in a series of increasingly strange AI-generated settings. In the first scene, he's pictured using the machine in a neon-lit gym; in the next, he's dressed like Caeser and pictured against a distinctly ancient Roman backdrop. At one point he's pressing dripping racks of gold.

Then, in perhaps the strange scene of all, Zuck is suddenly pictured leg-pressing a large bucket of chicken nuggets whilst surrounded by a sea of french fries.

"Every day is leg day with Meta's new MovieGen AI model that can create and edit videos," Zuck captioned the video. "Coming to Instagram next year."

Sure! Why not. Generative AI might be guzzling energy and drastically worsening carbon emissions in the process, but we get... a fake billionaire nugget press. Will somebody please make it make sense?

Mixed Reactions

The top comments on the video were overwhelmingly positive.

"Whoa!" wrote one impressed Instagram user. "That's exciting!!"

But other Instagram users were more skeptical.

"Second richest man in the world spending his [research & development] money on this," commented one user, seemingly incredulous of Meta's resource allocation.

"How many artists did you steal from to train your AI?" asked another netizen. A fair question, given that Zuck recently drew criticism for declaring that "individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content."

Looking Ahead

In a press release, Meta characterized Movie Gen as an "advanced and immersive storytelling suite of models" with "four capabilities: video generation, personalized video generation, precise video editing, and audio generation."

But the chicken nugget promo aside, there's no set release date for the tool.

"We aren't ready to release this as a product anytime soon," Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox wrote in a Threads post, "but we wanted to share where we are since the results are getting quite impressive."

Or, alternatively, Meta wants its shareholders to know that a competitor to OpenAI's Sora model is in the works — and that Zuck can leg press copious amounts of chicken nuggets.

More on Mark Zuckerberg: Zuckerberg Says It's Fine to Train AI on Your Data Because It Probably Has No Value Anyway

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Meta’s AI Bootleg Moo Deng Is an Insult to Pygmy Hippos Everywhere

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Meta has just announced Movie Gen, its new AI-powered video generation tool, and to show it off, it's flaunting an AI-generated baby hippo.

Boo Deng

Meta has just announced Movie Gen, its new AI-powered video generation tool for creating realistic-looking footage — and one-upping OpenAI's Sora, it can automatically add matching audio to its output.

But notable detail is its de facto choice of mascot. Featured front and center on the product's announcement page — and in the marketing material shared with the press — is an AI-generated video of a cute baby hippo swimming underwater.

We'd put money on that being a shameless evocation of Moo Deng, the young, plucky pygmy hippo whose adorable antics have endeared millions.

It may be a cynical marketing move, but based on the instructions it was given, the AI video generational tool was spot on — if you can overlook the AI sheen. "A baby hippo swimming in the river. Colorful flowers float at the surface, as fish swim around the hippo," reads the prompt entered into Movie Gen, as shared by Wired. "The hippo's skin is smooth and shiny, reflecting the sunlight that filters through the water."

And impressively, we must admit, all of that's there. It doesn't compare to the perfect creature that is Moo Deng — but it's all there.

Super proud of our Movie Gen reveal because it can generate:
— Edits (way more fun than restyles)
— Personalization (imagine yourself - in video!)
— Moo Deng pic.twitter.com/KfQ5QfTrBq
— Danny Trinh (@dtrinh) October 4, 2024

Filmfaker

For new footage, Movie Gen can generate clips up to 16 seconds long at 16 frames per second, according to The New York Times. (This puts it short of the filmmaking standard of 24 fps, despite Meta claiming it can help Hollywood filmmakers in its blog post.)

But it can also be used as an editing tool for existing footage, too. In a series of examples shared in the announcement, the AI is used to add pom poms to the hands of a man running across a scenic landscape, and in an even more ridiculous showing, place him in a dinosaur suit.

Movie Gen can also generate audio for the footage it produces by using both video and text inputs. That includes sound effects, background music, or even entire soundtracks, Meta said.

One example depicts a man gazing over a cliff as water crashes down around him, with music swelling in the background. Another shows firecrackers being shot into the sky, and the audio seems pretty well timed to the explosions, down to the crackling that follows.

Product Pending

There's just one small thing: Movie Gen isn't available to the public yet, and it probably won't be for a while.

