Stranded Boeing Astronaut Forced to Slum It in a Sleeping Bag by Himself

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Those tranded Boeing Starliner astronauts are apparently being forced to deal with some pretty undignified living standards.

Bag and Tag

More than two months into what was supposed to be a week-long journey, the stranded NASA astronauts who hitched a ride to the International Space Station on board Boeing's doomed Starliner spacecraft are apparently being forced to deal with some pretty undignified living standards.

As Time notes, the space station was already occupied by seven astronauts before NASA's Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived via the Starliner in early June.

Because the Boeing-built craft immediately sprung several helium leaks during its journey to the station, the pair are now stuck on board the ISS indefinitely — and as they previously told the magazine, that means they're not exactly sleeping in style.

Williams seems to have gotten the better end of the deal by spending the last two months camped out on board the space station's Crew Alternate Sleep Accommodation (CASA) sleep chamber with another of the extra astronauts hanging out on board the European Space Agency-built Columbus module.

Wilmore, however, has been forced to contend with a sleeping bag in the Japanese Space Agency's Kibo module.

"Butch is going to have to rough it a little bit," Williams told Time back in May when she and her copilot thought they'd only be slumming it for a mere eight days.

No Scrubs

It sounds less than ideal — but as the report notes, Williams and Wilmore's difficulties don't end with their sleeping arrangements.

As with every ISS mission, the Starliner astronauts initially had specific jobs to do on board the station that would have eaten up their eight-day journey. As Time reports, their main priority was checking in on the Boeing capsule and making sure its communications, life support, and other essential functions were in good shape.

With that checklist done and their journey having been extended until possibly February due to Starliner's technical issues, Wilmore and Williams have instead been assisting their fellow crew members with their tasks and experiments, including repairing a urine processing pump.

Beyond that lovely job, Wilmore and Williams were also forced to stretch their clothing rations because there's no laundry on board the ISS. Generally speaking, astronauts pack enough clothes for the length of their journey, and with their trip home having been pushed back repeatedly, the Starliner crew had to make do until a Northrop Grumman resupply mission finally came to deliver them new clothes earlier this month.

There was never much dignity to life on board the ISS, to begin with — and now that they're stranded there, Williams and Wilmore are likely feeling the burn of Boeing's shoddy Starliner work.

More on Starliner: NASA Clown Car Plan Would Stuff Extra Astronauts Into SpaceX Capsule to Avoid Return Journey in Disastrous Boeing Starliner

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Ex-Google CEO Says It’s Fine If AI Companies "Stole All the Content"

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, AI companies should

Move Fast and Steal Things

Worried your AI startup might be illegally swallowing up boatloads of copyright-protected content? According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, you can worry about that later — once you have oodles of cash and a platoon of lawyers, that is.

As caught by The Verge, during a recent talk at Stanford's School of Engineering, Schmidt displayed what can only be described as Silicon Valley CEO Final Boss Energy as he laid out a theoretical scenario in which the students in the room might use a large language model (LLM) to build a TikTok competitor, in the case that the platform was to be banned.

Schmidt acknowledged that his imagined scenario might be riddled with legal and ethical questions — but that, he says, should be something to deal with later.

"Here's what I propose each and every one of you do. Say to your LLM the following: 'Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it's not viral, do something different along the same lines," Schmidt told the room. "That's the command."

And "what you would do if you're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur," he continued, "is if it took off, then you'd hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right?" He then added that "if nobody uses your product, it doesn't matter that you stole all the content" anyway.

"Do not quote me," the billionaire continued. (Oops!)

Lawyers With Mops

Schmidt did at one point try to point out that he "was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody's music," despite advising the students moments earlier to essentially do exactly that.

In many ways, the ex-Google CEO's statement perfectly encapsulates much of the AI industry's overarching attitude toward other people's stuff.

Companies have been scraping up human-produced content for years now to train their ever-hungry AI models. And while some entities, like The New York Times, are calling copyright foul, Schmidt apparently sees alleged IP theft as a "mess" for lawyers to clean up later.

"Silicon Valley will run these tests and clean up the mess," Schmidt told the Stanford students, according to a transcript of the event. "And that's typically how those things are done."

The video has since been taken down after plenty of negative press coverage.

More on AI and copyright: Microsoft CEO of AI Says It's Fine to Steal Anything on the Open Web

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Ex-Google CEO Says It's Fine If AI Companies "Stole All the Content"

Severe Solar Storm Creates Stunning Auroras During Meteor Shower

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

A power geomagnetic storm that hit Earth on Monday created beautiful auroras that lit up the night sky during the Perseids meteor shower.

Bad Turns Good

Looks like the Sun is having another one of its outbursts again, because it just blasted us with a severe geomagnetic storm that crackled through our planet's magnetic field.

The Space Weather Prediction Center said it detected the solar event on Monday morning when it was classified as a severe G4 level storm — the second most intense kind.

By that same afternoon, the event eventually weakened to a G2-level storm — but not before zapping our skies with absolutely stunning auroras.

Now, observers the world over — not to mention off-world — are sharing the magical glimpses they got of these incredible light displays, which just so happened to coincide with the year's best meteor shower.

We’re in the middle of an intense geomagnetic storm!
A series of solar eruptions arriving at Earth are triggering widespread auroras. Here’s what NASA space weather analyst Carina Alden saw last night as she traveled through Michigan and Wisconsin! https://t.co/KG5pvCdyit pic.twitter.com/qrpdkva4Vj
— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) August 12, 2024

Fun in the Sun

Geomagnetic storms are caused by coronal mass ejections, which is when the Sun expels enormous blobs of solar material into space.

Occasionally, some of these ejections hit our planet, and their payload of charged particles can wreak havoc on the Earth's magnetic field.

If intense enough, the effects of the ensuing solar storm can be serious, such as disrupting communications infrastructure and causing power blackouts.

Most of the time, though, they go unnoticed. But if we're lucky, they create the marvelous curtains of light dancing across the night sky known as the northern lights, or auroras.

