It’s been a little over four years since a major fire ravaged France’s iconic Notre Dame de Paris cathedral, causing an estimated $865 million of damage to the majority of its roof and recognizable spire. Since then, the French government, engineers, and a cadre of other dedicated restoration experts have been hard at work rebuilding the architectural wonder, which is currently slated to reopen to the public by the end of 2024.

It’s a tight turnaround, and one that would be much easier to meet if carpenters used modern technology and techniques to repair the iconic building. But as AP News explained earlier this week, it’s far more important to use the same approaches that helped first construct Notre Dame—well over 800 years ago. According to the recent dispatch, rebuilders are consciously employing medieval era tools such as hand axes, mallets, and chisels to reforge the cathedral’s hundreds of tons’ worth of oak wood roofing beams.

Although it would progress faster with the use of modern equipment and materials, that’s not the point. Instead, it’s ethically and artistically far more imperative to stay true to “this cathedral as it was built in the Middle Ages,” explained Jean-Louis Georgelin, a retired general for the French overseeing the project.

[Related: The Notre Dame fire revealed a long-lost architectural marvel.]

Thankfully, everything appears to be on track for the December 2024 reopening. Last month, overseers successfully conducted a “dry run” to assemble and erect large sections of the timber frame at a workshop in western France’s Loire Valley. The next time the pieces are put together will be atop the actual Notre Dame cathedral.

As rudimentary as some of these construction techniques may seem now, at the time they were considered extremely advanced. Earlier this year, in fact, researchers discovered Notre Dame was likely the first Gothic-style cathedral to utilize iron for binding sections of stonework together.

It’s not all old-school handiwork, however. The team behind Notre Dame’s rebuilt roofing plans to transport the massive components to Paris via trucks, and then lifted into place with help from a large mechanical crane. Over this entire process, detailed computer analysis was utilized to make absolutely sure carpenters’ measurements and handhewn work were on the right track. Still, the melding of bygone and modern technology appears to perfectly complement one another, ensuring that when Notre Dame finally literally and figuratively rises from the ashes, it will be as stunning as ever.

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The Federal Trade Commission’s ongoing attempt to rein in Amazon entered a new phase this week, with the regulatory organization recommending both the company and its home surveillance system subsidiary Ring receive multimillion dollar fines in response to alleged monopolistic practices and data privacy violations.

According to an FTC statement released on Wednesday, Amazon disregarded children’s privacy laws by allegedly illegally retaining personal data and voice recordings via its Alexa software. Meanwhile, in a separate, same-day announcement, the commission claims Ring employees failed to stop hackers from gaining access to users’ cameras, while also illegally surveilling customers themselves.

Amazon relies on its Alexa service and Echo devices to collect massive amounts of consumer data, including geolocation data and voice recordings, which it then uses to both further train its algorithms as well as hone its customer profiles. Some of Amazon’s Alexa-enabled products marketed directly to children and their parents collect data and voice recordings, which the company can purportedly retain indefinitely unless parents specifically request the information be deleted.  According to the FTC, however, “even when a parent sought to delete that information … Amazon failed to delete transcripts of what kids said from all its databases.”

[Related: End-to-end encryption now available for most Ring devices.]

Regulators argued these privacy omissions are in direct violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule. First established in 1998, the COPPA Rule requires websites and online services aimed at children under 13-years-old to notify parents about the information collected, as well as obtain their consent.

According to the complaint, Amazon claimed children’s voice recordings were retained to help Alexa respond to vocal commands, improve its speech recognition and processing abilities, and allow parents to review them. “Children’s speech patterns and accents differ from those of adults, so the unlawfully retained voice recordings provided Amazon with a valuable database for training the Alexa algorithm to understand children, benefitting its bottom line at the expense of children’s privacy,” argues the FTC.

“Amazon’s history of misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests violated COPPA and sacrificed privacy for profits,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in Wednesday’s announcement. “COPPA does not allow companies to keep children’s data forever for any reason, and certainly not to train their algorithms.”

[Related: Amazon’s new warehouse employee training exec used to manage private prisons.]

The FTC’s proposed order includes deleting all relevant data alongside a $25 million civil penalty. Additionally, Amazon would be prohibited from using customers’ (including children’s) voice information and geolocations upon consumers’ request. The company would also be compelled to delete inactive children’s Alexa accounts, prohibit them from misrepresenting privacy policies, as well as mandate the creation and implementation of a privacy program specifically concerning its usage of geolocation data.

Meanwhile, the FTC simultaneously issued charges against Amazon-owned Ring, claiming the smart home security company allowed “any employee or contractor” to access customers’ private videos, and failed to implement “basic privacy and security protections” against hackers. In one instance offered by the FTC, a Ring employee “viewed thousands” of videos belonging to female Ring camera owners set up in spaces such as bathrooms and bedrooms. Even after imposing restrictions on customer video access following the incident, the FTC alleges the company couldn’t determine how many other workers engaged in similar conduct “because Ring failed to implement basic measures to monitor and detect employees’ video access.”

[Related: Serial ‘swatters’ used Ring cameras to livestream dangerous so-called pranks.]

The FTC’s proposed order against Ring would require the company to pay $5.8 million in fines to be directed towards consumer refunds. The company would also be compelled to delete any data, including facial information, amassed prior to 2018.

Amazon purchased Ring in 2018, and has since vastly expanded its footprint within the home surveillance industry. In that time, however, the company has found itself under fire on numerous occasions for providing video files to law enforcement entities without consumers’ knowledge, lax security, as well as promoting products via its much-criticized found footage reality TV show, Ring Nation.

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Last month, engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology unveiled a creepy, crawly centipede-inspired robot sporting a plethora of tiny legs. The multitude of extra limbs wasn’t simply meant to pay homage to the arthropods, but rather to improve the robot’s maneuverability across difficult terrains while simultaneously reducing the number of complicated sensor systems. Not to be outdone, a separate team of researchers at Japan just showed off their own biomimetic “myriapod” robot which leverages natural environmental instabilities to move in curved motions, thus reducing its computational and energy requirements.

[Related: To build a better crawly robot, add legs—lots of legs.]

As detailed in an article published in Soft Robotics, a team at Osaka University’s Mechanical Science and Bioengineering department recently created a 53-inch-long robot composed of six segments, each sporting two legs alongside agile joints. In a statement released earlier this week, study co-author Shinya Aoi explained their team was inspired by certain “extremely agile” insects able to utilize their own dynamic instability to quickly change movement and direction. To mimic its natural counterparts, the robot included tiny motors that controlled an adjustable screw to increase or decrease each segment’s flexibility while in motion. This leads to what’s known as “pitchfork bifurcation.” Basically, the forward-moving centipede robot becomes unstable.

But instead of tipping over or stopping, the robot can employ that bifurcation to begin moving in curved patterns to the left or right, depending on the circumstances. Taking advantage of this momentum allowed the team to control their robot extremely efficiently, and with much less computational complexity than other walking bots.

As impressive as many bipedal robots now are, their two legs can often prove extremely fragile and susceptible to failure. What’s more, losing control of one of those limbs can easily render the machine inoperable. Increasing the number of limbs a lá a centipede robot, creates system redundancies that also expand the terrains it can handle. “We can foresee applications in a wide variety of scenarios, such as search and rescue, working in hazardous environments or exploration on other planets,” explained Mau Adachi, one of the paper’s other co-authors.

[Related: NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.]

Such serpentine robots are attracting the attention of numerous researchers across the world. Last month, NASA announced the latest advancements on its Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS), a snake-bot intended to potentially one day search Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus for signs of extraterrestrial life. Although EELS utilizes a slithering movement via “rotating propulsion units,” it’s not hard to envision it doing so alongside a “myriapod” partner—an image that’s as cute as it is exciting.

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One of the world’s busiest airports will soon showcase an innovative, undeniably cute way to speed up travelers’ entrances and exits. First announced earlier this month, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is partnering with EV Safe Charge to demonstrate how the company’s mobile electric vehicle charging station, ZiGGY, could be deployed in public spaces to economically and conveniently power up consumers’ parked cars.

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source.]

Electric vehicles are an integral component of the societal shift towards clean, renewable energy. Unfortunately, battery shortages stemming from supply chain issues alongside a need for evermore charging stations is hampering a wider adoption of green transportation. ZiGGY obviously isn’t a catch-all fix, but it’s still a novel tool that both its makers and DFW hope to highlight over the summer as part of the airport’s series of EV charging solution demos.

“We know that electric vehicles will be a big part of the future of transportation,” Paul Puopolo, DFW’s Executive VP of Innovation, said in a statement, adding their air hub is “leaning into emerging technology now so that we are prepared to meet the needs of the airport community well into the future.”

ZiGGY itself resembles a large vending machine on wheels, which makes a certain amount of sense given it dispenses electric fuel on demand. Using geofencing technology, app-based controls, and on-board cameras, ZiGGY can be deployed directly to the location of your parked EV, where a user can then connect the charging bot to their ride. To court additional revenue streams, each ZiGGY also features large video screens capable of displaying advertisements. Don’t worry about getting stuck behind it if someone is using a ZiGGY, either—its dimensions and mobility ensures each station can park itself behind an EV without the need for additional space.

Speaking with Ars Technica on Tuesday, EV Safe Charge’s founder and CEO Caradoc Ehrenhalt explained that the idea is to deploy ZiGGY fleets to commercial hubs around the world, such as additional airports, hotels, and shopping centers. “What we’re hearing from people… is the common thread of the infrastructure being very challenging or not possible to put in or not cost effective or takes too much time. And so there really is the need for a mobile charging solution,” said Ehrenhalt.

[Related: Why you barely see electric vehicles at car dealerships.]

Of course, such an autonomous vehicle could find itself prone to defacement and vandalism, but Ehrenhalt apparently opts to look on the sunnier side of things. “Ziggy is fairly heavy because of the battery,” they cautioned to Ars Technica. “It has cameras all around and sensors, including GPS, and so there potentially could be [vandalism], but I’m always hoping for the best of humanity.”

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Following a troubling proliferation of AI-generated and manipulated media, Twitter announced on Tuesday its plans to expand its Community Notes system to flag altered and fake images. First launched late last year shortly after Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Community Notes built upon the company’s previous Birdwatch program aimed at leveraging unpaid, crowdsourced fact checking of tweets to rein in misinformation and hoaxes.

[Related: Why an AI image of Pope Francis in a fly jacket stirred up the internet.]

The expansion is currently in an “experimental” testing phase, and only pertains to posts containing a single image. Twitter states it plans to extend the feature to handle tweets featuring additional media uploads such as GIFs, videos, and multiple images in the near future. As of right now, however, only those signed up as a Community Notes contributor with a user rated Writing Impact score of 10 can see the option to flag a post for its accompanying media instead of just its text. According to Twitter’s Community Notes page, “Tagging notes as ‘about the image’ makes them visible on all Tweets that our system identifies as containing the same image,” meaning that other users’ tweets containing the same image alongside different text will hypothetically contain the same flag.

Twitter’s Community Notes team warned that the new feature’s accuracy could still produce both false positives and negatives for other tweets.  “It’s currently intended to err on the side of precision when matching images,” they explained, “which means it likely won’t match every image that looks like a match to you.” Twitter added that its team will continue to “tune this to expand coverage” while also cutting down on “erroneous matches.”

The new feature arrives just days after a fake image depicting an explosion at the Pentagon began circulating on Twitter, first via an account claiming association with Bloomberg News. The now-suspended account included a “Blue Checkmark” that for years reflected an account’s verified authenticity. Following Musk’s company takeover, a verification can now be obtained via subscribing to the premium Twitter Blue user tier.

[Related: Twitter’s ‘Blue Check’ drama is a verified mess.]

Twitter has relied extensively on crowdsourced moderation via the Community Notes system after axing the majority of its staff dedicated to trust and safety issues. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported the social media platform is now worth approximately one-third of the $44 billion Musk paid for it.

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Over 350 AI researchers, ethicists, engineers, and company executives co-signed a 22-word, single sentence statement about artificial intelligence’s potential existential risks for humanity. Compiled by the nonprofit organization Center for AI Safety, a consortium including the “Godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott agree that, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

The 22-word missive and its endorsements echo a similar, slightly lengthier joint letter released earlier this year calling for a six-month “moratorium” on research into developing AI more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4. Such a moratorium has yet to be implemented.

[Related: There’s a glaring issue with the AI moratorium letter.]

Speaking with The New York Times on Tuesday, Center for AI Safety’s executive director Dan Hendrycks described the open letter as a “coming out” for some industry leaders. “There’s a very common misconception, even in the AI community, that there only are a handful of doomers. But, in fact, many people privately would express concerns about these things,” added Hendrycks.

But critics remain wary of both the motivations behind such public statements, as well as their feasibility.

“Don’t be fooled: it’s self-serving hype disguised as raising the alarm,” says Dylan Baker, a research engineer at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), an organization promoting ethical AI development. Speaking with PopSci, Baker went on to argue that the current discussions regarding hypothetical existential risks distract the public and regulators from “the concrete harms of AI today.” Such harms include “amplifying algorithmic harm, profiting from exploited labor and stolen data, and fueling climate collapse with resource consumption.”

A separate response first published by DAIR following March’s open letter and re-upped on Tuesday, the group argues, “The harms from so-called AI are real and present and follow from the acts of people and corporations deploying automated systems. Regulatory efforts should focus on transparency, accountability and preventing exploitative labor practices.”

Hendrycks, however, believes that “just as it would be reckless to exclusively prioritize present harms, it would also be reckless to ignore them as well.” Hendrycks likened the moment to when atomic scientists warned the world about the technologies they created before quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer, “We knew the world would not be the same.”

[Related: OpenAI’s newest ChatGPT update can still spread conspiracy theories.]

“They are essentially saying ‘hold me back!’ media and tech theorist Douglas Rushkoff wrote in an essay published on Tuesday. He added that a combination of “hype, ill-will, marketing, and paranoia” is fueling AI coverage, and hiding the technology’s very real, demonstrable issues while companies attempt to consolidate their holds on the industry. “It’s just a form of bluffing,” he wrote, “Sorry, but I’m just not buying it.”

In a separate email to PopSci, Rushkoff summarized his thoughts, “If I had to make a quote proportionately short to their proclamation, I’d just say: They mean well. Most of them.”

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It feels like nearly every week or so, someone’s quadrupedal robot gains yet another impressive (occasionally terrifying) ability or trick. But as cool as a Boston Dynamics Spot bot’s new capability may be, it’s hard to reliably compare newly developed talents to others when there still aren’t any industry standard metrics. 

Knowing this, a team of research scientists at Google are aiming to streamline evaluations through their new system that’s as ingenious as it is obvious: robot obstacle courses akin to dog agility competitions. It’s time to stretch those robotic limbs and ready the next generation of four-legged machines for Barkour.

[Related: This robot dog learned a new trick—balancing like a cat.]

“[W]hile researchers have enabled robots to hike or jump over some obstacles, there is still no generally accepted benchmark that comprehensively measures robot agility or mobility,” the team explained in a blog post published last week. “In contrast, benchmarks are driving forces behind the development of machine learning, such as ImageNet for computer vision, and OpenAI Gym for reinforcement learning (RL).” As such, “Barkour: Benchmarking Animal-level Agility with Quadruped Robots” aims to rectify that missing piece of research.