"We aren't ready to release this as a product anytime soon — it's still expensive and generation time is too long — but we wanted to share where we are since the results are getting quite impressive," Chris Cox, Meta's chief product officer, wrote on Threads.

It's also far from perfect. In the NYT's testing, it mistakenly grafted a human hand onto a phone that was meant to be held by a dog.

To be fair, OpenAI's Sora, which generated a lot of hype when it was unveiled in February, is also yet to be made public.

In the meantime, other companies like Google-backed Runway have stepped in with impressive AI video generation tools of their own — so the race is on.

More on AI: Gullible Trump Cronies Losing Their Minds Over Fake AI Slop on Twitter

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California Greenlights Amsterdam-Style Weed Cafes Where You Can Get Stoned Without Getting the Munchies

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Starting in January, Californians will be able to enjoy cannabis Euro-style thanks to a newly-passed bill legalizing weed cafes.

Cafe Culture

Starting in January, Californians will be able to enjoy cannabis Netherlands-style thanks to a newly passed bill legalizing weed cafes.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law Assembly Bill 1775, which will allow existing dispensaries to make and serve hot food, sell nonalcoholic drinks, and host live performances in a push that some lawmakers hope will reinvigorate the state's nightlife.

"Cannabis cafes are going to be a huge part of the future of cannabis in our state, and help to beat back the illegal drug market," boasted Assemblymember Matt Haney of San Francisco, who authored the bill, in an interview with the LA Times.

According to California's cannabis control department, the cannabis black market is still larger than its legal counterpart.

"Right now, our small cannabis businesses are struggling to compete against illegal drug sellers that don't follow the law or pay taxes," Haney continued in an interview with Agence France-Presse. "In order to ensure the legal cannabis market can survive and thrive in California, we have to allow them to adapt, innovate and offer products and experiences that customers want."

Staunch Opposition

Despite the proposed legal and economic benefits, however, many powerful players are not on board with the cannabis cafe push in California. Chief among them is the American Cancer Society's advocacy branch.

"Secondhand marijuana smoke has many of the same carcinogens and toxic chemicals as secondhand tobacco smoke," the ACS' Cancer Action Network statement reads, pointing to a landmark 2007 study that found little differentiation between the toxicity of cannabis and cigarette smoke in a lab setting.

Jim Knox, the managing director of the ACS' Cancer Action Network, told the LA Times that allowing indoor cannabis cafes will allow people to "smoke in a restaurant for the first time in 30 years."

"That is a big step backward," he said.

While proponents insist that the latest language of the bill allows for greater worker protections from secondhand cannabis smoke — including giving local governments the ability to impose ventilation restrictions — than the previous one that Newsom vetoed, Knox is still calling foul.

"There is very well-established science and industry knowledge that you cannot isolate smoke — it can’t be done," Knox said, without citing any specific studies. "The only way to prevent migration of smoke is to not allow smoking."

In that sense, he's right — though one could wager that anyone who works at or visits a cannabis cafe is signing up for said secondhand smoke risk.

More on smoke: Teens Who Vape Show Higher Levels of Uranium and Lead, Scientists Find

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Elon Musk Might Die of Old Age Before He Can Make It to Mars, Expert Suggests

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Elon Musk's plans to fly to Mars grow more ambitious every year — but it's unclear whether he'll live long enough to actually see it happen.

Mulling Martians

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's plans to turn humanity into a "multiplanetary" species grow more ambitious every year — but it's unclear whether he'll live long enough to actually see it happen.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, experts are skeptical about the billionaire's bold plan to take humans to Mars.

In an interview with the newspaper, aerodynamics expert Christopher Combs of the University of Texas said that it may take between 15 and 20 years for it to be safe enough for humans to travel to Mars. Should it take that long, the multi-hyphenate business owner will be in his 60s or 70s by the time he's able to reach the Red Planet.

"SpaceX has a history of designing iteratively, and we kind of expect things to go wrong the first few tries — if you have to wait two years between iterative attempts, that really stretches out your development cycle," Combs told the newspaper. "Can they be perfect the first time?"

Of particular concern are the logistics of getting to the Red Planet, which only has a single window every 26 months where that planet and ours are aligned closely enough to send spacecraft with the least amount of fuel. With future launches having to occur on that timeline, there will only be nine windows for SpaceX's Starships to go to Mars in the next 20 years.