Cosmic Coincidence

This year, the stars aligned — well, strictly speaking, just the Sun did — and hurled a coronal mass ejection at Earth right as the Perseids meteor shower hit its peak, when it can deliver up to a hundred shooting stars in an hour.

It's not every day you get to see a dazzling aurora be the backdrop to a barrage of luminescent meteors, and skywatchers the world over marveled at the rare event's beauty.

"Aurora over the Grand Canyon, during the peak of the Perseids, with lightning flashes on the horizon. Does it get any better?" one photographer tweeted, sharing a photo of the spectacle.

We've even gotten a view of this from space, shared by NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick aboard the International Space Station.

This sky display will be hard to top — but keep your eyes peeled for storms like these in the future, because a lot of the time, auroras follow.

More on solar phenomena: NASA Investigating Mysterious Radio Signals From the Sun

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Groundbreaking Brain Chip Allows Man With ALS to "Speak" Again

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Using an amazing new brain chip, a man who'd lost the ability to speak is now able to communicate his thoughts out loud using his own voice.

Using an amazing new brain-computer interface (BCI), a man who'd lost the ability to speak is now able to communicate his thoughts out loud using his own voice.

Scientists at the University of California, Davis have developed a brain chip that can interpret brain signals and have them be "read" aloud by a computer in real time.

Using this chip, 45-year-old Casey Harrell, whose speech is slurred from the muscle control loss that characterizes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease, went from being very difficult to understand to communicating in a computerized voice.

What's more: the voice assistant software connected to Harrell's BCI is designed to sound like his voice before the disease took hold using artificial intelligence trained with audio samples of him pre-ALS.

Implanted last summer in the left precentral gyrus, the brain region responsible for speech, the BCI's 256 electrodes record the area's activity and essentially convert it into text that's then read aloud by the AI voice assistant mere seconds later.

As UC Davis neuroprosthesis expert Sergey Stavisky explained in a press release, the chip does so by "translating those patterns of brain activity into a phoneme — like a syllable or the unit of speech — and then the words they’re trying to say."

Though it's far from the first device that helps people with diseases like ALS to communicate — Stephen Hawking famously used a specialized microprocessing computer powered by Intel to talk after losing the ability to speak following an emergency tracheotomy in 1985 — Davis scientists say their BCI functions even better because its translation algorithm was built with natural speech flow in mind.

"Previous speech BCI systems had frequent word errors," explained UC Davis neurosurgeon David Brandman, the principal investigator in the experiment and the co-senior author of the study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. "This made it difficult for the user to be understood consistently and was a barrier to communication."

"Our objective," Brandman continued, "was to develop a system that empowered someone to be understood whenever they wanted to speak."

It's not the only brain chip that has helped an ALS patient regain their ability to communicate. Last year, for instance, a 36-year-old German man, who was fully paralyzed by the condition, had a BCI implanted — and immediately asked for a beer when it allowed him to spell out messages.

More on brain chips: Brain Implant Hooked Up to Control VR Headset

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Implantable Device Can Detect and Reverse Opioid Overdose

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Researchers developed a implantable device that can detect the first signs of an opioid overdose and then rapidly inject naloxone.

When a person overdoses on opioids, their life can hang in the balance unless someone quickly injects them with an effective antidote like the life-saving medication naloxone.

But sometimes, people don't have access to naloxone, most commonly known as Narcan, or they don't get it soon enough, a scenario that has prompted researchers to develop a clever implantable device that can detect the first signs of an overdose and then rapidly infuse naloxone into the bloodstream.

As detailed in a paper published in the journal Device, the researchers demonstrated the device's effectiveness in a series of preclinical trials, detecting and reversing opioid overdoses in 24 out of 25 pigs.

If it makes the huge leap from the lab to becoming a viable commercial product, the implant could make a sizable dent in the more than 100,000 deaths related to drug overdoses in the US in 2022.

"In overdose cases where there is a bystander nearby, that individual can be rescued through either intramuscular or intranasal administration of naloxone, but you need that bystander," said Giovanni Traverso, the study's principal researcher and a biomedical expert at MIT, in a statement about the research. "We wanted to find a way for this to be done in an autonomous fashion."

The device, small enough to be slipped under the skin, consists of sensors that track vital signs, a wirelessly rechargeable battery, and a reservoir for medication.

If a person starts exhibiting signs of an overdose, algorithms analyzing data from the sensors send an alert to the person's smartphone. If they don't cancel the alert, the implanted device shoots an infusion of naloxone into their tissue, acting in a "closed-loop" fashion, meaning that it can deliver the drug by itself.

"Beyond the closed loop, the device can also serve as an early detection or warning system that can help alert others — whether it be loved ones, healthcare professionals or emergency services — to the side of the person so that they can help intervene as well," Traverso explained in the statement.

The study's writers think people who have previously overdosed or are at high risk are the ideal patients for these implants.

They are now attempting to further optimize and miniaturize the device before testing it out on human subjects.

"This is only the first lab-based prototype, but even at this stage we’re seeing that this device has a lot of potential to help protect high-risk populations from what otherwise could be a lethal overdose," said Traverso.

More on opioids: Doctors Are Getting Ready to Give Patients a Vaccine That Blocks Fentanyl's Effects

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Company Claims It Can Charge a Smartphone In Less Than 5 Minutes

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Chinese electronics company Realme recently demonstrated a 320 watt charger that fully charged a smartphone in four and a half minutes.

Speed Demon

There's fast charging, and then there's fast charging.

Chinese electronics company Realme has just revealed a new battery charger that it claims can fully top up a smartphone in well under five minutes, LiveScience reports, making it the fastest smartphone charging tech in the world.

The "320 W SuperSonic Charge" can fill a battery cell up to 26 percent in one minute, over 50 percent in two minutes, and takes just 4 minutes and 30 seconds to reach a full charge — which narrowly edges domestic competitor Redmi's 300W charging tech at 4 minutes and 55 seconds, according to GSMArena.