In simple terms, the Barkour agility course is nearly identical to many dog courses, albeit much more compact at 5-by-5 meters to allow for easy setup in labs. The current standard version includes four unique obstacles—a line of poles to weave between, an A-frame structure to climb up and down, a 0.5m broad jump, and finally, a step up onto an end table.

To make sure the Barkour setup was fair to robots mimicking dogs, the team first offered up the space to actual canines—in this case, a small group of “dooglers,” aka Google employees’ own four-legged friends. According to the team, small dogs managed to complete the course in around 10 seconds, while robots usually take about double that time.

[Related: Dogs can understand more complex words than we thought.]

Scoring occurs between 0 and 1 for each obstacle, and is based on target times set for small dogs in novice agility competitions (around 1.7m/s). In all, each quadrupedal robot must complete all five challenges, but is given penalties for failing, skipping stations, or maneuvering too slowly through the course.

“We believe that developing a benchmark for legged robotics is an important first step in quantifying progress toward animal-level agility,” explained the team, adding that, moving forward, the Barkour system potentially offers industry researchers an “easily customizable” benchmark.

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Even after all that quarantine hobby honing, gardening can still be an uphill battle for those lacking a green thumb—but a little help from robotic friends apparently goes a long way. Recently, UC Berkeley unveiled AlphaGarden, a high-tech, AI-assisted plant ecosystem reportedly capable of cultivating a polycultural garden at least as well as its human counterparts. And in one particular, consequential metric, AlphaGarden actually excelled.

As detailed by IEEE Spectrum over the weekend, UC Berkeley’s gardening plot combined a commercial robotic gantry farming setup with AlphaGardenSim, an AI program developed in-house by utilizing a high-resolution camera alongside soil moisture sensors. Additionally, the developers included automated drip irrigation, pruning, and even seed planting. AlphaGarden (unfortunately) doesn’t feature a fleet of cute, tiny farm bots scuttling around its produce; instead, the system resembles a small crane installation capable of moving above and tending to the garden bed.

[Related: How to keep your houseplants from dying this summer.]

As an added challenge, AlphaGarden was a polyculture creation, meaning it contained a variety of crops like turnips, arugula, lettuce, cilantro, kale, and other plants. Polyculture gardens reflect nature much more accurately, and benefit from better soil health, pest resilience, and fewer fertilization requirements. At the same time, they are often much more labor-intensive given the myriad plant needs, growth rates, and other such issues when compared to a monoculture yield.

To test out AlphaGarden’s capabilities compared with humans, researchers simply built two plots and planted the same seeds in both of them. Over the next 60 days, AlphaGarden was largely left to its own literal and figurative devices, while professional horticulturalists did the same. Afterwards, UC Berkeley repeated the same growth cycle, but this time allowed AlphaGarden to give its slower-growing plants an earlier start.

According to researchers, the results from the two cycles  “suggest that the automated AlphaGarden performs comparably to professional horticulturalists in terms of coverage and diversity.” While that might not be too surprising given all the recent, impressive AI advancements, there was one aspect that AlphaGarden unequivocally outperformed its human farmer controls—over the two test periods, the robotic system reduced water consumption by as much as a whopping 44 percent. As IEEE Spectrum explained, that translates to several hundred liters less after the two month period.

[Related: Quick and dirty tips to make sure your plants love the soil they’re in.]

Although researchers claim “AlphaGarden has thus passed the Turing Test for gardening,” referencing the much-debated marker for robotic intelligence and sentience, there are a few caveats here. For one, these commercial gantry systems remain cost prohibitive for most people (the cheapest one looks to be about $3,000), and more research is needed to further optimize its artificial light sources and water usage. There’s also the question of scalability and customization, as different gardens have different shapes, sizes, and needs.

Still, in an era of increasingly dire water worries, it’s nice to see developers creating novel ways to reduce water consumption for one of the planet’s thirstiest industries.

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Termites are often thought to be structural pests, but two researchers have taken a slightly contrarian viewpoint. As detailed in a new paper recently published in Frontiers in Materials, David Andréen of Lund University and Rupert Soar of Nottingham Trent University studied termites’ tens of millions of years of architectural experience exhibited within their massive mounds. According to the duo’s findings, the insects’ abilities could inspire a new generation of green, energy efficient architecture.

Termites are responsible for building the tallest biological structures in the world, with the biggest mound ever recorded measuring an astounding 42-feet-high. These insects aren’t randomly building out their homes, however—in fact, the structures are meticulously designed to make the most of the environment around them. Termite mounds in Namibia, for example, rely on intricate, interconnected tunnels known as an “egress complex.” As explained in Frontiers’ announcement, these mounds’ complexes grow northward during the November-to-April rainy season in order to be directly exposed to the midday sun. Throughout the rest of the year, however, termites block these egress tunnels, thus regulating ventilation and moisture levels depending on the season.

To better study the architectural intricacies, Andréen and Soar created a 3D-printed copy of an egress complex fragment. They then used a speaker to simulate winds by sending oscillating amounts of CO2-air mixture through the model while tracking mass transference rates. Turbulence within the mound depended on the frequency of oscillation, which subsequently moved excess moisture and respiratory gasses away from the inner mound.

[Related: Termites work through wood faster when it’s hotter out.]

From there, the team created a series of 2D models of the egress complex. After driving an oscillating amount of water through these lattice-like tunnels via an electromotor, Andréen and Soar found that the machine only needed to move air a few millimeters back-and-forth to force the water throughout the entire model. The researchers discovered termites only need small amounts of wind power to ventilate their mounds’ egress complex.

The researchers believe integrating the egress complex design into future buildings’ walls could create promising green architecture threaded with tiny air passageways. This could hypothetically be accomplished via technology such as powder bed printers alongside low-energy sensors and actuators to move air throughout the structures.

“When ventilating a building, you want to preserve the delicate balance of temperature and humidity created inside, without impeding the movement of stale air outwards and fresh air inwards,” explained Soar, adding the egress complex is “an example of a complicated structure that could solve multiple problems simultaneously: keeping comfort inside our homes, while regulating the flow of respiratory gasses and moisture through the building envelope,” with minimal to no A/C necessary. Once realized, the team believes society may soon see the introduction of “true living, breathing” buildings.

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Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink announced on Thursday evening that it has received FDA approval to begin conducting human trials. News of the major step arrives after years of research and numerous regulatory hurdles, as well as multiple investigations into potential safety and animal ethics violations.

“This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” Neuralink wrote via its Twitter account on Thursday evening, with Musk retweeting the message alongside his congratulations.

[Related: Elon Musk hopes humans will test Neuralink brain implants in the next six months.]

Neuralink aims to create a line of computer implants that connect directly with users’ brains, initially in order to restore patients’ vision and help those with a “Stephen Hawking-type [neurological] situation,” explained Musk during a Neuralink presentation last November. For the majority of his life, Hawking suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which ultimately resulted in a near total body paralysis.

Neuralink first released footage in 2019 of a successful interfacing with rat test subjects. The company subsequently moved on to similar implants for sheep, pigs, and monkeys. In 2021, the company released footage of one of its test macaques playing Pong via a prototype “brain-machine interface.” Late last year, however, an exposé from Reuters revealed the company was under a federal investigation stemming from “internal staff complaints” regarding alleged animal-welfare violations, some of which pertained to over alleged 1,500 dead test subjects. Shortly thereafter, another report via Reuters indicated the FDA had rebuffed the company’s initial requests to begin human test trials, citing concerns over devices potentially overheating, as well as the possibility of damaging brain tissue upon implant removal.

[Related: Employees say Neuralink’s ‘hack job’ tests killed roughly 1,500 animals since 2018.]

As The Verge and DigitalTrends noted on Thursday, Neuralink is not the first company to receive regulatory greenlight on human brain-computer interface trials. Earlier this year, a company called Synchron—backed by the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—announced it had successfully implanted their “Stentrode” neuroprosthesis device in four human subjects. BrainGate’s device has also previously allowed a paralyzed man to convert his imagined handwriting into text to communicate.

Per Neuralink, recruitment is not yet open for clinical trials, but the company promised “more information on this soon.” Last November, Musk stated during a company show-and-tell that “You could have a Neuralink device implanted right now and you wouldn’t even know,” adding that, “ Hypothetically in one of these demos, in fact… I will.”

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Apart from being naturally cliquey, gorillas are born foragers. In the wild, the great apes are regularly on the move in search of fruits, vegetables, and bamboo shoots; a habit that can become difficult to recreate when living within a zoo setting. At Zoo Atlanta, for example, human workers generally provided gorillas with their meals at certain scheduled times and locations.  But an affordable new device could provide a much more naturalistic feeding regime for the apes—once they get used to it.

[Related: Gorillas can be cliquey, too. Here’s what that says about our own social lives.]

Recently, a team of mechanical engineering students and alumni at Georgia Tech began developing and testing ForageFeeder, a $400 machine partly inspired by deer feeders that can disperse gorillas’ their meals at random intervals and locations throughout the day. Suspended about 15 feet above the ground, ForageFeeder drops food such as carrots, sweet potatoes, and turnips from a bucket into a tray, after which time a rotor shoots the snacks in a circular motion as far as 30 feet away from the machine.

Recreating animals’ natural habitats and environments are crucial to ensuring zoo residents’ psychological and physical wellbeing, while also encouraging exercise and mental stimulation. Much like modern humans, zoo animals frequently deal with obesity due to a lack of activity. Tools and techniques such as the ForageFeeder not only promote Zoo Atlanta gorillas’ movement, but better simulate their natural foraging world.

Zookeepers at Zoo Atlanta have utilized the ForageFeeder on-and-off in their gorilla enclosure since last August. Although the primates are now largely used to its appearance, it wasn’t always the case. A video showcasing the gorillas’ first encounter with ForageFeeder depicts pretty much what one might expect—that is to say, some extremely befuddled apes. Over time, however, Zoo Atlanta’s residents have grown more used to the device.

“I’m confident we’re going to see statistical data that confirms what we’re already seeing: more foraging behavior,” Josh Meyerchick, senior keeper of primates at Zoo Atlanta and one of the research paper’s co-authors, said earlier this month.

[Related: Zoo animals are getting COVID vaccines made specially for them.]

That said, the team behind ForageFeeder aren’t waiting for gorillas to get with the program. Plans for the machine are currently open source online, and easily modifiable to adapt for countless other animal species’ diets, feeding times, and other particularities. ForageFeeder’s makers have already even modified their creation to serve Zoo Atlanta’s Angolan colobus monkey population.

“I find the zoo projects very interesting because your intended audience can’t provide any feedback,” says Magie Zhang, a project collaborator and recent mechanical engineering graduate. “If the device stops working, the animal doesn’t tell you. If they rip it apart, you can’t tell them to stop. It’s good to anticipate the problems of a design and figure out its solutions before it’s sent into the real world.”

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Certain robots can certainly sense cold temperatures, but feeling cold is a whole other ordeal. And yet the world is now blessed with robot sweaters.

To be fair, the new, adorable garb recently designed by an engineering team at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute isn’t intended to keep machines warm. As detailed in a research paper scheduled to be presented at 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, the group utilized the properties of a knitted sweater to create a fabric capable of sensing pressure and contact. The cutting-edge textile can now help indicate direction, orientation, and even grip strength via physical touch. 

[Related: A new material creates clean electricity from the air around it.]

Like its yarn inspiration, the new “RobotSweater” fabric can be woven into whatever three-dimensional shape is needed, and thus fitted over robots’ uneven shapes and surfaces. The knitted material itself features two layers of conductive, metallic fibers capable of conducting electricity. Between those two layers, another lace-like pattern is inserted. When pressure is applied, a closed circuit is generated and subsequently detected by sensors.

In order to ensure the metallic yarn didn’t degrade or break with usage, the team wrapped the wires around snap fasteners at the end of each stripe in the fabric. “You need a way of attaching these things together that is strong, so it can deal with stretching, but isn’t going to destroy the yarn,” James McCann, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science (SCS), explained in a statement.

To demonstrate their creation, researchers dressed up a companion robot in their RobotSweater, then pushed it to direct its head and body movement. On a robotic arm, the fabric could respond to guided human pushes, while grabbing the arm itself opened and closed a gripping mechanism.

[Related: Dirty diapers could be recycled into cheap, sturdy concrete.]

Swaddling robots in smart sweaters isn’t just fashionable—it could prove extremely valuable in industrial settings to improve human worker safety. According to the team, most safety barriers are currently extremely rigid and shield-like; encasing machines in flexible, sensitive fabrics, however could make them much more sensitive, and thus able to “detect any possible collision,” said Changliu Liu, an assistant professor of robotics in the SCS. Moving forward, the team hopes to integrate touchscreen inputs like swiping and pinching motions to direct robots. Even if that takes a while to realize, at least the machines will look stylish and cozy.

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The notorious Pegasus software exploit developed by the Israeli tech company NSO Group has allegedly been used for the first time as a weapon against civilians in an international conflict. According to a new report, the software is being used to spy on experts, journalists, and others critical of Azerbaijan’s incursion into the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia.

Reports of potentially the first documented case of a sovereign state utilizing the commercial spyware during a cross-border conflict comes courtesy of the digital rights group, Access Now, in collaboration with CyberHUB-AM, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, Amnesty International’s Security Lab, and independent mobile security researcher, Ruben Muradyan.

[Related: You need to protect yourself from zero-click attacks.]

According to the research team’s findings published on Thursday, at least 12 individuals’ Apple devices were targets of the spyware between October 2020 and December 2022, including journalists, activists, a government worker, and Armenia’s “human rights ombudsperson.” Once infected with the Pegasus software, third-parties can access text messages, emails, and photos, as well as activate microphones and cameras to secretly record communications.

Although Access Now and its partners cannot conclusively link these attacks to a “specific [sic] governmental actor,” the “Armenia spyware victims’ work and the timing of the targeting strongly suggest that the conflict was the reason for the targeting,” they write in the report. As TechCrunch also noted on Thursday, The Pegasus Project, monitoring the spyware’s international usage, previously determined that Azerbaijan is one of NSO Group’s customers.

[Related: Why you need to update your Apple products’ software ASAP.]

Based in Israel, NSO Group claims to provide “best-in-class technology to help government agencies detect and prevent terrorism and crime.” The group has long faced intense international criticism, blacklisting, and lawsuits for its role in facilitating state actors with invasive surveillance tools. Pegasus is perhaps its most infamous product, and offers what is known as a “zero-click” hack. In 2021, PopSci explained:

Unlike the type of viruses you might have seen in movies, this one doesn’t spread. It is targeted at a single phone number or device, because it is sold by a for-profit company with no incentive to make the virus easily spreadable. Less sophisticated versions of Pegasus may have required users to do something to compromise their devices, like click on a link sent to them from an unknown number. 

In September 2021, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab discovered NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware on a Saudi Arabian activists’ iPhones that may have proved instrumental in the assassination of US-based Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi, quickly prompting Apple to release a security patch to its over 1.65 billion users. Later that year the US Department of Commerce added NSO Group to its “Entity List for Malicious Cyber Activities.”