Time Windows

At the age of 53, Musk will ultimately have to pull off at least one crewed Mars mission within the next 20 years to get there himself — and given that the next such window opens in the fourth quarter of this year, he's clearly not going to be able to launch anything to Mars again before late 2026.

To be fair, Musk himself has made public comments about the fuzziness of the Mars travel timeline as it relates to his own lifespan.

"If we don’t improve our pace of progress, I’m definitely, you know, gonna be dead before we go to Mars," Musk said during a 2020 conference. "I would like to not be dead by the time we go to Mars — that’s my aspiration here."

As per recent tweets, Musk is still hoping to send an uncrewed Starship spacecraft to the Red Planet during the next Earth-Mars transfer window in 2026 and claims humans will hitch rides there within the next eight years. Unlike Combs, astrophysicist Peter Hague thinks after crunching the numbers that it can be done.

"2031 for humans is credible," Hague tweeted. "If not 2033. This is happening and you’ll get to see it."

Which expert is more correct remains to be seen. SpaceX still has a lot to prove — and Musk is only getting older.

More on Musk and Mars: Elon Musk Makes Embarrassingly Stupid Claim: If Trump Loses, Humanity Will Never Make It to Mars

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Google Is Stuffing Annoying Ads Into Its Terrible AI Search Feature

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Ad Attack

Google's notoriously wonky AI Overviews feature — you know, the one that repeatedly makes up facts and literally tells users to eat rocks — is about to get a whole lot more annoying.

On Thursday, the tech giant announced that its AI-generated search summaries will now begin to show ads above, below, and within them, as a way of demonstrating that the technology is capable of actually making money.

It will also serve to assuage concerns that AI chatbots could eat into search ad revenues, which are Google's biggest cash cow.

Now, if you search how to get a grass stain out of jeans, as seen in an example in Google's blog post, you'll get an AI summary which contains a carousel of relevant website links, plus a heavy helping of "Sponsored" ads for stain removers. Revolutionary stuff.

"People have been finding the ads within AI Overviews helpful because they can quickly connect with relevant businesses, products and services to take the next step at the exact moment they need them," Shashi Thakur, vice president of Google Ads, wrote in the blog post.

Perhaps signaling its commitment to weaving its search engine with AI tech most of all, the company is also rolling out a separate product for mobile users called AI-organized Search results pages, which will be full-pages — right now limited to recipe searches — that are entirely populated with content curated by an AI.

Here Comes the Sludge

The move is all well and good for the company's investors. But for others, this is just introducing more AI slop that's watering down an increasingly less useful search engine.

Like AI chatbots in general, Google's AI Overviews have earned a reputation for being unreliable and making up facts. Notable gaffes include recommending putting glue on pizza and smearing poop on a balloon — and its bad rep is no doubt heightened by the fact that the AI summaries are forced to the top of a search engine that practically everyone uses.

And while this will protect Google's revenue stream, it does little for the websites who are losing clicks because their content is being mediated through an AI model. A Google spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that the company won't share ad money with publishers whose material is cited in the AI overviews.

As a small concession, however, Google will start including inline links to those sources. Rhiannon Bell, Google Search's VP of user experience, claims that tests showed that compared to the old design, which relegated links to the bottom of the summaries, this new one sends more traffic to the cited websites, per Bloomberg.

In any case, it's looking like Google is in the AI search game for the long haul.

More on Google: Google Paid $2.7 Billion to Get a Single AI Researcher Back

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Vast Majority of CEOs Ready to Make Remote Workers’ Lives As Miserable As Possible

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

The battle over remote work continues — and it looks like CEOs are overwhelmingly willing to take extreme measures to get folks back to the office.

Giving an Edge

The battle over remote work continues — and it looks like chief executives are overwhelmingly willing to take extreme measures to get folks back to the office.

A recent report from the global research and accounting firm KPMG shows that 89 percent of corporate CEOs at US companies are willing to dangle incentives like "favorable assignments, raises, and promotions" for employees who head back to the office full-time.

As Inc and Axios point out, that overwhelming figure suggests that CEOs may also be willing to withhold those same benefits from employees who choose to stay home. In other words, folks who are willing or able to get back into the office will likely have a serious advantage over those who don't want to be back in the office — or, perhaps more importantly, can't due to location, health, or family reasons.