And this isn't just what the tech can do in a lab. In a live demonstration at the Realme Fanfest event on Wednesday, the charger filled a smartphone from 2 percent to 100 percent in an astoundingly quick 4:20 seconds, which is about a full percentage of charge every 2.65 seconds.

But when or if the tech will ever hit the mainstream remains to be seen. For now, Realme's charger is not much more than an impressive tech demo.

Multipronged Approach

It's not some black magic enabling Realme's ludicrous charging speeds. The company said its tech works by charging multiple battery cells simultaneously, instead of just one at a time; most phone manufacturers, including Apple and Android, only use single-cell batteries.

Providing an ungodly amount of wattage definitely helps, too. Generally, smartphone chargers only use five to twenty watts. Fast chargers for iPhones typically don't go higher than 30 watts, though many competitors for other smartphone brands offer 60 to 100-watt chargers. Laptops, meanwhile, typically need around 60 watts to charge, with fast options offering 140 watts.

But Realme's super-speedy charging won't work on just any phone. For its demonstration, the electronics manufacturer used a specially built, 4,420 mAh battery with four separate cells to sap up all that power, which was folded to fit inside the smartphone used in the demonstration.

Warp Drive

It's unclear when Realme will debut this technology commercially. The capabilities are undeniably impressive, but it might be way more than consumers would ever practically need.

And, as we mentioned earlier, there may simply not be a market for this yet, since most phones only use single-cell batteries. And for good reason: pound-for-pound, multi-cell batteries tend to have lower capacities.

There are also potential concerns over how this would affect your phone's battery health. Proper fast charging is considered pretty safe and standard, but 320 watts might be pushing it.

But, all told, it's assuring to know that these speeds are at least possible. And who knows: maybe someone will figure out how to make this stuff work for the rest of us.

More on battery tech: Apple Battery Supplier Working on New Battery Material With 100 Times the Energy Density of Current Tech

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Tech Company Lays Off 5,500 Workers to Invest More in AI, Despite Making $10.3 Billion in Profit

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Cisco posted $10.3 billion in profits last year but is still laying off 5,500 workers as part of an effort to invest more into AI.

Pink Slip Season

Despite tech conglomerate Cisco posting $10.3 billion in profits last year, it's still laying off 5,500 workers as part of an effort to invest more in AI, SFGATE reports.

It joins a litany of other companies like Microsoft and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, that have used AI as justification for the mass culling of its workforce.

The layoffs at Cisco came to light in a notice posted with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week, affecting seven percent of its staff.

In a short statement, CEO Chuck Robbins used the term "AI" five times, highlighting the company's efforts to keep up in the ongoing AI race.

Earlier this year, Cisco also laid off 4,000 or five percent of it staff, saying that the company wanted to "realign the organization and enable further investment in key priority areas."

In short, companies are no longer hiding their optimism over replacing human labor with AI, an unfortunate reality for those looking to maintain a stable job. But whether this "realignment" will pay off in the long run remains to be seen.

Red Herring

The layoff news helped boost Cisco's stock price on Wednesday, going from $45.04 in the morning to spiking over $48 per share in after-hours trading.

We've already seen similar spikes in the stock prices of other tech companies announcing layoffs.

Cisc's layoffs are also part of another pattern: tech companies saying they are shifting resources to boost their AI efforts and therefore they need to lay off people as part of a restructuring campaign.

While many companies have used AI as a public-facing excuse for their restructuring efforts, experts remain skeptical and think the tech is instead used as a cover.

"Fighting against robots is a nice cover story," University of Oxford economist and data scientist Fabian Stephany told Business Insider earlier this year. "But if you have a closer look, it's often old school, simple economic dynamics like outsourcing or lead management cutting costs to increase salaries in other places."

More on tech layoffs: Microsoft Lays Off 1,500 Workers, Blames "AI Wave"

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The Earth Just Can’t Stop Setting Heat Records

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

A record 15 national heat records have been shattered since January, as this year looks on track to surpass the last as the hottest ever.

Coming In Hot

It's too early to say if 2024 will top last year as the hottest on record — but it will already go down in history for blowing past another damning heat metric.

As The Guardian reports, an unprecedented 15 national temperature records from countries around the globe have been broken since January. Monthly national temperature records, meanwhile, have been broken a whopping 130 times, with tens of thousands of monitoring stations worldwide observing all-time local highs.

This is according to data gathered by climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who maintains an online database of extreme temperatures.

"This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen or even thought possible before," Herrera told The Guardian. "The months from February 2024 to July 2024 have been the most record-breaking for every statistic."

Hell on Earth

The hottest temperatures have descended on the tropics, where heat records were broken every day for 15 months in a row, Herrera said. Egypt recorded a national high of 123.6 degrees Fahrenheit in June, while just two days before, Chad tied its record of 118.4 degrees.

Just north of the Tropic of Cancer, Mexico also matched its record of 125.6 degrees later that month. Other countries that either tied or broke heat ceilings include Costa Rica, Laos, Ghana, and Cambodia. Extraordinarily, the Cocos Islands in the eastern Indian Ocean near Australia equaled its all-time high of 91 degrees twice this year: once in February, and again in April.

It's no wonder, then, that this July was also the hottest in history — and so has every month since June of last year, making it 14 record months in a row.

And in yet another hot streak: many scientists, including those at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, say we're on track for 2024 to be the hottest year ever recorded, which would make an ominous double-header with last year.

Summer Is Coming

Summer heat waves that scourged cities around the globe are believed to have killed hundreds of people this year, Reuters reported — if not thousands.

Scientists fear that if temperatures continue to climb, the extreme climate will render vast amounts of land uninhabitable, which could displace billions of people.

This recent spate of record-setting heat has heightened attention on the issue. But, even if the streak ends, "we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm," Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, told The Guardian. "This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans."

Until that happens, Herrera said that extreme weather alerts could save lives amidst our ever-hotter climate.

More on extreme heat: Dozens of Americans Die in Brutal Heat Wave

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Recruiters Are Getting Bombarded With Crappy, AI-Generated CVs

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Companies and recruiters are getting flooded with AI-generated job applications and they are badly written.