“Helping attack those already experiencing violence is a despicable act, even for a company like NSO Group,” Access Now’s senior humanitarian officer, Giulio Coppi, said in a statement. “Inserting harmful spyware technology into the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict shows a complete disregard for safety and welfare, and truly unmasks how depraved priorities can be. People must come before profit—it’s time to disarm spyware globally.”

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Following a similar report issued by the American Psychological Association (APA) earlier this month, the US Surgeon General released an advisory statement on Tuesday warning of social media platforms’ potentially harmful effects on minors.

While cautioning more research is still needed to understand the full scope of social media’s impact on children, adolescents, and teens, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s office makes clear they believe “ample indicators” show social media can represent a “profound risk of harm to [their] mental health and well-being.”

“We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address,” Murthy said in a statement this week, citing the “growing evidence” supporting their worry. In one such study referenced, adolescents who spend over 3 hours per day on social media faced double the risk of mental health issues such as symptoms of anxiety and depression. Additional research cited by the Surgeon General’s report points towards particular harm for girls, who face cyberbullying and body-image issues.

[Related: APA releases youth social media guidelines.]

“At this time, we do not yet have enough evidence to determine if social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents,” the advisory states.

At the same time, the advisory statement makes it clear that children and adolescents utilize and are influenced by social media in vastly varying ways. The ways children are impacted by social media are often based on their particularly emotional and psychological strengths and vulnerabilities, as well as cultural, historical, and socio-economic factors. Some of these experiences on social media can prove beneficial, such as offering spaces for community and connection with like-minded individuals sharing “identities, abilities, and interests,” alongside offering access to important information and spaces for self-expression.

As The New York Times noted on Thursday, social media has also proven especially helpful to children and teens within the LGBTQ+ community. “[A] variety of research over the decade since social media became ubiquitous among teenagers has found that often, social media use has been more beneficial than not for LGBTQ youth,” the article states.

A Surgeon General’s advisory does not carry any legal weight, but often serves as a public statement calling attention to a health issue alongside subsequent recommendations for policymakers, businesses, and the public. Among other suggestions, the Surgeon General’s office urges lawmakers to enact legislation ensuring tech companies share relevant health impact data to independent researchers and the public “in a manner that is timely, sufficiently detailed, and protects privacy.”

Additionally, the report recommends the development and implementation of digital and media literacy curricula in schools, as well as encouraging policies that “further limit access—in ways that minimize the risk of harm—to social media for all children.”

[Related: How to use built-in parental controls on Instagram, TikTok, and more.]

Meanwhile, businesses such as Meta, Twitter, and TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, are pushed to maintain a proper level of transparency about their own internal research and methods for developing products used by minors—something that’s frequently proven difficult to realize. Parents are also strongly encouraged to discuss, educate, and monitor their children’s social media habits.

Earlier this month, the American Psychological Association released its first-ever health advisory report on youth and adolescent social media usage, which spoke broadly of potential developmental effects stemming from experiences on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The APA’s 11-page outline described these apps as “not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people,” but stressed it was rather how minors used the apps that influenced them.

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Researchers recently constructed a material capable of generating near constant electricity from just the ambient air around it—thus possibly laying the groundwork for a new, virtually unlimited source of sustainable, renewable energy. In doing so, and building upon their past innovations, they now claim almost any surface could potentially be turned into a generator via replicating the electrical properties of storm clouds… but trypophobes beware.

According to a new study published today with Advanced Materials, engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have demonstrated a novel “air generator” (Air-gen) film that relies on microscopic holes smaller than 100 nanometers across—less than a thousandth the width of a single human hair. The holes’ incredibly small diameters rely on what’s known as a “mean free path,” which is the distance a single molecule can travel before colliding with another molecule of the same substance.

[Related: The US could reliably run on clean energy by 2050.]

Water molecules are floating all around in the air, and their mean free path is around 100 nm. As humid air passes through Air-gen material’s miniscule holes, the water molecules come into direct contact with first an upper, then lower chamber in the film. This creates a charge imbalance, i.e. electricity.

It’s the same physics at play in storm clouds’ lightning discharges. Although the UMass Amherst team’s product generates a miniscule fraction of a lightning bolt’s estimated 300 million volts, its several hundred millivolts of sustained energy is incredibly promising for scalability and everyday usage. This is particularly evident when considering that air humidity can diffuse in three-dimensional space. In theory, thousands of Air-gen layers can be stacked atop one another, thus scaling up the device without increasing its overall footprint. According to the researchers, such a product could offer kilowatts of power for general usage.

[Related: How an innovative battery system in the Bronx will help charge up NYC’s grid.]

The team believes their Air-gen devices could one day be far more space efficient than other renewable energy options like solar and wind power. What’s more, the material can be engineered into a variety of form factors to blend into an environment, as contrasted with something as visually noticeable as a solar farm or wind turbine.

“Imagine a future world in which clean electricity is available anywhere you go,”Jun Yao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the paper’s senior author, said in a statement. “The generic Air-gen effect means that this future world can become a reality.”

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An estimated 30 tons of highly volatile ammonium nitrate disappeared from a railcar traveling last month between Wyoming and the Mojave Desert in California. Frequently used as a fertilizer, the compound is also infamous for its role in the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, as well as a massive 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed over 200 people. In this instance, however, multiple reports indicate Union Pacific railway officials believe the cargo accidentally leaked out of “the bottom gate on the railcar” during its two-week journey across the western US.

According to The New York Times, a Union Pacific spokesperson explained that the fertilizer—transported in pellet form within a covered hopper car akin to coal shipments—is designed for ground application and quick soil absorption, and “should pose no risk to public health or the environment.” The shipment belonged to an explosives manufacturer, Dyno Nobel, whose representatives also told the Times they do not currently suspect “criminal or malicious activity” behind the disappearance. Union Pacific is reportedly in the “early stages” of its investigation, while the Federal Railroad Administration and the California Public Utilities Commission are also conducting their own reviews of the incident.

[Related: Toxic train derailment in East Palestine, OH highlights issues facing America’s railways.]

“The railcar was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale. The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the railcar may have developed in transit,” a Dyno Nobel spokesperson said in a statement.

Although ammonium nitrate is relatively harmless on its own, its addition to a fuel source combined with heat and pressure make for an extremely powerful explosion. This can often prove useful—as is the case with a compound called ANFO (ammonium nitrate/fuel oil), which miners use to clear large rock formations. However, ammonium nitrate is also a go-to chemical for illegal homemade explosives and bombs. As California radio outlet KQED explains, Congress passed a law in 2007 on the regulation and transfer of ammonium nitrate to prevent its misuse by bad actors. In 2011, the Department of Homeland Security proposed additional regulations, but never formally adopted them.

News of the rail incident comes only a few months after a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, resulting in a temporary, mandatory evacuation order for thousands of residents. The release of toxic chemicals such as vinyl chloride gas and a carcinogen called ethylhexyl acrylate resulted in numerous reports of physical and respiratory issues such as headaches, coughing, and acute bronchitis.

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Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) slapped Meta with a record-shattering $1.3 billion (€1.2 billion) fine Monday alongside an order to cease transferring EU users’ Facebook data to US servers. But despite the latest massive penalty, some legal experts warn little will likely change within Meta’s overall approach to data privacy as long as US digital protections remain lax.

The fine caps a saga initiated nearly decade ago thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s damning reveal of American digital mass surveillance programs. Since then, data privacy law within the EU changed dramatically following the 2016 passage of its General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). After years of legal back-and-forth in the EU, Ireland’s DPC has determined Facebook’s data transfer protocols to the US do not “address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of EU residents. In particular, the courts determined EU citizens’ information could be susceptible to US surveillance program scrapes, and thus violate the GDPR.

[Related: A massive data leak just cost Meta $275 million.]

User data underpins a massive percentage of revenue for tech companies like Meta, as it is employed to build highly detailed, targeted consumer profiles for advertising. Because of this, Meta has fought tooth-and-nail to maintain its ability to transfer global user data back to the US. In a statement attributed to Meta’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead, the company plans to immediately pursue a legal stay “given the harm that these orders would cause, including to the millions of people who use Facebook every day.” The Meta representatives also stated “no immediate disruption” would occur for European Facebook users.

As The Verge notes, there are a number of stipulations even if Meta’s attempt at a legal stay falls apart. Right at the outset, the DPC’s decision pertains only to Facebook, and not Meta’s other platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram. Next, Meta has a five-month grace period to cease future data transfers alongside a six-month deadline to purge its current EU data held within the US. Finally, the EU and the US are in the midst of negotiations regarding a new data transfer deal that could finalize as soon as October.

[Related: EU fines Meta for forcing users to accept personalized ads.]

Regardless, even with the record-breaking fine, some policy experts are skeptical of the penalty’s influence on Meta’s data policy. Over the weekend, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties told The Guardian that, “A billion-euro parking ticket is of no consequence to a company that earns many more billions by parking illegally.” Although some states including California, Utah, and Colorado have passed their own privacy laws, comprehensive US protections remain stalled at the federal level. 

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On Friday, NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract to provide a lunar lander for the Artemis V moon mission scheduled for 2029—two years after they lost a bid to build similar vehicles for the Artemis III and IV missions.

Blue Origin will lead a consortium that also includes Lockheed Martin and Boeing to design and build the lander, with NASA contributing $3.4 billion in funding. According to The New York Times, Blue Origin’s VP for lunar transportation also confirmed their company would also add “well north” of that number for the project.

[Related: SpaceX’s Starship launch caused a ‘mini earthquake’ and left a giant mess.]

“We are in a golden age of human spaceflight, which is made possible by NASA’s commercial and international partnerships,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Friday. “Together, we are making an investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way to land the first astronauts on Mars.”

Now comes the hard part: Blue Origin will soon begin designing, building, and testing a new lander that meets NASA’s mission requirements, such as the ability to dock with Gateway, a planned space station that will transfer crew into lunar orbit. The contract encompasses both an uncrewed moon landing demo, as well as the crewed Artemis V mission on track for 2029.

In 2021, Blue Origin and another company lost out to SpaceX on a contract to supply vehicles for Artemis III and IV, which both aim to put humans back on the moon’s surface for the first time in over half a century. SpaceX turned in a proposal estimated to cost $2.9 billion, while Blue Origin’s was tallied at $6 billion.

[Related: Watch SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket explode.]

Blue Origin then attempted to sue NASA in federal court over the bidding process, claiming their proposal had been unfairly evaluated. A 76-page report subsequently issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) laid out all the reasons NASA had every legal right to choose a contract with SpaceX, which cost around half as much as Blue Origin’s $6 billion proposal. NASA’s other concerns included the fact that Blue Origin’s proposal vehicle did not reportedly include proper safeguards for landing in the dark. As Business Insider noted at the time, “The GAO contended that NASA was not required to lay out all minute details, and Blue Origin should take into account the conditions on the moon or space itself—which is dark.”

Jeff Bezos’ company eventually lost the legal fight. “Not the decision we wanted,” Bezos tweeted afterwards, adding that he would respect the court’s judgment while wishing “full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract.” Two years later, however, it appears Blue Origin has properly revised its proposal process—hopefully including plans for landing in the dark.

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A documentary project using cutting edge 3D imaging, drone photography, and virtual reality combined with painstakingly detailed hand drawings is digitally preserving some of Afghanistan’s most awe-inspiring, endangered historical sites. On Friday, MIT previewed the impending release of “Ways of Seeing,” a collaborative effort between MIT Libraries and its Aga Khan Documentation Center alongside the Aga Khan Trust for Culture that aims to create “extended reality” (XR) experiences of significant architectural locales throughout the country.

“Ways of Seeing” currently focuses on four separate historical sites across Afghanistan: the Green Mosque in Balkh, a Buddhist dome south of Kabul known as the Parwan Stupa, the 15th century tomb of Queen Gawhar Saad, and the 200-foot-tall Minaret of Jam, built during the 12th century in a remote location in western Afghanistan. According to MIT’s announcement, scholars chose the sites for their architectural and religious diversity, as well as the relative inaccessibility of some of the locales.

[Related: Staggering 3D scan of the Titanic shows the wreck down to the millimeter.]

To amass the visual data, MIT researchers worked alongside an Afghan digital production crew that traveled to the chosen sites after being remotely trained to pilot a “3D scanning aerial operation.” Once there, the on-location journalists collected between 15,000 and 30,000 images at each location. Meanwhile, Nikolaos Vlavianos, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Architecture Design and Computation group, led an effort to “computationally [generate] point clouds and mesh geometry with detailed texture mapping.”

Afterwards, Jelena Pejkovic, an MIT alum and practicing architect, created detailed drawings of the locations via VERNADOC, a traditional ink rendering technique first developed by the Finnish architect Markku Mattila. “I wanted to rediscover the most traditional possible kind of documentation—measuring directly by hand, and drawing by hand,” Pejkovic said in Friday’s announcement.

While “Ways of Seeing” is meant to provide a cutting-edge means of digital preservation of remote and potentially at-risk historical sites, the team ultimately hopes to make the archive available to displaced Afghans around the world, as well as “anyone keen to witness them,” says Fontini Christia, a political science professor at MIT who led the project. Christia’s team also hopes this approach to extended reality modeling could eventually be scaled and replicated for other at-risk heritage sites around the world in the face of environmental catastrophes, wars, and cultural appropriation. “Ways of Seeing” is scheduled to be publicly released by the end of June 2023.

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American families need over one trillion diapers every year for the 4 million babies born across the country annually. Diaper use can extend far past the first year of infants’ lives—and they generally don’t finish potty training until somewhere between 1.5 to 3 years old. Extrapolate those needs to the entire world, and it’s easy to see how disposable diapers are the third-most prevalent consumer product found in landfills. Because most diapers contain plastics such as polyester, polyethylene, and polypropylene, they are expected to linger in those same landfills for about 500 years before breaking down.

But what if disposable diapers’ lifespans expanded far beyond their one-and-done use? Environmental engineers recently pondered that very question, and have reportedly found a surprising solution: diaper domiciles.

As detailed in a paper published on Thursday with Scientific Reports, a trio of researchers at Japan’s University of Kitakyushu combined six different amounts of washed, dried, and shredded diaper waste with gravel, sand, cement, and water, then cured their samples for 28 days. Afterwards, they tested their composite materials’ resiliencies, and recorded some extremely promising results.

[Related: Steel built the Rust Belt. Green steel could help rebuild it.]

For a three-story, 36-square-meter floor plan, the team found that the cured diaper waste could replace as much as 10 percent of sand within a structure’s traditional concrete support beams and columns. In a single-story home, that percentage nearly tripled. Meanwhile, diapers could swap out 40 percent of the sand needed in partition wall mortar, alongside 9 percent of the sand in flooring and garden paving. All told, disposable diaper waste could replace as much as 8 percent of all sand in a single-story, 36-square-meter floor plan.

The team’s results are extremely promising for low- and middle-income nations facing intense housing crises. For the purposes of their study, researchers adhered to Indonesian building codes to mirror a real world application. “Like other developing countries, low-cost housing provision in Indonesia has been a serious concern in the last three decades,” writes the team in their article. Indonesia’s urban population is growing at around 4 percent per year, resulting in an annual housing deficit of as much as 300,000 homes per year, the authors also noted.