It's a staggering figure, and one that comes at a tumultuous moment in the ongoing battle between remote or hybrid workforces and C-suite executives insisting that it's time for employees to get back to the office full-time — despite overwhelming evidence that remote work doesn't affect productivity.

RTO Cullings

The KPMG report also found that 79 percent of CEOs expect that within three years, corporate roles ceded to remote setups during the pandemic will once again be in the office full-time. Per the report, just a few short months ago, only 34 percent of CEOs predicted a mass return-to-office shift.

On that note, the report's findings come after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced last month that employees must return to the office for all five days a week, or otherwise risk being sacked. And while Jassy's decision might have some chief executives feeling inspired, it's worth noting that the decision was met with outrage from much of Amazon's workforce.

Many of them have since looked for work elsewhere.

"At first, I didn't quite believe it," one such Amazon employee, a mother who says she was hired with the understanding that there would be no full-time return-to-office mandate, recently told Fortune. "I've been updating my resume and portfolio, and rage applying to new jobs on LinkedIn."

Some CEOs have admitted to using return-to-office mandates as a guise for layoffs, expecting the decision to lead to some degree of a voluntary exodus.

Whether the executives' gambit to attract workers to come back to the office will pay off in the long run remains to be seen. If there's one certainty, it's that a mandate likely won't go over easy.

More on the future of work: CEO Alarmed to Discover That Laying Off 1,500 Workers Had Consequences

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Scientists Gene Hack Bacteria That Breaks Down Plastic Waste

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

The scientists edited to the bacteria to prove which enzyme it used to degrade PET plastics into bioavailable carbon.

Bottom Feeders

We may have a way of literally eating away at our planet's pollution crisis.

As part of a new study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, researchers have shed additional light on a possibly game-changing bacteria that grows on common polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics, confirming that it can break down and eat the polymers that make up the waste.

Scientists have long been interested in the plastic-decomposing abilities of the bacteria, Comamonas testosteroni. But this is the first time that the mechanisms behind that process have been fully documented, according to study senior author Ludmilla Aristilde.

"The machinery in environmental microbes is still a largely untapped potential for uncovering sustainable solutions we can exploit," Aristilde, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois, told The Washington Post.

Enzyme or Reason

To observe its plastic-devouring ability, the researchers isolated a bacterium sample, grew it on shards of PET plastics, and then used advanced microscopic imaging to look for changes inside the microbe, in the plastic, and in the surrounding water.

Later, they identified the specific enzyme that helped break down the plastic. To prove it was the one, they edited the genes of the bacteria so that it wouldn't secrete the enzyme and found that without it, the bacteria's plastic degrading abilities were markedly diminished.

That gene-hacking trick formed a full picture of what goes on. First, the bacteria more or less chews on the plastic to break it into microscopic particles. Then, they use the enzyme to degrade the tiny pieces into their monomer building blocks, which provide a bioavailable source of carbon.

"It is amazing that this bacterium can perform that entire process, and we identified a key enzyme responsible for breaking down the plastic materials," Aristilde said in a statement about the work. "This could be optimized and exploited to help get rid of plastics in the environment."

PET Project

PET plastics, which are often used in water bottles, account for 12 percent of global solid waste, the researchers said. It also accounts for up to 50 percent of the microplastics found in wastewater.

That happens to be the environment that C. testosteroni thrives in, opening up the possibility of tailoring the bacteria to clean up our sewage before it's dumped into the ocean, for example.

But we'll need to understand more about the bacteria before that can happen.

"There's a lot of different kinds of plastic, and there are just as many potential solutions to reducing the environmental harm of plastic pollution," Timothy Hollein, a professor of biology at Loyola University Chicago who was not involved with the study, told WaPo. "We're best positioned to pursue all options at the same time."

More on pollution: A Shocking Percentage of Our Brains Are Made of Microplastics, Scientists Find

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Top Tesla Exec Abandons Ship Just Days Before Major "Robotaxi" Event

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Tesla chief information officer Nagesh Saldi is now leaving the company less than a week before it's supposed to unveil its robotaxi.

Peace Out

One of Tesla's long-serving executives is abandoning ship.

As Bloomberg reports, Tesla employees were informed that chief information officer Nagesh Saldi, who has held his position for six years, is leaving the automaker.