Trash Mountain

Companies and recruiters are getting flooded with AI-generated job applications — and predictably, many of them are badly written and generic sounding, Financial Times reports.

The use of AI has reached such a fever pitch that about half of job seekers are using AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini to churn out cover letters and resumes, and to fill out job assessment forms. FT used interviews with recruiters and employers, in addition to several surveys, to arrive at that estimate.

And it's seriously annoying people who need to fill positions.

"We’re definitely seeing higher volume and lower quality, which means it is harder to sift through," Khyati Sundaram, chief executive at recruitment website Applied, told FT. "A candidate can copy and paste any application question into ChatGPT, and then can copy and paste that back into that application form."

Productivity Killer

Several surveys have also found job applicants are making ample use of the tech, like this recent poll by Canva, in which 45 percent of 5,000 people surveyed said they had used AI to "build, update, or improve their resumes."

Worst of all, many applicants are clearly not going over the text they send out.

"Without proper editing, the language will be clunky and generic, and hiring managers can detect this," Victoria McLean, CEO of career consultancy company CityCV, told FT. "CVs need to show the candidate’s personality, their passions, their story, and that is something AI simply can’t do."

With no clear solution to this problem in sight, employers will have to rely heavily on in-person interviews to assess a candidate, recruiters told FT, which goes to show that AI isn't making everybody's jobs easier.

Besides job recruiters, AI has also made educators' jobs harder. It has become practically impossible to detect AI-generated writing in student work, requiring teachers to assess pupils in other ways — such as in-class assignments.

A recent UpWork survey revealed that 77 percent of workers who had used AI find the technology cumbersome and hampering their productivity.

What's clear from these disparate tales is that AI may not be the magic bullet proponents of AI claim it to be, especially when it comes to the job search market.

More on AI: OpenAI Exec Says AI Will Kill Creative Jobs That "Shouldn't Have Been There in the First Place"

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This Entirely AI-Generated Local "News" Site Is Incredibly Depressing

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Northwestern Arkansas has a new local news site — and it's entirely AI-generated, complete with "AI reporters" and all.

According to Nieman Lab, the digital news website called OkayNWA has been around since it first cropped up as an app last year. And unlike a lot of AI-generated local news sites, most of which fall under the umbrella of "pink-slime" journalism — automated local news content that's politically biased and often propagandized — OkayNWA isn't shy about its liberal use of AI.

"At OkayNWA," reads the website's About page, "we've embraced the cutting-edge potential of artificial intelligence to redefine how news is sourced, reported, and presented to you."

OkayNWA's self-avowed redefinition of news reporting involves scraping the web for local happenings and publishing them under the bylines of the website's "AI reporters," each of which has a different beat. "Benjamin Business," for example, is the website's "business reporting lead," while "Sammy Streets" is its "chief of street-level reporting." The website mostly publishes pretty low-stakes stuff, including information about upcoming local events, blurbs about area business openings and closings, and so on.

And according to the site's owner, the avoidance of controversial or otherwise more complex topics is intentional.

"The articles should only be about events and fun and good times," Jay Price, the app developer who launched the site, told Nieman Lab. "I don't want crime or politics, or even city council stuff."

But while it's great to have a resource for finding things like local events, the site's stated mission of redefining news and reporting raises the question: is this actually news? And how might a site like this impact the broader — and struggling — world of local reporting?

Price was inspired to start the site after he moved to Bentonville, Arkansas with no connections.

"I was trying to figure out what to do here and there was information spread all over the place," the app developer told Nieman Lab, "whether it be Facebook, Instagram, various event aggregator sites and email lists."

But even publishing blurbs about benign events, Price admitted, came with its own challenges.

"I was seeing the bots pick up news as events, and I wasn't sure what to do with it, honestly," Price told Nieman Lab. "Like, a new bar is opening this Friday. Yeah that's an event, but it's also kind of news."

But instead of conducting some on-the-ground interviews with the bar's owner and patrons, the AI takes care of the write-up, leading to questions of what gets lost in that process.

For one, local newspapers are incredibly important. Without them, local governments often aren't being held accountable, fewer people vote, and communities become more polarized.

Thankfully, as Nieman Lab notes, OkayNWA isn't the only newspaper in Bentonville — but as local newsrooms around the country continue to dwindle in size and number, it won't be surprising to see automated outfits resembling OkayNWA crop up to fill those voids. And to that end, though local news does cover stuff like bar openings and live music events, it also includes hard-hitting reporting about topics like crime, politics, and, yes "city council stuff."

The fact that Price actively avoids publishing actually newsworthy content with his AI seems to speak strongly to the limitations of generative AI when it comes to fully automated news. Reporting is a complex task, and generative AI often gets things wrong.

So while it's great to have a website where people can find information about local events, calling this a "news" site is at best, questionable — and at worst, existentially depressing.

More on AI and journalism: Beloved Local Newspapers Fired Staffers, Then Started Running AI Slop

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Doctors Suggest ‘Raw-Dogging’ Your Flight Is Bad For Your Health

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

We regret to inform you that there's another semi-ironic and potentially harmful TikTok trend that's taking the internet by storm: "raw-dogging" a flight.

It's the ultimate act of ponderous, self-flagellating stoicism: instead of doing the normal things people do to kill time on a miserable, long-haul flight, you tough it out by doing… nothing.

Sit up straight, don't eat the complimentary peanuts or the frozen dinners, and don't watch a movie on the in-flight entertainment system or on one of your devices. Hell, don't even go to the bathroom or drink water. Be a man. Because all you need is discipline, grit — and maybe the in-flight map, which is apparently sacrosanct in the world of aerial raw-dogging.

According to doctors, who are universally bewildered by the trend, this is a very bad idea.

"They're idiots," general practitioner Gill Jenkins told BBC. "A digital detox might do you some good, but all the rest of it is against medical advice."