Moving forward, researchers note that collaboration would be needed with government and waste facility officials to develop a means for large-scale collection, sanitization, and shredding of diaper waste. At the same time, nations’ building regulations must be amended to allow for diaper-imbued concrete. Still, the findings are a creative potential solution to the literal and figurative mountain of a sustainability issue—one that may soon finally be toppled. Just make sure it’s all sanitized first.

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A worrying new report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) estimates over two-thirds of North America will see elevated risks of energy grid shortfalls and blackouts over the summer if faced with extreme temperature spikes and dire weather. While resources remain “adequate” for normal seasonal peak demand, the major non-profit international regulatory authority’s 2023 Summer Reliability Assessment warns most of the US—including the West, Midwest, Texas, Southeast, and New England regions—may not possess enough energy reserves to handle heatwaves, severe storms, and hurricanes.

NERC’s report is particularly troubling given this year’s El Niño forecast. El Niño historically produces wetter-than-average conditions along the Gulf Coast alongside drier climates for areas such as the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountains. While a naturally occurring event, both El Niño and La Niña weather patterns are expected to rapidly strengthen by the end of the decade due to the exacerbations from climate change. On top of this, industry watchdogs say the US power grid still requires critical maintenance, repairs, and modernization. “The system is close to its edge,” warned NERC’s Director of Reliability Assessment and Performance Analysis John Moura in a call with reporters.

In Texas, for example, the NERC explains that “dispatchable generation may not be sufficient to meet reserves during an extreme heat wave that is accompanied by low winds.” Wildfire risks in the West and Northwest, on the other hand, could jeopardize the ability to transfer electricity as needed, resulting in “localized load shedding.”

[Related: How an innovative battery system in the Bronx will help charge up NYC’s grid.]

“This report is an especially dire warning that America’s ability to keep the lights on has been jeopardized. That’s unacceptable,” Jim Matheson, the CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said in a statement.“Federal policies must recognize the compromised reliability reality facing the nation before it’s too late.”

In addition to reliability concerns during peak performance times, the NERC report notes that continued supply chain issues concerning labor, material, and equipment have affected preseason maintenance for generation and transmission facilities across North America.

Still, NERC’s assessment isn’t entirely bad news—much of northern Canada and the US East Coast face a low risk of exceeding their operating reserves. Meanwhile, no region in North America is currently staring down a “high” risk of not meeting their needs during normal peak conditions. “Increased, rapid deployment of wind, solar and batteries have made a positive impact,” said Mark Olson, NERC’s manager of Reliability Assessments. “However, generator retirements continue to increase the risks associated with extreme summer temperatures, which factors into potential supply shortages in the western two-thirds of North America if summer temperatures spike.”

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Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a bill into law on Wednesday banning TikTok within the entire state, all-but-ensuring a legal, political, and sheer logistical battle over the popular social media platform’s usage and accessibility.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Gianforte claimed the new law is an effort to “protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party.” Critics and security experts, however, argue the app’s blacklisting infringes on residents’ right to free speech, and would do little to actually guard individuals’ private data.

“This unconstitutional ban undermines the free speech and association of Montana TikTok users and intrudes on TikTok’s interest in disseminating its users’ videos,” the digital rights advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation argued in a statement posted to Twitter,  calling the new law a “blatant violation of the First Amendment.”

[Related: Why some US lawmakers want to ban TikTok.]

According to the EFF and other advocacy groups, Montana’s TikTok ban won’t actually protect residents’ from companies and bad actors who can still scrape and subsequently monetize their private data. Instead, advocates repeated their urge for legislators to pass comprehensive data privacy laws akin to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations. Similar laws have passed in states like California, Colorado, and Utah, but continue to stall at the federal level.

“We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana,”TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter stated on Wednesday.

Montana’s new law is primarily focused on TikTok’s accessibility via app stores from tech providers like Apple and Google, which are directed to block all downloads of the social media platform once the ban goes into effect at the beginning of 2024. Montanans are not subject to the $10,000 per day fine if they still access TikTok—rather, the penalty is levied at companies such as Google, Apple, and TikTok’s owner, ByteDance.

[Related: The best VPNs of 2023.]

That said, there is no clear or legal way to force Montanans to delete the app if it is already downloaded to their phones. Likewise, proxy services such as VPNs hypothetically could easily skirt the ban. As The Guardian noted on Thursday, the ability for Montana to actually enforce a wholesale ban on the app is ostensibly impossible, barring the state following censorship tactics used by nations such as China.

“With this ban, Governor Gianforte and the Montana legislature have trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information, and run their small business in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment,” Keegan Medrano, policy director at the ACLU of Montana, said in a statement. “We will never trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points.”

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Shortly after CNN’s Town Hall with Donald Trump last week, the former president’s son tweeted a clearly manipulated 9-second video clip featuring an AI-generated vocal imitation of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper offering a vulgar compliment of the former president’s town hall performance. “I’m told this is real…,” wrote Donald Trump, Jr. “[I]t seems real and it’s surprisingly honest and accurate for CNN… but who knows these days.”

Despite a Twitter Community Note flagging the video as fake, one commenter replied “Real or not, it’s the truth just the same.”

Two days later, Trump re-upped the same altered clip to Truth Social, the alternative social media platform favored by his supporters. And while many replies on both Twitter and Truth Social appear to indicate users are largely aware of the clumsy parody, experts warn Trump’s multiple recent instances of embracing AI-generated content could sow confusion and chaos leading up to his bid for reelection in next year’s presidential campaign.

[Related: “This fictitious news show is entirely produced by AI and deepfakes” ]

“Manipulating reality for profit and politics not only erodes a healthy society, but it also shows that Trump has incredible disrespect for his own base, forget about others,” Patrick Lin, a professor of philosophy and director of California Polytechnic State University’s Ethics and Emerging Sciences Group, told PopSci. “It’s beyond ironic that he would promote so much fake news, while in the same breath accuse those who are reporting real facts of doing the same,” said Lin.

And there’s no indication the momentum behind AI content will slow—according to Bloomberg on Wednesday, multiple deepfake production studios have collectively raised billions of dollars in investments over the past year. 

Barely a month after Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself kneeling in prayer, the Republican National Committee released a 30-second ad featuring AI-created images of a dystopian America should President Biden be reelected.

“We’re not prepared for this,” A.J. Nash, vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox told AP News over the weekend regarding the rise of audio and video deepfakes. “When you can do that on a large scale, and distribute it on social platforms, well, it’s going to have a major impact.”

According to Lin, the spread of AI-manipulated footage by a former president, even if done so jokingly, is a major cause for concern, and “should be a wake-up call that we need regulation of AI right now,” they say. To him, recent high-profile stories focused on AI’s theoretical existential threats to humanity are a distraction from the “clear and present dangers” of today’s generative AI, ranging “from discrimination to disinformation.”

Correction 05/19/23: A previous version of this article misattributed A.J. Nash’s comments to an interview with PBS, instead of with AP News.

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Months of painstaking work analyzing over 16 terabytes of imaging and 4K video data has resulted in the first full-sized 3D scan of the RMS Titanic’s stunning, sunken remains.

Per the BBC, specialists working for the deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd. began remotely piloting two deep sea submersibles during the summer of 2022. The pair of subs, Romeo and Juliet, collected over 700,000 images over the 3-mile wreckage site during their more than 200 hours of diving time. The results are renderings in such detail that they showcase one of the cruise liner propeller’s serial numbers alongside passengers’ shoes and bottles of unopened champagne.

[Related: How scientists keep ancient shipwrecks from crumbling into dust.]

Over 1,500 people died after the cruise liner struck an iceberg and sank into the frigid Atlantic Ocean waters during its 1912 maiden voyage from Southampton, UK, to New York. Numerous expeditions have surveyed the Titanic’s remains since its rediscovery in 1985, but until now the ocean’s pitch-black environment at 3,800m (12,500ft) coupled with the ship’s sheer size have only allowed murky glimpses and snapshots of wreckage.

Now, however, experts can begin studying the Titanic’s remnants with an entirely new level of detail and precision. In a statement, Parks Stephenson, a longtime Titanic researcher, explained, “What we are seeing for the first time is an accurate and true depiction of the entire wreck and debris site. I’m seeing details that none of us have ever seen before and this allows me to build upon everything that we have learned to date and see the wreck in a new light.”

According to Stephenson, despite knowing the disaster’s cause, we still aren’t sure what really happened when the ship hit the iceberg. “We don’t even know if she hit it along the starboard side, as is shown in all the movies—she might have grounded on the iceberg,” Stephenson told the BBC. Additionally, examining portions such as the ship’s stern could uncover the physics behind how the ship actually landed upon the sea floor.

[Related: Watch never-before-seen footage of the Titanic shipwreck from the 1980s.]

Time is of the essence for future visits to the Titanic’s remains, as microbial life continues to eat away at portions of the ship while other pieces disintegrate within the deep ocean’s hostile environment. But even so, the newest imagery will be an invaluable historical asset for researchers as they continue to learn from one of the 20th century’s most famous tragedies.

The 2022 expedition was detailed by a film crew working alongside Magellan Ltd. for Atlantic Productions, with plans to release a documentary on the project in the near future. 

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Nothing in this life is free, especially a “free” 55-inch television. On Monday, a new startup called Telly announced plans to provide half-a-million smart TVs to consumers free-of-charge. But there’s a catch—underneath the sizable 4K HDR primary screen and accompanying five-driver soundbar is a second, smaller screen meant to constantly display advertisements alongside other widgets like stock prices and weather forecasts. The tradeoff for a constant stream of Pizza Hut offers and car insurance deals, therefore, is a technically commercial-free streaming experience. Basically, it swaps out commercial breaks for a steady montage of pop-up ads.

Whether or not this kind of entertainment experience is for you is a matter of personal preference, but be forewarned: Even after agreeing to a constant barrage of commercials, Telly’s “free” televisions make sure they pay for themselves through what appears to be an extremely lax, potentially litigious privacy policy.

[Related: FTC sues data broker for selling information, including abortion clinic visits.]

As first highlighted by journalist Shoshana Wodinsky and subsequently boosted by TechCrunch on Tuesday, Telly’s original privacy fine print apparently was a typo-laden draft featuring editorial comments asking “Do wehave [sic] to say we will delete the information or is there another way around…,” discarding children’s personal data.

According to a statement provided to TechCrunch from Telly’s chief strategy officer Dallas Lawrence, the questions within the concerning, since-revised policy draft “appear a bit out of context,” and there’s a perfectly logical explanation to it:

“The team was unclear about how much time we had to delete any data we may inadvertently capture on children under 13,” wrote Lawrence, who added, “The term ‘quickly as possible’ that was included in the draft language seemed vague and undetermined and needing [sic] further clarification from a technical perspective.”

[Related: This app helped police plan raids. Hackers just made the data public.]

But even without the troubling wording, Telly’s privacy policy also discloses it collects such information as names, email addresses, phone numbers, ages, genders, ethnicities, and precise geolocations. At one point, the policy stated it may collect data pertaining to one’s “sex life or sexual orientation,” although TechCrunch notes this stipulation has since been “quietly removed” from its privacy policy.

User data troves are often essential to tech companies’ financials, as they can be sold to any number of third-parties for lucrative sums of money. Most often, this information is used to build extremely detailed consumer profiles to customize ad experiences, but there are numerous instances of data caches being provided to law enforcement agencies without users’ knowledge, alongside various hacker groups and bad actors regularly obtaining the personal information.

Telly is still taking reservations for its “free” smart TVs, but as the old adage goes: Buyer beware. And even when you’re not technically “buying” it, you’re certainly paying for it.

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A golden, tissue box-sized satellite has set a new record for the fastest data transfer rate ever achieved by orbital laser light communications—breaking its own previous milestone set less than a year ago. According to a recent announcement from NASA, the agency’s TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system achieved a 200 gigabit per second (Gbps) space-to-ground optical link speed on April 28 during a six-minute pass high above its corresponding ground station.

Within that time frame, NASA estimates TBIRD can transmit multiple terabytes of test data back to Earth. That’s equivalent to thousands of hours of HD video data. “This capability will change the way we communicate in space,” said Beth Keer, TBIRD’s mission manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

[Related: NASA’s newest office is all about putting humans on Mars.]

Since 1958, radio waves have transmitted the majority of all space communications via the Deep Space Network, a global antenna array capable of sending and receiving information for satellites and astronaut crews. As NASA explains, switching to “ultra-high-speed” optical communications crams more data into each lasers’ infrared light waves that are invisible to the naked eye. This alternative—as showcased in TBIRD’s recent record breaking demonstrations—will prove vital to future space research and exploration, particularly as humans look to return to the moon, and eventually attempt to make their way to Mars.

The TBIRD system was first delivered into space last year via NASA’s Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator 3 (PTD-3) as a tiny satellite (also known as a CubeSat) roughly the size of two stacked cereal boxes. CubeSats are popular for both their relative simplicity and cost-effectiveness. After launching aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-5 rideshare mission in May 2022, PTD-3 synchronized with the Earth’s solar orbit so that the CubeSat entered a “fixed” position relative to the sun. Once established, the TBIRD satellite could begin transmitting data twice a day as it passed over its space-to-ground command center link. Within less than a year, its capabilities have broken records twice over.

[Related: This tiny, trailblazing satellite is taking on a big moon mission.]

“Just imagine the power of space science instruments when they can be designed to fully take advantage of the advancements in detector speeds and sensitivities, furthering what artificial intelligence can do with huge amounts of data,” Kerr added. “Laser communications is the missing link that will enable the science discoveries of the future.”

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Rumors of a free national tax e-filing service have surfaced repeatedly over the past couple years, and it sounds like the US could be one step closer to making it a reality. As The Washington Post first reported on Monday, the IRS plans to test a digital tax filing prototype with a small group of Americans at the onset of the 2024 tax season—but just how much of your biometric data is needed to use the service remains to be seen.

Although the IRS offers a Free File system for people below a certain income level (roughly 70 percent of the population), the Government Accountability Office estimates less than three percent of US tax filers actually utilize the service. The vast majority of Americans instead rely on third-party filing programs, either in the form of online services like Intuit TurboTax and H&R Block, or via third-party CPAs. The $11 billion private tax filing industry has come under intense scrutiny and subsequent litigation in recent years for allegedly misleading consumers away from free filing options to premium services. Last November, an investigation into multiple major third-party tax filing services’ data privacy policies revealed the companies previously provided sensitive personal data to Facebook via its Meta Pixel tracking code.

[Related: Major tax-filing sites routinely shared users’ financial info with Facebook.]

According to The Washington Post’s interviews with anonymous sources familiar with the situation, the IRS is developing the program alongside the White House’s technology consulting agency, the US Digital Service. A dedicated universal free filing portal would add the US to the list of nations that already provide similar options, including Australia, Chile, and Estonia.

Last year, the IRS found itself facing a barrage of criticisms after announcing, then walking back, a new policy that would have required US citizens to submit a selfie via ID.me to access their tax information. ID.me is a third-party verification service used extensively by state and federal organizations, as well as private companies for proofing, authentication and group affiliations via a combination of photo uploads and video chat confirmations. Using ID.me is currently one of multiple verification options for the IRS. It is unclear if such a process will be mandatory within a future federal free filing portal. Both the IRS and the US Treasury Department have not responded to requests for clarification at the time of writing.

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WhatsApp just got a new feature bolstering its long-standing emphasis on users’ privacy: a “Chat Lock” feature that squirrels away your most confidential conversations.