The news comes less than a week before Tesla is reportedly set to unveil a long-rumored "Cybercab" prototype at its (rescheduled) robotaxi event in Los Angeles, an event that many hope will answer major questions about the company's risky pivot to operating a driverless taxi service.

Saldi joined Tesla from the computing giant HP in 2012. After a major restructuring at the company in 2018, he was promoted to CIO, a role that is typically responsible for an organization's information and computer technologies.

As CIO, Saldi reported directly to Musk. One of the latest major projects he was involved in was the expansion of Tesla's data centers in New York and Texas, according to Bloomberg, which are part of the automaker's AI infrastructure to develop its autonomous driving tech, including its Full Self-Driving driver assistance system.

Why Saldi left, however — and whether it was of his own accord or by being fired by his boss Elon Musk — is unclear. Nevertheless, the timing of the move will invite additional scrutiny into the state of the company's leadership, as the ranks of its c-suite dwindle.

Management Massacre

Saldi's departure adds to an alarming number of top execs who have left Tesla this year.

Three departed in the course of a tumultuous two weeks in April: senior vice president Drew Baglino, vice president of public policy Rohan Patel, and vice president of investor relations Martin Viecha, who announced his departure during an earnings call.

The next month, head of human resources Allie Arabalo also left, soon followed by Tesla's head of product launches Rich Otto, who publicly trashed Musk's leadership for the brutal layoffs he carried out.

As it stands, Tesla officially lists just three executives: CEO Elon Musk, chief financial officer Vaibhav Taneja, and senior vice president of automotive Tom Zhu. For a company with over 100,000 employees, that's strikingly few leaders.

All the CEO's Men

The seeming leadership crisis comes at what could be a pivotal moment for the company. Sales have slowed, but Musk has ramped up his commitment to launching a robotaxi service.

This is despite many believing that Tesla's autonomous driving tech isn't advanced and reliable enough for the job, as evidenced by the controversies surrounding Full Self-Driving. The challenge is only heightened by the hurdle of rolling out an entirely new vehicle to serve as the taxis.

Good thing, then, that Musk has surrounded himself with plenty of people to advise him. Right?

More on Tesla: Tesla Won't Have Much to Show at "Light on Details" Robotaxi Event, Investor Warns

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Fun New Mouth Swab Will Tell You When You’ll Die

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Danzig

Scientists have devised a fascinating way to determine when you may die.

Known as "CheekAge," this new biological clock-reader developed by the company Tally Health is, according to a press release, a far less invasive version of so-called "epigenetic clock" technology scientists have been using for the past decade to help determine how fast people are aging.

While there are some "super-agers" who age particularly well, most folks' aging rates generally follow both genetic trends personal to them and their own lifestyle factors, including smoking, drinking, stress, and diet.

Paired with epigenetic factors — those that are "imprinted" on our DNA from ancestral factors ranging from proximity to environmental pollution to the full-body stress of dealing with institutional racism — scientists can, with a fairly high level of certainty, determine how fast you're going to age.

Put differently: scientists can tell you when you're going to die. In the past, however, the process involved either taking blood tissue samples or being subjected to a battery of tests that more resembled a physical assessment than anything else.

Seeking a less-invasive solution, researchers at the New York-based longevity company Tally Health not only came up with a new methodology but are likely intending to sell it to the public.

After sifting through data from a longitudinal aging study out of Scotland that measured elderly patients' DNA expression (otherwise known as "methylation") over time, the Tally Health team determined that they had acquired enough of a trove of biomarkers to create their own epigenetic clock criteria.

In a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Aging, the Tally experts explained how they created what they're calling a "second-generation clock," which can detect DNA methylation most associated with mortality from cells obtained via a cheek swab.

"The fact that our epigenetic clock trained on cheek cells predicts mortality when measuring the methylome in blood cells suggests there are common mortality signals across tissues," boasted Maxim Shokhirev, the study's first author and head of computational biology and data science at Tally Health. "This implies that a simple, non-invasive cheek swab can be a valuable alternative for studying and tracking the biology of aging."

Because the research was funded and undertaken by a for-profit company, there is also clearly a financial benefit to this research.

Specifically, it appears that Tally Health is already selling its cheek swab tests, though it's unclear if the methodology boasted in this new paper is the same that's included in the $250 box kit advertised on its website, but we've reached out to the company for clarification.

More on aging: Scientists Figure Out Exact Ages Your Face Will Start Aging Like Milk

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