"I really have no idea why anyone would do it," Gin Lalli, a psychotherapist specializing in anxiety, stress, and depression, told Fortune. "You're better off sleeping than raw-dogging."

Erling Haaland just ‘raw dogged’ a seven hour flight. [IG] pic.twitter.com/SVMpWSPwmf
— City Report (@cityreport_) August 4, 2024

And yet, people are doing it. Or they're at least pretending to. Soccer star and Manchester City striker Erling Haaland — who aficionados of the sport frequently joke is a robot — was one such celebrity to popularize the trend, jokingly or not.

"Just raw-dogged a seven hour flight," he posted in an Instagram story, vacantly staring at the seat in front of him. "No phone, no sleep, no water, no food, only map. #easy."

And, okay: this probably isn't a thing that people actually do. But it's undeniably become popular to joke about doing (or attempting), and we wouldn't rule out impressionable kids or pseudo-stoics giving it a shot for real.

"If you're not moving you're at risk of deep vein thrombosis, which is compounded by dehydration," Jenkins told BBC. "Not going to the toilet, that's a bit stupid. If you need the loo, you need the loo."

However, if you're not insane about it, raw-dogging — in severe moderation — could be beneficial for our device-addled brains.

"Not having access to emails or the ability to 'check in' means that we can create the space to engage our minds in thinking about other activities and people," Sophie Mort, a clinical psychologist at Headspace, told Fortune. "When we grant ourselves the space to switch off, it offers an opportunity to focus on what genuinely makes us happy."

"So switching off — even if just when you are traveling — can be just the ticket when it comes to protecting our mental state," she added.

In short, it's fine to allow yourself a worldly pleasure or two when you're flying the red-eye in your cramped economy seat.

More on internet trends: Dentists Horrified by People Carving Off Tooth Enamel at Home

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Crypto Fans Disgusted by Trump’s Rambling Appearance at Bitcoin Event

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Danzig

Donald Trump attempted to woo crypto voters by appearing at this weekend's Bitcoin Conference in Nashville.

In a 2021 interview with Fox Business, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump blasted Bitcoin, calling it a "scam" that should be regulated "very, very high."

"The currency of this world should be the dollar," he said at the time. "And I don't think we should have all of the Bitcoins of the world out there."

But given his lackadaisical commitment to virtually any belief, it shouldn't come as a shock that Trump has since completely flip-flopped on the topic, even issuing a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in 2022 in a brazen attempt to cash in on a largely unregulated market.

And now, in his bid to be reelected as the president of the United States, Trump is attempting to woo crypto voters — even appearing at this weekend's Bitcoin Conference in Nashville.

"I will appoint an SEC chair who will build the future, not block the future," he told audiences, in a total reversal of his prior position.

But if anybody was expecting him to make a meaningful statement about the future of crypto regulation in the US, they'd be sorely disappointed.

Instead, Trump made a characteristically rambling speech at the conference, leading to raised eyebrows and plenty of boredom.

"Most people have no idea what the hell it is," he said. "So what happens when everyone figures it out? That’ll be something."

The price of Bitcoin actually fell following Trump's remarks, indicating a muted response.

Even crypto enthusiasts who were willing to give Trump a pass for his regressive beliefs, criminal record, and keen interest in ending democracy in the US weren't impressed.

"I was excited to hear what Trump had to say about #bitcoin then I [fell] asleep listening to him ramble and pander to the crowd," attendee Mike Doan wrote in a social media post, as spotted by Raw Story. "I have to remind myself, vote for the platform, not the personality."

Other attendees took a less nihilistic approach.

"I don’t think Trump’s speech will gain him a lot of new voters among Bitcoiners," crypto investor Marc van der Chijs tweeted. "The other way around, many will now see him for what he really is."

"It was my first time watching him speak live," he added. "He sounds like a low IQ conman to me, I wouldn’t believe anything he tells me."

"It was painful to watch, hurting the reputation of the #Web3 community," crypto exec Kai Meinke tweeted. "Having a racist criminal on stage, a notorious liar who just stated 'you don't need to vote anymore after my term' and was babbling a lot narcissistic nonsense between punchlines and empty promises."

During his speech, Trump promised to establish a national "stockpile" of Bitcoin to serve as a "permanent national asset." Exactly how he was planning to do this remains unclear.

Organizers claimed that vice president Kamala Harris declined an invitation to appear at the conference. However, as the Financial Times reports, Harris is looking for a "reset" with crypto companies, suggesting an ongoing dialogue.

In short, Trump isn't exactly the poster child the crypto community was hoping for. But given the upcoming election, there's a lot on the line as far as crypto regulation is concerned. And given Trump's role as a sock puppet that's only swayed by the promise of making money, he may just give them a chance to further their interests as president.

More on Trump and crypto: Trump Has Completely Flip Flopped on Crypto

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Crypto Fans Disgusted by Trump's Rambling Appearance at Bitcoin Event

Elon Musk Accused of Withholding His Own Children From Visiting Grimes’ Dying Grandmother After She Supported His Trans Daughter

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Danzig

In a series of tweets, Grimes' mother Sandy Garossino accused Elon Musk of

Locked Away

Claire "Grimes" Boucher and multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk's relationship has soured significantly, with the former couple now embroiled in a custody battle over the three children they've had together.

Now Musk, who has extended the fight into an extended legal dispute in California and Texas courts, is allegedly holding the children hostage, preventing them from going on a family trip with Boucher's extended family.

In a series of tweets, Boucher's mother Sandy Garossino accused Musk of "withholding" the children

Like broken-down Tesla owners, Garossino had to resort to tagging Musk on Twitter-formerly-X to get his attention, indicating just how far the family ties have deteriorated.

"I’m writing here as the only way I have to reach you," she wrote. "As you know, my 93-year-old mother is now at end-of-life palliative care."

"I am alarmed to learn that the children cannot come as you are withholding them and their needed passport documents from Claire," Garossino added.