Much like Apple’s hidden photos option, Chat Lock allows users to create a separate folder for private discussions; it’s protected by either password or biometric access. Any conversations filed within WhatsApp’s Chat Lock section also will block both sender and text in their push notifications, resulting in a simple “New Message” button. According to WhatsApp’s owners at Meta, Chat Lock could prove useful for those “who have reason to share their phones from time to time with a family member or those moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives.”

[Related: WhatsApp users can now ghost group chats and delete messages for days.]

To enable the new feature, WhatsApp users simply need to tap the name of a one-to-one or group message and select the lock option. To see those classified conversations, just slowly pull down on the inbox icon, then input the required password or biometric information to unlock. According to WhatsApp, Chat Lock capabilities are set to expand even further over the next few months, including features like locking messages on companion devices and creating custom passwords for each chat on a single phone.

Chat Lock is only the latest in a number of updates to come to the world’s most popular messaging app. Earlier this month, WhatsApp introduced multiple updates to its polling feature, including single-vote polls, a search option, and notifications for when people cast their votes. The platform also recently introduced the ability to forward media and documents with captions for context.

[Related: 3 ways to hide photos and files on your phone.]

Although it has long billed itself as a secure messaging alternative to standard platforms such as Apple’s iMessage (both WhatsApp and iMessage use end-to-end encryption, as do some other apps), WhatsApp experienced a sizable user backlash in 2021 when it changed its privacy policy to allow for more personal data sharing with its parent company, Meta. Meanwhile, other privacy-focused apps like Signal and Telegram remain popular alternatives.

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Researchers at Canada’s University of Waterloo have unveiled a new program for personal assistance robots. This new program utilizes episodic memory and object-detection algorithms to help locate lost items. Although designed specifically to aid patients suffering from cognitive issues, the team believes their advancements could eventually find their way onto people’s smartphones or tablets.

Dementia affects approximately 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 65, while another 22 percent of the same population contends with mild cognitive impairments. Symptoms vary between individuals, but forgetfulness is a common issue that can disrupt one’s day and increase stress levels for both those suffering from these conditions, as well as their caregivers.

Knowing this, a four-person team at the University of Waterloo created an algorithm they then uploaded to a commercial Fetch mobile manipulator robot, endowing the machine with a memory log of individual objects detected via its onboard video camera. Once enabled, the Fetch robot noted the time and date for anytime it spotted an object in its view area. Researchers also designed a graphical user interface (GUI) for individuals to pick and label which detected objects they wanted to track. Searching for a label via keyboard entry could then bring up Fetch’s “highly accurate” location log, according to a statement released on Monday.

[Related: The latest recommendations for preventing dementia are good advice for everyone.]

“The long-term impact of this is really exciting,” said Ali Ayub, a postdoctoral fellow in electrical and computer engineering and study co-author. “A user can be involved not just with a companion robot but a personalized companion robot that can give them more independence.”

Caregiving robotics is a rapidly expanding field that is showing promise in a number of areas. Recently, researchers at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence announced Garmi, a personal assistant designed to help elderly users for telemedicine appointments, and potentially even physical tasks like opening bottles and serving meals.

Although Ayub and their colleagues have only tested their visual-based algorithm amongst themselves, the team hopes to soon conduct further trials—first with people without disabilities, then with people dealing with dementia and other cognitive issues. While Ayub’s team conceded that disabled individuals could potentially find the GUI and robot intimidating, they believe the system could still prove extremely beneficial for their caregivers and family members.

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This month marks the fifth anniversary of “No Mow May,” an annual environmental project dedicated to promoting sustainable, eco-friendly lawns via a 31-day landscaping moratorium. In doing so, the brief respite gives bees and other pollinators a chance to do what they do best: contribute to a vibrant, healthy, and biodiverse ecosystem. To keep the No Mow May momentum going, Swedish tech company Husqvarna has announced a new, simple feature for its line of robotic lawnmowers: a “rewilding” mode that ensures 10 percent of owners’ lawns remain untouched for pollinators and other local wildlife.

While meticulously manicured lawns are part of the traditional suburban American mindset, they come at steep ecological costs such as biodiversity loss and massive amounts of water waste. The Natural Resource Defense Council, for instance, estimates that grass lawns consume almost 3 trillion gallons of water each year alongside 200 million gallons of gas for traditional mowers, as well as another 70 million pounds of harmful pesticides. In contrast, rewilding is a straightforward, self-explanatory concept long pushed by environmentalists and sustainability experts that encourages a return to regionally native flora for all-around healthier ecosystems.

[Related: Build a garden that’ll have pollinators buzzin’.]

While convincing everyone to adopt rewilding practices may seem like a near-term impossibility, companies like Husqvarna are hoping to set the literal and figurative lawnmower rolling with its new autopilot feature. According to Husqvarna’s announcement, if Europeans set aside just a tenth of their lawns, the cumulative area would amount to four times the size of the continent’s largest nature preserve.

Enabling the Rewilding Mode only takes a few taps within the product line’s Automower Connect app, and can be customized to change the overall shape, size, and placement of the rewilding zones. Once established, the robotic mower’s onboard GPS systems ensure which areas of an owner’s lawn are off-limits and reserved for bees, butterflies, and whatever else wants to set up shop.

Of course, turning on Rewilding Mode means owning a Husqvarna robotic mower that supports the setting—and at a minimum of around $700 for such a tool, they might be out of many lawn care enthusiasts’ budgets. Even so, that doesn’t mean you should abandon giving rewilding a try for your own lawns. It’s easy to get started on the project, and as its name suggests, doesn’t take much maintenance once it’s thriving. If nothing else, there’s still two weeks left in No Mow May, so maybe consider postponing your weekend outdoor chore for a few more days.

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This year marks the 250th anniversary of the first human hopping aboard a hot air balloon. But Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier only hovered about 85 feet above the ground, so it’s safe to say he would be stunned at what his country’s modern denizens are planning. As CNN reported on Thursday, a French company called Zephalto aims to begin “edge of space” hot air balloon tourist sojourns as early as next year—for $130,000 a seat.

After ponying up the hefty price tag, passengers will board Zephalto’s pressurized capsule, Celeste, which is attached to a massive, helium-filled stratospheric balloon. Over the course of roughly ninety minutes, the balloon will ascend at 4 meters per second to an altitude of 25 kilometers (about 15.5 miles). Once at the edge of space, tourists will enjoy a fancy meal during their three-hour hover time in front of 7-square-meter window views of the Earth’s curvature before descending back down to terra firma.

[Related: How will NASA keep up with space tourism?]

Other high-profile space tourism ventures such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic travel much higher than the capabilities of even a high-end hot air balloon such as Zephalto’s. In July 2021, Virgin Galactic’s founder, Richard Branson, soared 86 km above Earth. Just one week later, Blue Origin took its co-founder and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos above the Karman Line, the internationally recognized (if somewhat disputed) boundary for outer space.

Unlike those high-profile space tourism ventures, however, Zephalto bills itself as being a much more eco-friendly alternative. According to its official description page, only 26.6 kg of CO2 are purportedly needed for a single journey—the lowest amount required for a space flight, says the company, or akin to “as little as the production of a pair of denim trousers.” By comparison, a single suborbital rocket launch can put out as much as 300 tons of CO2 into the upper atmosphere during its journey.

[Related: Blue Origin brought the first official tourists to space.]

As reservations quickly fill for the trips—Zephalto told CNN it’s already booked out until mid-2025. The company’s founder recently explained they were working closely with France’s space agency, CNES, alongside partners at Airbus to ensure all safety and logistical regulations are met. Once in full swing, Zephalto aims to launch as many as 60 flights per year, each with six passengers alongside two pilots.

And if the six-hour-total journey and fancy meal aren’t enough to sell you on a $130,000 ticket, Zephalto says it’s throwing in complementary psychological counseling ahead of the outing to help deal with what’s known as the “overview effect,” the existential weight that reportedly comes from viewing the entirety of Earth from high above its surface.

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A road capable of charging electric vehicles en route to their destinations could power up as soon as 2025 in one of the world’s most eco-friendly nations. As the Amsterdam-based tech site The Next Web explains, Sweden is well on track to electrifying a roughly 13-mile portion of its E20 highway spanning between Hallsberg to Örebro, both of which are located between Sweden’s two largest cities, Stockholm and Gothenburg.

The electric road system (ERS) project is overseen by the nation’s transport administration, Trafikverket, who are still determining which of three specific technologies could be best suited for the task: overhead conductive, ground-based conductive, and ground-based inductive charging. The first format utilizes an overhead pantograph design similar to those seen atop traditional trolleys and streetcars, but would be limited to large vehicles capable of reaching the tall power lines, i.e. public commuter vehicles.

[Related: Car owners: here’s when experts say you should switch to an EV.]

The other two options, however, could hypothetically also support smaller vehicles and private EVs. In a ground-based conductive format, power would transfer from specialized tracks installed either on top or below the pavement via a mechanical arm. Inductive charging would require conductive coils installed in both the roads and vehicles.

As futuristic as these ideas may sound, Sweden has already successfully tested all three ERS methods in various areas around the nation, including the towns of Gotland, Lund, and Sandviken. While much of that work has pertained to mass transit options, designers also tinkered with systems capable of supporting smaller and private vehicles as far back as 2018.

There are immense benefits to expanding ERS capabilities, beyond just the immediate convenience. According to one recent study from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, increased reliance on ERS installations alongside at-home EV charging could lower electrical grid demands during peak usage times, as well as potentially reduce vehicle battery size by as much as 70 percent. Those smaller batteries would mean less rare earth materials are harvested, leading to potentially cheaper, more accessible EV options for consumers.

[Related: Why you barely see electric vehicles at car dealerships.]

“After all, many people charge their cars after work and during the night, which puts a lot of strain on the power grid,” author Sten Karlsson, an energy efficiency researcher and professor at Chalmers, said in a release in March. “By instead charging more evenly throughout the day, peak load would be significantly reduced.”

Sweden isn’t alone in its aim to electrify portions of its roadways. As the electric transportation industry site Electrive notes, similar projects are also underway in the UK, Germain, Italy, and Israel. Here in the US, the Norwegian company ENRX recently announced plans to install a one-mile ERS prototype section within a stretch of four-lane highway near Orlando, Florida.

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After embracing artificial intelligence, Microsoft is taking another gamble on a promise from OpenAI’s CEO for one more moonshot goal—nuclear fusion. As CNET reports, Microsoft announced it has entered into a power purchase agreement with a startup company called Helion Energy that is slated to go into effect in 2028. Unlike AI’s very immediate realities, however, experts suspectbelieve the project’s extremely short timeframe and technological constraints make this timeline unrealisticcould easily prove disastrous.

Nuclear fusion is considered by many to be the end-all be-all of clean, virtually limitless energy production. Compared to fission reactions within traditional nuclear power plants that split atoms apart, fusion occurs when atoms are forced together within extremely high temperatures to produce a new, smaller mass atom, thus generating comparatively massive amounts of energy in the process. Researchers accomplished important fusion advancements in recent years, but a sustainable, affordable reactor has yet to be designed. What’s more, many experts estimate achieving this milestone won’t happen without “a few decades of research,” if ever.

Helion was founded in 2013, and received a $375 million investment from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2021, shortly after it became the first private company to build a reactor component capable of reaching 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit). The optimum temperature for fusion, however, is roughly double that temperature. Meanwhile, Altman’s OpenAI itself garnered a massive partnership with Microsoft earlier this year, and has since integrated its high-profile generative artificial intelligence programming into its products, albeit not without its own controversy.

[Related: Physicists want to create energy like stars do. These two ways are their best shot.]

Helion aims to have its first fusion generator online in 2028. This generator would theoretically provide at least 50 megawatts following a one-year ramp up period—enough energy to power roughly 40,000 homes near a yet-to-be-determined facility location in Washington state. From there, Microsoft plans to pay Helion for its electricity generation as part of its roadmap to match its entire energy consumption with zero-carbon energy purchases by the end of the decade. As CNBC notes, because it’s a power purchase agreement, Helion could face financial penalties for not delivering on its aggressive goal.

In 2015, Helion’s CEO David Kirtley estimated their company would achieve “scientific net energy gain” in nuclear fusion within three years. Within nuclear fusion research, this energy gain refers to the ability to viably emit more power than it takes to produce. When asked this week by MIT Technology Review if Helion met those goals, a representative declined to comment, citing competitiveness concerns, but said its “initial timeline projections” had assumed the company would raise funds faster than it ultimately managed.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Helion CEO David Kirtley also admitted in a statement released Wednesday,  but we are confident in our ability to deliver the world’s first fusion power facility.”

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One of the leading US mental health organizations, the American Psychological Association (APA), has issued its first ever health advisory report on social media usage for youth and adolescents. Published on Tuesday, the 11-page brief speaks in broad terms regarding the habits of children and teens on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, describing them as “not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.” Rather, the APA argues social media’s influences on minors are only part of a much wider, complex array of factors, and “likely depend on what teens can do and see online, teens’ pre-existing strengths or vulnerabilities, and the contexts in which they grow up.”

In short, the APA reiterates that, like every other aspect of psychological development, it’s difficult to pinpoint and quantify any single influence on an individual’s brain evolution. Instead, the association focuses on two major contributors to how social media can potentially affect younger users—parental oversight and awareness, as well as a platform’s own algorithmic structures.

[Related: Twitter may soon purge ‘inactive’ accounts.]

The APA recommends parents regularly review and discuss their children’s social media usage, particularly during early adolescence—usually defined as between 10- and 14-years-old. Educating children and teens on social media literacy and usage alongside fostering healthy online habits and relationships are also considered key methods of maintaining a safe experience on platforms like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Meanwhile, the APA stresses the responsibility does not rest solely on minors’ parents. The advisory’s authors note that the tech companies’ algorithms determining how, when, and why users see certain content are built upon “centuries of racist policy and discrimination encoded.” Social media therefore often becomes an “incubator” of these inherent biases, and which can  introduce and exacerbate extremist socio-political and racist ideals. “The resulting potential impact is far reaching, including physical violence offline, as well as threats to well-being,” adds the APA.

Speaking to PopSci, Jeremy Birnholtz, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University focusing on LGBTQ+ adolescent social media usage and the head of the school’s Social Media Lab, says he believes the APA’s “measured document” is a step in the right direction, but argues some of the guidelines are potentially difficult to follow for parents.

[Related: Is shyness something kids feel, or something kids are?]

In one section of the report, for example, the APA advises limiting the amount of time younger users spend comparing themselves to others the see on social media, “particularly around beauty- or appearance-related content,” pointing towards its potentially influence on “poorer body image, disordered eating, and depressive symptoms, particularly among girls.”

“The guideline is ‘teens should avoid using social media for social comparison.’ And it’s like, well, what does that mean? You shouldn’t look at your friends’ vacation photos? You shouldn’t follow the influencers that all your friends follow? I don’t think that’s realistic,” says Birnholtz.

Like the APA’s report, Birnholtz also argues social media’s negative effects are often symptomatic of broader, real world issues. Racism can be baked into social media—while that’s true, it’s also baked into society,” they say of platforms’ algorithmic biases. “Certain things like social comparison, no question, can be exacerbated by social media. But to suggest that they are a function of [it] is problematic, I think.”