Expected in Canada

The tweets paint an alarming picture of how alienated Musk has become from his family. The news comes shortly after his estranged transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson was interviewed by NBC News, revealing that Musk had treated her with unbelievable cruelty, deadnaming her and accusing her of having been killed by the so-called "woke mind virus," a bizarre delusion Musk uses to characterize so-called "woke culture."

"I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged," Wilson told NBC. "Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide."

Boucher later rallied behind Wilson, tweeting that "I love and am forever endlessly proud of Vivian."

Considering Garossino's latest comments, Musk's family troubles go far beyond his anti-trans bigotry and disdain for Wilson.

Garossino noted that she had seen Musk appear "on television at the Olympics in Paris yesterday" with X, his son.

"Where are the other children, and with whom?" she pleaded. "They are scheduled to be with their mother. They were expected here in Canada."

"I write with a grandmother’s plea, asking you to honor your agreement, return the children, and provide the documents they need to see their great-grandmother before she passes," Garossino wrote.

It's a heartbreaking revelation, suggesting Musk is actively keeping his children from spending time with their mother and her family.

"Some moments in life last forever, and we get no second chances," Garossino wrote. "Family is priceless."

More on Grimes: Grimes Comes Out in Support of Elon Musk's Daughter He Publicly Attacked

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Elon Musk Accused of Withholding His Own Children From Visiting Grimes' Dying Grandmother After She Supported His Trans Daughter

If You’re Upset About That Broken Wind Turbine, Remember the Time BP Spilled 210 Million Gallons of Oil Into the Gulf of Mexico?

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Danzig

Earlier this month, a 360-foot blade of a wind turbine off the shore of Nantucket shattered.

The bizarre event, which experts believe was caused by a thunderstorm, led to nearby beaches being flooded with massive pieces of sharp fiberglass, leading to outrage among local residents.

Fishermen were furious, accusing the company behind the wind farm Vineyard Wind of turning a blind eye.

And then, of course, pundits who oppose green energy started using the incident to decry renewable power.

But while the turbine's operator Vineyard Wind should be held accountable, the fallout absolutely pales in comparison to environmental tragedies caused by the fossil fuel industry — like an oil spill, which is vastly more damaging event.

You might recall one example, when the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank in April 2010, causing millions of oil to flood the Gulf of Mexico and cause an incomprehensible amount of damage to the local environment, with officials suggesting that more than 25,000 marine mammals were harmed.

In short, while a federal investigation into Vineyard Wind incident is gaining steam, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the risks for renewable energy are dwarfed by the ecological destruction caused by activities like oil drilling, fracking and mountaintop removal.

There are over 150 oil and chemical spills in US waters every year, according to the Office of Response and Restoration. While modern wind turbines have been known to catch fire or leak lubricating fluids, government data shows that those incidents are rare. Oil spills, on the other hand, are notoriously difficult to contain, measure, and even detect. In comparison, floating chunks of fiberglass are less harmful and far easier to identify and dispose of.

That's not to say green energy providers are off the hook for safety. Vineyard Wind has since shut down operations, but several other wind farm projects are still active in the area, as the Vineyard Gazette reports.

Local Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) tribal council chair Cheryl Andrews-Maltais called for the government to slow down and tread more carefully.

"They should be shutting down every single offshore wind project until they know what is going on," she told the newspaper. "We warned them of these potential catastrophic failures."

The Gazette reported last week that the splintered wind turbine was caused by a defect that manufacturer GE Vernova failed to spot.

On a larger scale, the state of Massachusetts is looking to make headway in the renewable energy sector by taking on several new bids for energy contracts.

"The offshore wind industry is a critical component of Massachusetts’ economy and the country’s transition to clean, affordable energy," governor Maura Healey told the Gazette in a statement. "It is essential that we gain a full understanding of what happened here and how it can be prevented in the future."

More on the incident: Beaches Covered in Shards and Debris as Giant Wind Turbine Shatters

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Ferrari Exec Suspects Call From CEO Is Deepfaked, Asks Question Only He Would Know the Answer To

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Danzig

A scammer attempting to trick Ferrari executives using deepfake tech was thwarted by a stalwart safety measure: the security question.

Sotto Voce

A scammer attempting to trick Ferrari executives was thwarted by a stalwart safety measure: common sense.

As Bloomberg reports, the scammer in question earlier this month reached out to a Ferrari executive via WhatsApp. From an account with the name and profile of Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna — though not from the real CEO's usual number, of course — they attempted to convince the C-Suiter that a major acquisition was soon to be underway.

"Hey, did you hear about the big acquisition we're planning? I could need your help," the Vigna impersonator wrote, adding that they should be ready to sign a non-disclosure agreement ahead of the big deal.

"Italy's market regulator and Milan stock exchange have been already informed," the scammer continued. "Stay ready and please utmost discretion."

That's when things got even shadier, according to Bloomberg. The unnamed executive then jumped on the phone with the phony Vigna, who used a deepfaked voice to "speak" in a live conversation with the targeted scam-ee. In Vigna's voice, the scammer fibbed that the CEO was using a super-secret number to conduct super-secret business, hence the strange messages from the new number. But still not quite convinced, the executive asked the scammer a question that only the real Vigna would know: what book did the exec just lend to his high-powered boss?

And with that, the scammer hung up the phone. The enduring security question tactic stands strong!

Scamly Reunion

AI-powered deepfakes of human voices and even faces are getting increasingly convincing, meaning that it's getting increasingly difficult to rely on simply trying to dissect whether someone looks or sounds real. So, with deepfaked-abetted scam sprees on the rise, the Ferrari executive's time-tested strategy is a great example of a way to defend yourself — yes, this stuff can happen to anyone, not just executives of billion-dollar Italian companies — against a similar scam.

In the same vein, security experts have encouraged families to come up with secret "code words" to use with each other in the case that, say, a scammer impersonates a family member in a ploy to abscond with some cash.

While the attempted Ferrari scammer was foiled, other corporate executives should remain vigilant. Earlier this year, a CEO was fooled into handing over tens of millions of dollars to deepfake-assisted scammers. And in an incredible twist of irony, the security firm Know Be4 recently revealed that it was tricked into hiring a North Korean hacker as a remote worker, who used an AI-generated headshot to conceal their identity.

In other words, scammers stay scamming, and they're using AI to do it. Stay safe out there, kids!

More on AI scams: Security Firm Alarmed to Discover Their Remote Employee Is a North Korean Hacker

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Elon Musk Won’t Apologize After Sharing Faked AI Video of Kamala Harris

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Danzig

Elon Musk posted an AI-doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris on X-formerly-Twitter without disclosing it was AI.

Hack Job

Over the weekend, Elon Musk posted an AI-doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris on X-formerly-Twitter — and thus far, he hasn't apologized for it.

In the video, which Musk posted on July 26 and has since been viewed hundreds of millions of times, the presidential candidate's voice was altered to make it sound like she was bragging about being "the ultimate diversity hire."

"I'm both a woman and a person of color," the fake-Harris in the altered video says, "so if you criticize anything I say, you're both sexist and racist."

"This is amazing," the billionaire Donald Trump booster boasted of the video, originally posted by an account that calls itself @MrReaganUSA.

In that initial post, the user admitted that the video was a parody. When Musk posted it as his own, he made no such acknowledgment, seemingly violating X's own rules barring users from sharing "synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm."

Other Foot

At press time, the video has been up for nearly three days, and although Musk spent the weekend posting his usual drivel — including misinformation suggesting Democrats are "importing" undocumented people to vote illegally and that the party controls Google — he hasn't said a word online or in response to press requests, including from Futurism, about the AI-manipulated video he shared.

Though Musk himself has stayed mum on the subject, the Harris campaign hasn't.

"We believe the American people want the real freedom, opportunity, and security Vice President Harris is offering," declares a statement from the campaign to CNN, "not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump."

Electioneering aside, it's not at all hard to imagine that if a Democratic donor shared a doctored video of Trump without disclosure or apology, Musk and his fellow travelers would be up in arms about it — but then again, that crowd isn't exactly known for not being hypocrites.

More on Musk: Elon Musk Accused of Withholding His Own Children From Visiting Grimes' Dying Grandmother After She Supported His Trans Daughter

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Elon Musk Won’t Apologize After Sharing Faked AI Video of Kamala Harris

SpaceX Preparing to Launch Billionaire Adventurer for First Ever Private Spacewalk

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Danzig

Ready Or Not

SpaceX is slated to launch a billionaire benefactor into orbit for the world's first private spacewalk in the next few weeks — that is, if the mission doesn't get postponed yet again.

As Space.com reports, the Elon Musk-owned company admitted in a press briefing over the weekend that its Polaris Dawn mission will now launch no earlier than August 19 following reschedulings that pushed it back to July 31.

The mission, which will take fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman aboard a Falcon 9 rocket to become the first space tourist to ever attempt a spacewalk, was postponed in the wake of another of the company's rockets exploding earlier in July — though the official reasoning behind the slip seems to be traffic-related.

"There's a lot going on on [the International Space Station] right now," explained Sarah Walker, the director of SpaceX's Dragon mission management, during the presser. "We opted to fly the Crew-9 mission as our next [astronaut] mission and are ready to fly Polaris Dawn in late summer, as soon as we fulfill those obligations."

She later clarified that "late summer" meant at some point in August, Space.com notes.

Flying Solo-ish

This will be neither the first time Isaacman has flown up on a SpaceX rocket — he previously took an incredibly expensive orbital vacation in 2021 — nor the first time this specific mission has slipped launch dates.

As Space.com explains, Polaris Dawn was originally slated for late 2022, but it's been pushed back repeatedly. Given the official cause of the slip, it's unclear whether this most recent postponement is due to the Falcon 9 explosion or not.

When the Polaris Dawn mission — which is supposed to be the first of three additional trips after his first one — is finally launched, it won't link up with the ISS but will instead see Isaacman and his comrades fly farther into Earth's orbit than any other Dragon mission to date.

Postponements aside, it's nevertheless going to be incredible to watch Isaacman and the crew flying up with him to ghostride the whip — as he becomes the first space tourist ever to do so.

Updated to better describe the Falcon 9 failure.

More on space tourism: Billionaire Promised Crew Free Flights Around Moon, Then Dashed Their Dreams

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Astronauts Hold Their Own Olympics on Board Space Station

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Danzig

Astronauts on the International Space Station sent well wishes to the folks competing at the 2024 Olympics — with a zero-G take on the Games.

Orbital Games

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) sent well wishes to the athletes competing in the Paris Olympics by putting on their own, zero-gravity spin on the international games.

On Friday, NASA released a video of ISS astronauts performing a series of athletic spoofs, starting with a faux ceremonial passing of the Olympic torch. The crewmembers then performed a series of zero-gravity Olympic events, with the ISS' lack of gravity assisting them as they attempted to take on sports generally made much harder by gravity: gymnastics favorites like the pommel horse and floor-style backflipping, track and field feats like the discus, shotput, and hurdles, as well as weightlifting, and more.

"Over the past few days on the International Space Station, we've had an absolute blast pretending to be Olympic athletes," NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick told the camera to close out the video, faux-lympic torch in hand. "We, of course, have had the benefit of weightlessness," he added, caveating the advantages of being gravity-free. "We can't imagine how hard this must be to be such a world-class athlete, doing your sports under actual gravity."

"So from all of us aboard the International Space Station," Dominick continued, "to every single athlete in the Olympic Games, Godspeed."

Ring Around

If we had to pick a favorite zero-G event, it would have to be the ISSers' take on weightlifting, in which one crewmember squats a bar affixed with two other astronauts, as opposed to traditional rounded weights.

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games will run through August 11. And while there are a dizzying number of events to watch from home, there's unfortunately yet to be a spacefaring portion of the quadrennial athletic showdown. But who knows — maybe one day, humanity's imagined Moon colonies will host. But until then, to all of the athletes, we'll echo the ISS crew's message: Godspeed!