Birnholtz goes on to explain that while it’s vital to take the APA’s suggestions into account, it’s important to remember the origins of many social media issues. “You’re detaching problems with social media from the problems that they represent in the broader society,” says Birnholtz. “You can fix it on social media, but as long as it’s in the [real world], you’re not going to fix it.”

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Immense strides in human-robot interactions have been made over the past few years. But, all of these robots tend to be quite different.  The lack of an affordable, generalized, modular robotic platform hampers many researchers’ progress, alongside their ability to share and compare findings.

The National Science Foundation, an independent US government-funded agency supporting research and education, wants to accelerate advancements in robotics, and is offering a $5 million fleet of standardized humanoid robots to speed things along. On Monday, the NSF announced plans to distribute another 50 of its Quori bots to various research projects, with assistance from Oregon State University, University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Laboratory, and the robotics software company, Semio.

[Related: Meet Garmi, a robot nurse and companion for Germany’s elderly population.]

First designed with support from the NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community Research Infrastructure, Quori robots feature an omnidirectional, wheeled base, expressive video screen face, two gesturing arms, and a bowing spine. Quori is made to function both in labs and “in the wild,” according to its official description.

A previous pilot program built and tested 10 Quori robots that were subsequently awarded to research teams, including one from Carnegie Mellon University, who used their model to focus on social behavior and communication methods between humans and robots.

The new multimillion-dollar expansion will see many more of these standardized humanoid bots made available to applicants. All of Quori’s hardware designs are available as open-source, meaning anyone can access them to potentially build their own versions.

“A big hurdle in robotics research has been the lack of a common robot to work with,” Bill Smart, a professor of mechanical, industrial, and manufacturing engineering in OSU’s College of Engineering and project co-lead, explained in a statement.  “It’s tough to compare results and replicate and build on each other’s work when everyone is using a different type of robot. Robots come in many shapes and sizes, with different types of sensors and varying capabilities.”

[Related: Robot trash cans have survived a New York City field test.]

Alongside OSU project co-lead Naomi Fitter, Smart’s team will primarily set up and maintain a resource network for the Quori fleet, as well as beta test the robots. The project aims to soon connect both researchers and students through online collaborations, events, and various other opportunities in hopes of “building a community of roboticists that can learn from one another and advance the pace of research.”

According to Smart, pairing newcomers alongside experienced individuals can help quickly bring them up to speed in their field, while also increasing diversity and access in a field that is inordinately composed of white male researchers. 

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On Monday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced plans to delete accounts that the company deems inactive. He also warned that users may see their number of followers drop as a result of the digital house cleaning. “We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years,” Musk tweeted via his personal account.

The decision prompted swift criticism from both fans and critics of Musk’s chaotic tenure at the company, with some users pointing towards the emotional and historical implications in the wholesale erasures. For many, the Twitter profiles and messages of deceased relatives and loved ones function as digital memorials. Since Musk’s announcement, some users describe scrambling to archive the data before it disappears.

[Related: Twitter’s ‘Blue Check’ drama is a verified mess.]

“My son’s account is inactive because he died nearly 2 years ago. I would be devastated if his account were to be deleted… [I]t is one of the few things I have left,” one user tweeted. “I agree it’s worth preserving the libraries from the ancient internet,” tweeted Grimes, a musician and Musk’s ex-partner.

The sudden policy shift comes less than a week after Musk threatened to reassign NPR’s account handle after the news outlet publicly stated it would cease utilizing the social media platform. NPR’s decision stemmed from objections over Twitter’s attempt to relabel the nonprofit as a “government-funded media.” It now simply features a blue checkmark indicating the account is “Verified.” Federal funding comprises less than 1 percent of NPR’s annual operating budget, according to its own public data.

Prior to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the social media platform attempted a similar inactive username sweep in 2019, but widespread criticism at the time prompted the company to promptly reverse course. “We’ve heard you on the impact that this would have on the accounts of the deceased. This was a miss on our part,” company representatives said at the time, adding that Twitter would not remove any inactive accounts until they created “a new way for people to memorialize accounts.”

[Related: How to download your data from Twitter and other sites.]

A new memorialization method was never announced, although in responding to one critic yesterday, Musk claimed purged accounts “will be archived… But it is important to free up abandoned handles.” Musk has not yet offered an estimated timeline of when username deletions might occur, nor how a purged account archive would work. As of writing, it is still possible to download an archive of one’s own personal account.

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At least 83 moons orbit Saturn, and experts believe its most reflective one could harbor life underneath its icy surface. To find out, NASA scientists hope to send a massive serpentine robot to scour Enceladus, both atop its frozen ground—and maybe even within a hidden ocean underneath.

As CBS News highlighted on Monday, researchers and engineers are nearing completion of their Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) prototype. The 16-foot-long, 200-pound snakelike bot is capable of traversing both ground and watery environments via “first-of-a-kind rotating propulsion units,” according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These repeating units could act as tracks, gripping mechanisms, and underwater propellers, depending on the surrounding environment’s need. The “head” of EELS also includes 3D mapping technology alongside real-time video recording and transmission capabilities to document its extraplanetary adventure.

[Related: Saturn’s rings have been slowly heating up its atmosphere.]

In theory, EELS would traverse the surface of Enceladus towards one of the moon’s many “plume vents,” which it could then enter to use as a passageway towards its oceanic source. Over 100 of these vents were discovered at Enceladus’ southern pole by the Cassini space probe during its tenure around Saturn. Scientists have since determined the fissures emitted water vapor into space that contained amino acids, which are considered pivotal in the creation of lifeforms.

To assess its maneuverability, NASA researchers have already taken EELS out for test drives in environments such as an ice skating rink in Pasadena, CA, and even an excursion to Athabasca Glacier in Canada’s Jasper National Park. Should all go as planned, the team hopes to present a finalized concept by fall 2024. But be prepared to wait a while to see it in action on Enceladus—EELS’ journey to the mysterious moon would reportedly take roughly 12 years. Even if it never makes it there, however, the robotic prototype could prove extremely useful closer to Earth, and even on it. According to the Jet Propulsion Lab, EELS could show promise exploring the polar caps of Mars, or even ice sheet crevasses here on Earth.

[Related: Saturn has a slushy core and rings that wiggle.]

Enceladus’ fascinating environment was first unveiled thanks to NASA’s historic Cassini space probe. Launched in 1997, the satellite began transmitting data and images of the planet and its moons back to Earth after arriving following a 7 year voyage. After 13 years of service, a decommissioned Cassini descended towards Saturn, where it was vaporized within the upper atmosphere’s high pressure and temperature. Although NASA could have left Cassini to cruise sans trajectory once its fuel ran out, they opted for the controlled demolition due to the slim possibility of crashing into Enceladus or Titan, which might have disrupted the potential life ecosystems scientists hope to one day discover. 

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An unsettling report released barely a year ago painted a grim picture of the plastics industry—only about 5 percent of the 46 million annual tons of plastic waste in the US makes it to recycling facilities. The number is even more depressing after realizing that is roughly half of experts’ previous estimates. But if all that wasn’t enough, new information throws a heaping handful of salt on the wound: of the plastic that does make it to recycling, a lot of it is still released into the world as potentially toxic microplastics.

According to the pilot study recently published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances focused on a single, modern facility, recycling plants’ wastewater contains a staggering number of microplastic particles. And as Wired explained on Friday, all those possibly toxic particulates have to go somewhere, i.e. potentially city water systems, or the larger environment.

The survey focusing on one new, unnamed facility examined its entire recycling process. This involves sorting, shredding, and melting plastics down into pellets. During those phases of recycling, however, the plastic waste is washed multiple times, which subsequently sheds particles smaller than 5 millimeters along the way. Despite factoring in the plant’s state-of-the-art filtration system designed to capture particulates as tiny as 50 microns, the facility still produced as many as 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater.

[Related: How companies greenwash their plastic pollution.]

The silver lining here is that without the filtration systems, it could be much worse. Researchers estimated facilities that utilized filters cut down their microplastic residuals from 6.5 million pounds to around 3 million pounds per year. Unfortunately, many recycling locations aren’t as equipped as the modern plant used within the study. On top of that, the team only focused on microplastics as small as 1.6 microns; particles can get so small they actually enter organisms’ individual cells. This implies much more plastic escapes these facilities than previously anticipated.

“I really don’t want it to suggest to people that we shouldn’t recycle, and to give it a completely negative reputation,” Erina Brown, a plastics scientist at the University of Strathclyde, told Wired. “What it really highlights is that we just really need to consider the impacts of the solutions.”

Most experts agree that the most important way to minimize coating the entire planet in microplastics is to focus on the larger issue—reducing society’s reliance on plastics in general, and pursuing alternative materials. In the meantime, recycling remains an important part of sustainability, as long as both facilities do everything they can to minimize microscopic waste.

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There are countless studies and copious amounts of research delving into how the internet can negatively impact your mind. But, new data indicates that there’s one way online time could actually benefit the brain. According to findings recently published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society from a team at NYU, it appears that regular internet usage may significantly reduce the risk of dementia in older populations.

As also highlighted by Gizmodo on Thursday, the study examined online habits of over 18,000 adults over the age of 50 for as long as 17 years (with a median of nearly 8 years) via data from the government’s biannual Health and Retirement Study. The dataset was subsequently broken down into two groups—those who were regular internet users, and those who were not. A second survey assessed their cognition at the study’s outset to use for reference over time. According to researchers, regular visitors to the internet “experienced approximately half the risk of dementia than non-regular users,” even when taking issues like pre-existing conditions into consideration. As Gizmodo also noted, those who reported using the internet in subsequent analysis displayed even lower risks of impairment.

[Related: How your daily screen time affects your wellbeing.]

But don’t take this as carte blanche to surf the web to your heart’s content just yet. When utilizing a smaller dataset of users that provided hourly usage rates per week, researchers discovered a potential U-curve situation between time and risk for dementia. Those who spend over six hours a day on the internet appear to possess a slightly increased chance to develop cognitive issues, much like those who rarely go online at all. This led researchers to hypothesize that “excessive online engagement may have adverse cognitive effects on older adults.” Despite the study’s caveats, however, the findings present an interesting look into the potential positives of online use, especially when people are often told to use the internet less.

The Goldilocks “not too much, but not too little” linkage between internet use and dementia falls in line with experts’ recent suggestions on how to best maintain cognitive health: lead an overall, decently healthy lifestyle, i.e. one with regular physical activity, a primarily plant-based diet, an aversion to bogus supplements, managing existing diseases, and reduced alcohol consumption. So, on top of all that, you can now possibly add a healthy hour or so of daily internet scrolling to the list. Just don’t fall too far down the rabbit hole.

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There are so many animal-inspired soft robots out there at this point that you could easily pack an entire zoo with them. Although an adorable idea, it’s unlikely any such program will find its way into the real world soon—that said, a virtual zoo filled with digital soft robot prototypes will soon become available to researchers hoping to design and optimize their own creations.

A team at MIT recently unveiled SoftZoo, an open framework platform that simulates a variety of 3D model animals performing specific tasks in multiple environmental settings. “Our framework can help users find the best configuration for a robot’s shape, allowing them to design soft robotics algorithms that can do many different things,” MIT PhD student and project lead researcher Tsun-Hsuan Wang said in a statement. “In essence, it helps us understand the best strategies for robots to interact with their environments.”

While MIT notes similar platforms already exist, SoftZoo reportedly goes further by simulating design and control algorithms atop virtual biomes like snow, water, deserts, or wetlands. For instance, instead of a program only offering animal models like seals and caterpillars moving in certain directions, SoftZoo can place these designs in numerous settings via what’s known as a “differentiable multiphysics engine.”

[Related: Watch this robotic dog use one of its ‘paws’ to open doors.]

Soft robotics have quickly shown themselves to be extremely promising in navigating natural, real-world environments. Unlike laboratory settings, everyday clutter can prove extremely challenging for traditional robots. Soft variants’ malleability and adaptability, however, make them well suited for difficult situations such as volatile search-and-rescue scenarios like collapsed buildings and swift moving waters. The MIT team’s open-source SoftZoo program allows designers to simultaneously optimize their own works’ body and brain instead of relying on multiple expensive, complicated systems.

“This computational approach to co-designing the soft robot bodies and their brains (that is, their controllers) opens the door to rapidly creating customized machines that are designed for a specific task,” added Daniela Rus, paper co-author and director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

Of course, it’s one thing to simulate a soft robot, and another thing entirely to actualize it in the real world. “The muscle models, spatially varying stiffness, and sensorization in SoftZoo cannot be straightforwardly realized with current fabrication techniques, so we are working on these challenges,” explained Wang. Still, offering an open source program like SoftZoo allows researchers to experiment and test out their robot ideas in an extremely accessible way. From there, they can move on to making their best and most promising designs a reality.

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The Biden administration wants cryptocurrency miners to pay up if they intend to continue consuming more electricity than every television in the US combined each year. On Tuesday, the White House announced its 2024 proposed budget featuring the Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) tax, which aims to slap a 30 percent surcharge on crypto firms’ power intake.

“Currently, cryptomining firms do not have to pay for the full cost they impose on others, in the form of local environmental pollution, higher energy prices, and the impacts of increased greenhouse gas emissions on the climate,” reads the Biden administration’s statement released earlier this week. “The DAME tax encourages firms to start taking better account of the harms they impose on society.”

[Related: Bitcoin’s steep environmental costs go beyond its hunger for energy.]

Recent studies have shown that crypto mining’s extremely high energy costs negatively impact the environment, electricity grids, and quality of life for those living nearby. The pollution generated often disproportionately affects low-income areas and communities of color, while the stress on power infrastructure can also raise consumer prices while straining equipment and endangering the public. Despite these issues, the Biden administration argues that crypto firms offer neither local nor national benefits that often come from other businesses consuming the same amounts of electricity.

“There is little evidence of benefits to local communities in the form of employment or economic opportunity, and research has found that minor increases in local tax revenue are more than offset by increased energy prices for firms and households,” the White House adds.

[Related: Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested and charged with fraud.]

Fueled by viral media coverage and big-name endorsements, many cryptocurrencies (particularly its most popular variant, Bitcoin) experienced dramatic speculative runs beginning in late 2020. Following Bitcoin’s all-time high of nearly $69,000 per coin in November 2021, numerous financial scandals hit the industry, most notably the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange firm FTX and subsequent arrest of its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried on charges of fraud. Since then, values have since plummeted to around $29,000 for 1 BTC at the time of writing.

In March, members of Congress announced the Crypto-Asset Environmental Transparency Act, a bill that would force cryptominers to disclose their annual emissions. “When one year of U.S. Bitcoin mining creates as many carbon emissions as 7.5 million gas-powered cars—we have a problem,” bill co-sponsor Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) wrote on Twitter at the time. “The crypto industry is growing, but so is the fight for climate justice. We will hold these companies accountable.”

If passed, the Biden administration estimates the DAME tax would raise around $10.5 billion in revenue over the next decade.

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Last week, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) introduced the Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act alongside Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) and numerous other bipartisan co-sponsors. The bill’s objective is as straightforward as its name: ensuring AI will never have a final say in American nuclear strategy.