More on ISS happenings: NASA Reportedly Considering Rescuing Stranded Astronauts Using SpaceX Spacecraft

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Kennedy Thirst-Trapper Jack Schlossberg’s Instagram Feed Is Incredibly Unhinged

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Danzig

Caroline Kennedy's son Jack Schlossberg has become the internet's

Known for genetic good looks, bizarre antics seemingly reminiscent of his "Grey Gardens" foremothers, and now, for being Vogue's latest political correspondent, Caroline Kennedy's 31-year-old son Jack Schlossberg has become the internet's latest nepo baby "It" boy.

That's why it was so shocking when this Futurism reporter happened to be scrolling back through the Kennedy scion's Instagram feed — it is, somehow, even stranger and more unhinged than one could reasonably expect.

Take, for instance, this post from August 2018 during what we'll call Schlossberg's "green period":

Like most of the other posts in this roughly four-year-long attempt to turn his IG grid into a lime green-and-white custom meme page, Schlossberg muses about the comparative differences between the definitions of "Holland" and "Netherlands," the first of which denotes a region in the country as a whole.

"Also: Convinced 'The Hague' doesn't exist," Schlossberg writes, apropos to nearly nothing beyond The Hague very much being the capital of The Netherlands.

A Kennedy thinking The Hague isn't real sounds like the punchline of a long-forgotten political joke, but there's definitely more where that came from, too.

Prior to this green period, Schlossberg appeared to have a strange amount of personal stanning for since-assassinated Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that occurred while his mother was the US ambassador to Japan.

After Abe was assassinated, the political heir explained in an Instagram story that the former PM and his mom were the only people who attended his 23rd birthday — but given that the oldest of those stan posts was made 10 years ago, before Schlossberg turned 23, it appears the fandom came before the party appearance.

While no one who's seen his "Ticket to Ride" rendition would accuse the raven-mopped Kennedy devisee of being, well, normal, the outright strangeness of his IG feed before his viral fame — you know, back when he was just the ultimate American nepo baby — makes him a lot more interesting than other influencers (to say nothing of people working for Anna Wintour).

It's worth at least a smirk that nobody has advised Schlossberg or his well-heeled family to clean up his feed — but then again, maybe that's part of the brand. After all, the Kennedy clan are having nothing if not a wild 2024 on the Internet. What's another one? It's another lesson in the forgettable permanence of one's posted past — until the spotlight hits. The eternal wisdom remains as ever: Cleanse your feed with fire every now and again.

More on political memes: "JD Vance Couch" Searches Outpace "Trump Shooting" Queries on Google

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Google’s Latest Pitch for AI Is So Sad It Sounds Like a Spoof

Posted on July 31, 2024 by Danzig

Google's new pitch for generative AI, as seen in its new Olympic ad: don't teach your kids how to build something from a blank page.

If you've been watching the Olympics, you might have seen Google's new ad pitching its generative AI-powered chatbot, Gemini. And if you have seen it, we're curious: did you roll your eyes to the back of your skull when you first saw it, too?

The commercial in question features a young girl who aspires to be like Team USA hurdling star and two-time Olympic gold medal winner Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The girl's father, who narrates the ad, wants to help his daughter write a fan letter to her favorite athlete, so he turns to Gemini to help him do it.

"Help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is," the father prompts the bot, "and be sure to mention how my daughter plans on breaking her world record one day. (She says sorry, not sorry.)"

Gemini then spits out the requested letter — which in the small portion that's visible looks perfectly generic.

But while we would hope that this father-daughter duo might then spruce up the AI-spun fan mail with some more personality, the intended message of the commercial — that generative AI is there to offer a helping hand to all, including tykes hoping to reach out to their favorite athlete — falls wildly, brutally flat.

After all, this kid isn't an executive trying to expedite penning a boring, bound-to-be-formulaic email. She's a child who, instead of learning how to express herself through words on paper, is instead being taught to turn to a computer program that automatically provides a soulless and formulaic facsimile of genuine expression to learn from. Depressing stuff.

To be clear, we're not saying that the fictional kid in the commercial shouldn't be able to get some actual help while writing her letter. Assistance is important, and it's part of how kids learn! They give it — a fan letter, a math problem, a new move on the field — their best shot, and a good teacher or parent or coach helps them by editing, adjusting, and providing some healthy guidance along the way. The kid hopefully takes the notes and learns, and in doing so, they get better. Conversely, a great way to not help kids get better at written communication (or anything, really) is to simply get someone or something else to do the work for them.

This isn't about trying to train a kid to be a professional writer one day. This is about foundational knowledge and skills. Just because a young person might not feel naturally inclined to a subject — hi, math — doesn't mean they shouldn't learn the basics anyway.

And elsewhere, what happened to simply learning to do hard things? Writing a piece of fan mail to someone you admire might be nerve-wracking, for kids and even for adults, but sometimes the only way to do something challenging is to sit down and force yourself to do it.

Of course, sometimes formulas are helpful. But learning how to build something from a blank page using your own brain, even if the result is formulaic, is a very different process from asking a machine to spit the whole first draft out from scratch. If you only know how to hem, you don't really know how to sew a dress.

There's a vast difference between being overly cautious about a technology and having reservations about where and how said technology should be applied. Again, if you're turning to AI to reduce the time that you, in this one short life, are using to send already-robotic company emails, be our guest. But teaching a malleable child who wants to express their admiration to someone who inspires them — in this case an athlete who, as New York Magazine's Matt Stieb touches on, represents human excellence in their field — by using a human-mimicking AI instead of what could have been a challenging-yet-rewarding learning experience woefully misses the mark.

In other words, throw this AI ad in the garbage heap next to Apple's creativity-annihilating iPad ad. And by the way? We can almost guarantee that the human on the other side would prefer the letter read like it was written by an earnest kid who tried their best, and not like they used a downloaded fan mail template and filled in the blanks like corporate Mad Libs.

More on bad tech ads: Apple's New Ad Showing Machines Crushing Human Creativity Is a Bit on the Nose

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