“While we all try to grapple with the pace at which AI is accelerating, the future of AI and its role in society remains unclear. It is our job as Members of Congress to have responsible foresight when it comes to protecting future generations from potentially devastating consequences,” Rep. Lieu said in the bill’s announcement, adding, “AI can never be a substitute for human judgment when it comes to launching nuclear weapons.”

He’s not the only one to think so—a 2021 Human Rights Watch report co-authored by Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic stated that “[r]obots lack the compassion, empathy, mercy, and judgment necessary to treat humans humanely, and they cannot understand the inherent worth of human life.”

[Related: This AI-powered brain scanner can paraphrase your thoughts.]

If passed, the bill would legally codify existing Department of Defense procedures found in its  2022 Nuclear Posture Review, which states that “in all cases, the United States will maintain a human ‘in the loop’ for all actions critical to informing and executing decisions by the President to initiate and terminate nuclear weapon employment.’’ Additionally, the DOD said that no federal funds could be used to launch nukes by an automated system without “meaningful human control,” according to the bill’s announcement.

The proposed legislation comes at a time when the power of generative AI, including chatbots like ChatGPT, is increasingly part of the public discourse. But the surreal spectrum between “amusing chatbot responses” and “potential existential threats to humanity” is not lost on Lieu. He certainly never thought part of his civic responsibilities would include crafting legislation to stave off a Skynet scenario, he tells PopSci.

As a self-described “recovering computer science major,” Lieu says he is amazed by what AI programs can now accomplish. “Voice recognition is pretty amazing now. Facial recognition is pretty amazing now, although it is more inaccurate for people with darker skin,” he says, referring to long-documented patterns of algorithmic bias. 

The past year’s release of generative AI programs such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, however, is when Lieu began to see the potential for harm.

[Related: ‘Godfather of AI’ quits Google to talk openly about the dangers of the rapidly emerging tech.]

“It’s creating information and predicting scenarios,” he says of the available tech. “That leads to different concerns, including my view that AI, no matter how smart it gets, should never have operative control of nuclear weapons.”

Lieu believes it’s vital to begin discussing AI regulations to curtail three major consequences: Firs, the proliferation of misinformation and other content “harmful to society.” Second is reining in AI that, while not existentially threatening for humanity, “can still just straight-up kill you.” He references San Francisco’s November 2022 multi-vehicle crash that injured multiple people and was allegedly caused by a Tesla engaged in its controversial Autopilot self-driving mode.

“When your cellphone malfunctions, it isn’t going at 50 miles-per-hour,” he says.

Finally, there is the “AI that can destroy the world, literally,” says Lieu. And this is where he believes the Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act can help, at least in some capacity. Essentially, if the bill becomes law, AI systems could still provide analysis and strategic suggestions regarding nuclear events, but ultimate say-so will rest firmly within human hands.

[Related: A brief but terrifying history of tactical nuclear weapons.]

Going forward, Lieu says there needs to be a larger regulatory approach to handling AI issues due to the fact Congress “doesn’t have the bandwidth or capacity to regulate AI in every single application.” He’s open to a set of AI risk standards agreed upon by federal agencies, or potentially a separate agency dedicated to generative and future advanced AI. On Thursday, the Biden administration unveiled plans to offer $140 million in funding to new research centers aimed at monitoring and regulating AI development.

When asked if he fears society faces a new “AI arms race,” Lieu concedes it is “certainly a possibility,” but points to the existence of current nuclear treaties. “Yes, there is a nuclear weapons arms race, but it’s not [currently] an all-out arms race. And so it’s possible to not have an all-out AI arms race,” says Lieu.

“Countries are looking at this, and hopefully they will get together to say, ‘Here are just some things we are not going to let AI do.’”

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Researchers at the University of California San Diego have invented an adhesive, elastic patch capable of performing ultrasounds—but don’t expect any baby pictures just yet. Even without the social media fodder, the new wearable technology could soon provide an extremely useful tool for a wide array of medical monitoring procedures.

As detailed in a paper published on Monday in Nature Biomedical Engineering, a team led by nanoengineering professor Sheng Xu has developed a tiny, wearable device capable of measuring tissue stiffness up to 4 centimeters underneath the skin with a spatial resolution of 0.5 millimeters. In a statement, study coauthor and postdoctoral researcher Hongjie Hu explained that the group “integrated an array of ultrasound elements into a soft elastomer matrix and used wavy serpentine stretchable electrodes to connect these elements,” thus creating a conformable patch for portable medical monitoring.

According to the team’s paper, the device is composed of a 16-by-16 array of transducer elements connected via a seven-layer electrode. This is all protected by a waterproof and biocompatible silicone elastomer. A backing layer made from a composite of silver-epoxy helps absorb excessive vibrations to broaden bandwidth capabilities and improve resolution.

[Related: Wearable liquid pumps could one day regulate body temperature.]

All together, the patch comfortably conforms and “acoustically couples” to a patient’s skin to take repeated, three-dimensional images of underlying tissue. Compared with traditional ultrasound technology, the new patch can take the monitoring outside of hospital settings and eliminates the need for staff assistance. “This allows patients to continuously monitor their health status anytime, anywhere,” added Hu.

One significant challenge the team initially encountered involved the actual manufacturing of the patch. Traditional fabrication methods often require high-temperature bonding procedures that thermally damage the device’s sensitivity. To solve this problem, Xu’s team replaced their patch’s soldering paste with a conductive epoxy that bonded at room temperature, thus avoiding any burn-related problems.

Already, the team’s patch shows promise across a number of medical areas and research. Among the potential usages: monitoring the progression of cancerous cells, which often stiffen as they spread; assessing sports injuries affecting tendons, ligaments, and muscles; and analyzing the efficacy of treatments for liver and cardiovascular diseases alongside chemotherapy results. According to UC San Diego’s announcement, the ability to continuously monitor these health issues could aid in avoiding misdiagnosis and fatalities while also reducing costs via the new, non-invasive alternative to traditional hospital procedures.

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Europe’s fourth busiest airport wants to ground private jet setters for good, making an unprecedented move that could set a new industry benchmark in tackling global travel emissions. In order to achieve the high-profile goal, however, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has a very bumpy journey ahead of it.

Per Bloomberg, the Netherlands’ largest air hub first made headlines last month when it announced plans to shutter all night flights and private jets from its runways beginning in 2026. Schiphol is overseen by the Royal Schiphol Group, a Dutch government majority-owned company whose interim CEO said at the time they “realize that our choices may have significant implications for the aviation industry, but they are necessary. This shows we mean business.”

[Related: The FAA just made East Coast flights shorter.]

On Tuesday, Schiphol Airport representatives explained to Bloomberg that 30 and 50 percent of all its private jet flights are to holiday locales such as Cannes and Ibiza. Additionally, around 17,000 private flights passed through Schiphol last year, “causing a disproportionate amount of noise and generating 20 times more carbon dioxide emissions per passenger than commercial flights.”

A private jet can emit as much as two metric tons of CO2 during one hour of flight. And while private flights make up only four percent of global aviation carbon emissions, the richer half of humanity is still behind roughly 90 percent of all air travel pollution. Factor in the dramatic rise in private air travel, particularly since the onset of the COVID–19 pandemic, and it’s easy to see why public sentiment is turning against the notion of wealthy getaways and exclusive business jaunts.

[Related: How does a jet engine work? By running hot enough to melt its own innards.]

Many in the industry, however, aren’t thrilled by Schiphol’s new goals. One private jet charter company CEO argued to Bloomberg that their customers’ flights were mostly for “business,” while other critics argued passengers will simply transition to nearby alternative airports. The Royal Schiphol Group informed Bloomberg its closest neighbor, Rotterdam The Hague Airport, cannot accommodate the displaced flights, nor does the company plan to transfer flights elsewhere.

Royal Schiphol Group could face an uphill battle in accomplishing its goals, however. Most of its impending green goals require discussions with the company’s stakeholders—such as Delta Air Lines and France-KLM, who previously sued the Dutch government regarding caps on flights. Then there’s Transavia Airlines BV, who oversee the majority of night flights out of Schiphol. Regardless of the final outcomes, Royal Schiphol Group is still setting a very public example when it comes to raising awareness regarding air travel’s exorbitant effects on the planet, and the importance of finding solutions to these issues before it’s too late.

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Researchers at the University of Texas Austin have developed a breakthrough “semantic decoder” that uses artificial intelligence to convert scans of the human brain’s speech activity into paraphrased text. Although still relatively imprecise compared to source texts, the development represents a major step forward for AI’s role in assistive technology—and one that its makers already caution could be misused if not properly regulated.

First published on Monday in Nature Neuroscience, the team’s findings detail a new system that integrates a generative program similar to OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google Bard alongside existing technology capable of interpreting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans—a device that monitors how and where blood flows to particular areas of the brain. While previous brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have shown promise in achieving similar translative abilities, the UT Austin’s version is reportedly the first noninvasive version requiring no actual physical implants or wiring.

In the study, researchers asked three test subjects to each spend a total of 16 hours within an fMRI machine listening to audio podcasts. The team meanwhile trained an AI model to create and parse semantic features by analyzing Reddit comments and autobiographical texts. By meshing the two datasets, the AI learned and matched words and phrases associated with scans of the subjects’ brains to create semantic linkages.

After this step, participants were once again asked to lay in an fMRI scanner and listen to new audio that was not part of the original data. The semantic decoder subsequently translated the audio into text via the scans of brain activity, and could even produce similar results as subjects watched silent video clips or imagined their own stories within their heads. While the AI’s transcripts generally offered out-of-place or imprecisely worded answers, the overall output still successfully paraphrased the test subjects’ inner monologues. Sometimes, it even accurately mirrored the audio word choices. As The New York Times explains, the results indicate the UT Austin team’s AI decoder doesn’t merely capture word order, but actual implicit meaning, as well.

[Related: Brain interfaces aren’t nearly as easy as Elon Musk makes them seem.]

While still in its very early stages, researchers hope future, improved versions could provide a powerful new communications tool for individuals who have lost the ability to audibly speak, such as stroke victims or those dealing with ALS. As it stands, fMRI scanners are massive, immovable machines restricted to medical facilities, but the team hopes to investigate how a similar system could work utilizing a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

There is, however, a major stipulation to the new semantic decoder—a subject must make a concerted, conscious effort to cooperate with the AI program’s goals via staying focused on their objectives. Simply put, a busier brain means a more garbled transcript. Similarly, the decoder tech can also only be trained on a single person at a time. 

Despite these current restrictions, the research team already anticipates the potential for rapid progress alongside misuse. “[F]uture developments might enable decoders to bypass these [privacy] requirements,” the team wrote in its study. “Moreover, even if decoder predictions are inaccurate without subject cooperation, they could be intentionally misinterpreted for malicious purposes… For these and other unforeseen reasons, it is critical to raise awareness of the risks of brain decoding technology and enact policies that protect each person’s mental privacy.”

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An online coaching company recently teamed up with language researchers to amass the world’s largest publicly available dataset of two-person virtual conversations. Already in use by institutions at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and elsewhere, BetterUp Labs’ CANDOR Conversation Corpus includes over 850 hours’ worth of over 1,600 Zoom chats recorded between January and November 2020. Its authors hope to provide experts and scholars across an array of fields a deep trove of data offering insight into the myriad ways digital communication methods can affect everyday human interactions.

Zoom delays are the bane of many remote workers’ existence, but there’s a reason beyond the sheer annoyance. Zoom delays cause us to awkwardly talk over one another. According to a study published last year, it takes approximately 297 milliseconds for the human brain to process face-to-face, yes-or-no questions—ask those same queries over a video chat portal like Zoom, and that delay increases to upwards of 976 milliseconds. As Business Insider relayed on Monday, the previous study’s researchers theorized that even as little as a 30- to 70-millisecond audio delay (less than the blink of an eye) can disrupt conversation participants’ neural processing that underlies the very basics of human dialogue.

[Related: The best Zoom tricks and add-ons for your video chats.]

Enter BetterUp Labs’ “Conversation: A Naturalistic Dataset of Online Recordings,” aka CANDOR. With methodology and results recently published in Science Advances, CANDOR offers one of the most expansive archives of two-person audio and video conversations to date. The process was simple enough: compensated participants were asked to pair up with randomized fellow volunteers, who were then tasked to chat together for at least 25 minutes about whatever they wanted. Afterwards, they were surveyed about their feelings and thoughts post-chat. Both the audio and video of each conversation was also recorded, meaning that unlike most conversational corpuses, CANDOR didn’t merely archive their transcriptions. Speakers’ visual and audio information were also detailed, meaning every facial tic, verbal stutter, and subtle gesture was made available for researchers to parse and analyze.

Initial analysis of CANDOR’s data reveals some quick takeaways about what makes a solid Zoom conversationalist—generally speaking, higher rated and more well received participants were those who spoke faster, louder, and more intensely. As Insider explains, “people rated by their partners as better conversationalists spoke 3 percent faster than bad conversationalists—uttering about six more words a minute.” Although average volume didn’t change between positively and negatively reviewed conversations, the more nuanced notion of “intensity” factored heavily into opinions, as well as the variation between decibel levels. More variation meant a better view, while monotone conversationalists unsurprisingly didn’t score as well.

[Related: Zoom chats can be surprisingly therapeutic.]

The authors of the new CANDOR corpus freely admit the limitations to their initial work—the first version includes only American English conversations, and randomly pairing participants might have produced social anxieties and issues that skewed some of the data. Still, the CANDOR database offers one of the most expansive sets of two-person digital conversations ever amassed, and can serve as a launching pad for even more detailed investigations down the line. In order to do so, however, don’t be surprised if you find yet another Zoom invite in your email inbox in the near future.

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The Federal Aviation Administration announced the launch of 169 new flight routes along the East Coast on Monday. These new flight paths are estimated to annually trim 6,000 minutes and 40,000 miles from US plane travel. The revamped trajectories, some of which extend into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, come after seven years of collaborative industry review, and primarily pertain to planes traveling at cruising altitude above 18,000 feet.

“These significant improvements to our national airspace system… will help travelers get to their destinations more efficiently,” Tim Arel, COO of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, said in the statement.  “The new routes will reduce complexity and redistribute volume across all available airspace.”

[RELATED: How high do planes fly? It depends on if they’re going east or west.]

The legacy pathways prone to zigzagging were designed when most planes relied upon ground-based radar systems. With modern aircraft utilizing GPS navigation, the FAA’s revamped maps can provide more direct travel that shaves off time and, importantly, saves on fuel; air travel has long been one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions.

Although long planned by human dispatchers, artificial intelligence is playing an increasing role in the formulation of new, efficient flight routes for pilots. In 2021, for example, Alaska Airlines began enlisting an AI system from Airspace Intelligence to help develop potential routes. According to Alaska at the time, the AI pathways saved an average 5.3 minutes in flight time, alongside nearly half a million gallons of fuel during a prior trial period.

US-based companies such as American Airlines are already chiming in on the announcement, saying the revisions are a welcome update as traveling begins to ramp up for the summer. “American has long been a proponent of unlocking additional high-altitude routes along the East Coast and we are optimistic they will have significant benefits for our customers and team members,” American Airlines COO David Seymore said via email to CNBC on Monday. 

[Related: Let’s talk about how planes fly.]

The revised routes are long overdue for a crowded, frequently problematic skyscape. According to flight tracking website FlightAware 1.7 million (around 20 percent) of all US-operated airline flights were delayed in 2022—up four percent from 2019’s pre-pandemic numbers. Around 22 percent of 2023’s US flights have already been delayed. During the 2022 holiday season, Southwest Airlines experienced a wave of massive, unprecedented delays and cancellations stemming from outdated internal employee scheduling software.

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It might be difficult to see at first, but if you squint just right, you can tell the latest animal-inspired robot owes its ungainly waddle to seals. Researchers at Chicago’s DePaul University looked at the movements of the aquatic mammal and its relatives for their new robot prototype—and while it may look a bit silly, the advances could one day help in extremely dire situations.

According to their paper’s abstract, the team writes they aimed to build a robot featuring “improved degrees of freedom, gait trajectory diversity, limb dexterity, and payload capabilities.” To do this, they studied the movements of pinnipeds—the technical term given to fin-footed mammals such as seals, walruses, and sea lions—as an alternative to existing quadrupedal and soft-limbed robots. Their final result is a simplified, three-limbed device that propels itself via undulating motions and is supported by a rigid “backbone” like those of their mammalian inspirations.

As also detailed last week via TechXplore, the robot’s soft limbs are each roughly 9.5 inches long by 1.5 inches wide, and encased in a protective outer casing. Each arm is driven by pneumatic actuators filled with liquid to obtain varying degrees of stiffness. Changing the limbs’ rigidness controls the robot’s directional abilities, something researchers say is generally missing from similar crawling machines.

[Related: Robot jellyfish swarms could soon help clean the oceans of plastic.]

Interestingly, the team realized that their pinniped product actually moves faster when walking “backwards.” While in reverse, the robot waddled at a solid 6.5 inches per second, compared to just 4.5 inches per second during forward motion. “Pinnipeds use peristaltic body movement to propel forward since the bulk of the body weight is distributed towards the back,” explains the team in its research paper. “But, the proposed soft robot design has a symmetric weight distribution and thus it is difficult to maintain stability while propelling forward. As a consequence, the robot shows limited frontal movements. Conversely, when propelling backward, the torque imbalance is countered by the body.”

But despite the reversal and slightly ungainly stride, the DePaul University team believes soft robots such as their seal-inspired creation could one day come in handy for dangerous tasks, including nuclear site inspections, search and rescue efforts, and even future planetary explorations. It might be one small step for robots, but it may prove one giant waddle for pinniped propulsion tech.

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Geoffrey Hinton, known to some as the “Godfather of AI,” pioneered the technology behind today’s most impactful and controversial artificial intelligence systems. He also just quit his position at Google to more freely criticize the industry he helped create. Via an interview with The New York Times published on Monday, Hinton confirmed he told his employer of his decision in March and spoke with Google CEO Sundar Pichai last Thursday.

In 2012, Hinton, a computer science researcher at the University of Toronto, and his colleagues achieved a breakthrough in neural network programming. They were soon approached by Google to work alongside the company in developing the technology. Although once viewed with skepticism among researchers, neural networks’ mathematical abilities to parse immense data troves has since gone on to form the underlying basis of industry-shaking text- and image-generating AI tech such as Google Bard and OpenAI’s GPT-4. In 2018, Hinton and two longtime co-researchers received the Turing Award for their neural network contributions to the field of AI.

[Related: Microsoft lays off entire AI ethics team while going all out on ChatGPT.]

But in light of AI’s more recent, controversial advances, Hinton expressed to The New York Times that he has since grown incredibly troubled by the technological arms race brewing between companies. He said he is very wary of the industry’s trajectory with little-to-no regulation or oversight, and is described as partially “regret[ting] his life’s work.” “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now. Take the difference and propagate it forwards,” Hinton added. “That’s scary.”

Advancements in AI have shown immense promise in traditionally complicated areas such as climate modeling and detecting medical issues like cancer, “The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people—a few people believed that,” Hinton said during the interview. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

[Related: No, the AI chatbots (still) aren’t sentient.]

The 75-year-old researcher first believed, according to the New York Times, that the progress seen by companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI would offer new, powerful ways to generate language, albeit still “inferior” to human capabilities. Last year, however, private companies’ technological strides began to worry him. He still contends (as do most experts) that these neural network systems remain inferior to human intelligence, but argues that for some tasks and responsibilities AI may be “actually a lot better.” 

Since The New York Times’ piece published, Hinton took to Twitter to clarify his position, stating he “left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google.” Hinton added he believes “Google has acted very responsibly.” Last month, a report from Bloomberg featuring interviews with employees indicated many at the company believe there have been “ethical lapses” throughout Google’s AI development.

“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” Hinton said of his contributions to AI.

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The human hand is amazingly complex—so much so that most modern robots and artificial intelligence systems have a difficult time understanding how they truly work. Although machines are now pretty decent at grasping and replacing objects, actual manipulation of their targets (i.e. assembly, reorienting, and packaging) remains largely elusive. Recently, however, researchers created an impressively dextrous robot after realizing it needed less, not more, sensory inputs.

A team at Columbia Engineering has just unveiled a five-digit robotic “hand” that relies solely on its advanced sense of touch, alongside motor learning algorithms, to handle difficult objects—no visual data required. Because of this, the new proof-of-concept is completely immune to common optical issues like dim lighting, occlusion, and even complete darkness.

[Related: Watch a robot hand only use its ‘skin’ to feel and grab objects.]

Each of the new robot’s digits are equipped with highly sensitive touch sensors alongside 15 independently actuating joints. Irregularly shaped objects such as a miniature disco ball were then placed into the hand for the robot to rotate and maneuver without dropping them. Alongside “submillimeter” tactile data, the robot relied on what’s known as “proprioception.” Often referred to as the “sixth sense,” proprioception includes abilities like physical positionality, force, and self-movement. These data points were then fed into a deep reinforcement learning program, which was able to simulate roughly one year of practice time in only a few hours via “modern physics simulators and highly parallel processors,” according to a statement from Columbia Engineering.

In their announcement, Matei Ciocarlie, an associate professor in the departments of mechanical engineering and computer science, explained that “the directional goal for the field remains assistive robotics in the home, the ultimate proving ground for real dexterity.” While Ciocarlie’s team showed how this was possible without any visual data, they plan to eventually incorporate that information into their systems. “Once we also add visual feedback into the mix along with touch, we hope to be able to achieve even more dexterity, and one day start approaching the replication of the human hand,” they added.

[Related: AI is trying to get a better handle on hands.]

Ultimately, the team hopes to combine this dexterity and understanding alongside more abstract, semantic and embodied intelligence. According to Columbia Engineering researchers, their new robotic hand represents the latter capability, while recent advances in large language modeling through OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google Bard could one day supply the former.

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Your stomach is extremely moody—at any given time, a complex interplay of factors such as hormone production and various neurological signals can leave you feeling hungry, overstuffed, excited, or nauseous. These experiences stem directly from the enteric nervous system (ENS), which controls gastrointestinal tract functions along a path known as the gut-brain axis. The ENS is so complex, in fact, that it is often referred to as your “second brain.”

Because of this, there are a number of ways for things to go sideways, resulting in issues such as suppressed appetites and slow digestion. Recently, however, researchers developed a first-of-its-kind treatment to help spur hunger via stimulating hormone levels in the gut—an “electroceutical” ingestible capsule inspired by a “water wicking” reptile.

In a new paper published by a team of scientists at NYU Abu Dhabi working alongside experts at MIT, the team explored a novel way to “significantly and repeatedly” induce the production of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. To accomplish this, they looked to the Australian thorny devil lizard, whose spiky skin is evolved to transport any water it touches towards the reptile’s mouth. Similarly, the research team’s ingestible device features a grooved, hydrophilic exterior designed to defer fluids away from the stomach’s inner lining. When this occurs, the pill-shaped tool’s electrodes come into direct contact with the tissue to produce a tiny current stimulating ghrelin production.

[Related: Doctors need to change the way they treat obesity.]

Dan Azagury, an associate professor and Chief of Minimally Invasive and Bariatric Surgery at Stanford University who was not involved in the study, admired the new device, and said they found the findings “really intriguing.”

“I love the creativity of the device, the idea, and how they found a way to get around the fluid constraints,” Azagury said via email, but cautioned that “even if that works, the path for this to show clinical efficacy in a disease as complex as obesity, is very, very challenging.”

Azagury points towards experts’ still relatively poor understanding of gut hormones and the gut-brain axis, which are “more complex than we think, and likely underutilized.” As an example, he offered that the “new blockbuster drugs” used to treat obesity are based on gut hormones only discovered in the 1980s, far after doctors had begun performing weight loss surgeries.

Although Azagury estimates there is a “long road ahead” before the device is commercially used to treat diseases, its creators are more optimistic. “It’s a relatively simple device,” Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the senior author of the study, argued in a statement for MIT. “So we believe it’s something that we can get into humans on a relatively quick time scale.”

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Just months after it was supposedly shut down for good, a Michigan nuclear power plant could come roaring back to life with help from the very company charged with its demolition. According to an AP report published on Wednesday, Holtec Decommissioning International hopes to resurrect the 800 megawatt Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan’s Van Buren county. However,  it faces many logistical challenges alongside vocal opposition from critics.

Regulators removed Palisades’ reactor fuel in a “permanent cessation of power operations” in May 2022. Holtec bought the property from Entergy just weeks later, with plans to dismantle the 432-acre site. However, the Biden administration’s recent $6 billion federal funding allocation towards prolonging nuclear plants’ lifespans has spurred the company to reconsider the plant’s potential, the AP reports. Now, Holtec wants to update the facility and restore its operational capacities for the region’s energy grid. Palisades supplied an estimated 5 percent of all electricity within Michigan when active, according to the AP.

[Related: The next generation of US nuclear plants could be tiny but powerful.]

Holtec’s goals are lofty, however: Both regulators and activists had long criticized the plant’s poor conditions in the years leading up to its decommission. In fact, Palisades was forced to close two weeks earlier than anticipated due to the degradation of a device that helped control the atomic reaction. At Holtec’s pitch meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC), one radioactive waste specialist promised to “fight this proposal at every turn,” and called restart plans “uncharted risk territory,” per AP.

Meanwhile, nuclear energy production looms large over modern society as an immensely powerful alternative to fossil fuels that emits zero CO2. Restoring and expanding nuclear power access is a central component to the Biden administration’s 2050 goal for a net zero carbon emission nation, but notorious crises such as the Chernobyl and Fukushima plant disasters have soured many’s perception of the fuel source. In March, Germany shut down the last of the country’s nuclear facilities.

According to AP, recommissioning the Palisades site will require hundreds of newly hired and trained operators and engineers, alongside a meticulous review of every part of the facility. More uranium would need to be purchased to power the plant, as well. Holtec aims to secure funding and NRC approval by October, with an eye to restart the site in a couple years’ time. The firm is also requesting $300 million in taxpayer assistance to help restart operations. If all goes according to plan, however, Palisades would mark the first US nuclear reactor to restart after losing its fuel and operating license.

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Earlier this week, a California judge tentatively ordered Elon Musk to testify under oath regarding the Tesla CEO’s past claims related to the EV company’s Autopilot software. The request, as reported by multiple outlets, pertains to an ongoing lawsuit alleging the AI drive-assist program is partially responsible for the 2018 death of Apple engineer Walter Huang. The request would also compel Musk to address previous, frequently lofty descriptions of the system. In 2016, for example, Musk alleged “a Model S and Model X, at this point, can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person.”

But before Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Evette D. Pennypacker issued their decision, Tesla’s legal defense offered a creative argument as to why the CEO shouldn’t have to testify: any documentation of Musk’s prior Autopilot claims could simply be deepfakes. 

Reports of the defense strategy came earlier this week from both Reuters and Bloomberg, and also include Judge Pennypacker’s critical response to Tesla’s concerns. “Their position is that because Mr. Musk is famous and might be more of a target for deep fakes, his public statements are immune,” wrote the judge. “In other words, Mr. Musk, and others in his position, can simply say whatever they like in the public domain, then hide behind the potential for their recorded statements being a deep fake to avoid taking ownership of what they did actually say and do.”

[Related: Why an AI image of Pope Francis in a fly jacket stirred up the internet.]

While there are some entertaining examples out there, AI-generated videos and images—often referred to as deepfakes—are an increasing cause of concern among misinformation experts. Despite the legitimate concerns, contending that archival recorded statements are now rendered wholesale untrustworthy now would be “deeply troubling,” Judge Pennybacker said in the reports. Although Musk’s deposition order is “tentative,” as Reuters notes, “California judges often issue tentative rulings, which are almost always finalized with few major changes after such a hearing.” 

Tesla faces numerous investigations involving the company’s controversial Autopilot system, including one from the Department of Justice first revealed late last year. Last week, a California state court jury ruled the company was not at fault in a separate wrongful death lawsuit involving an EV’s Autopilot system. Huang’s wrongful death lawsuit is scheduled to go into trial on July 31.

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Although Tesla’s latest Impact Report promises that “a sustainable future is within reach,” the company’s 2022 figures show just how crucial accurate measurements are in achieving the lofty goal. Released earlier this week, an expanded dataset dramatically upped the electric vehicle maker’s total carbon footprint when compared with the prior year’s available information. The larger picture? An estimated 30.7 million tons of CO2 in supply chain emissions atop previously reported categories of pollution. That’s roughly equivalent to Serbia’s total emissions in 2021. 

[Related: Tesla employees allegedly viewed drivers’ car camera footage.]

Tesla only publicly offered how much greenhouse gas the company generated in 2021 via direct operations and EV owners charging their cars—around 2.5 million metric tons of CO2. That might seem small compared to its competitors (Ford recorded 337 million metric tons of CO2 in 2022, for example), but these segments of overall emissions are just a fraction of a company’s supply chain pollution stemming from production, transportation, and indirect operations. And while those numbers weren’t disclosed for 2021, they were for last year within Tesla’s new report.

As The Verge notes, the vast difference in numbers comes down to what companies generally choose to include in these kinds of industry reports. Carbon footprints are often broken down into three “scopes,” with Scope 1 encompassing direct company emissions (i.e. factory emissions, brick-and-mortar offices, and its own vehicles for travel and commuting). Meanwhile, Scope 2 includes emissions stemming from heating, A/C, and electricity usage in company buildings like offices. Scope 3 focuses on all the extra, indirect emissions from supply chain manufacturing alongside products’ lifecycle emissions.

Most often, businesses choose to detail only Scopes 1 and 2, as they are usually smaller than Scope 3’s numbers, even when combined. This often makes a company’s carbon footprint appear much smaller than it actually is when seen as a fuller picture; a strategy often referred to as “greenwashing.” In Tesla’s 2022 Impact Report, for instance, the first two “scopes” totaled just 610,000 metric tons of CO2—a much more palatable figure for investors and consumers than the true total of over 31 million tons.

[Related: Tesla is under federal investigation over autopilot claims.]

Still, Tesla actually making its Scope 3 data available to the public offers some much needed additional transparency within the industry. Even then, however, the company’s  combined Scope 1 and 2 numbers rose a little under four percent, year-over-year. This, as The Verge also added, came even as Tesla still worked to make its EVs less carbon-intensive. Earlier this month, Tesla revealed “Part 3” of its ongoing “Master Plan” to provide sustainable energy for the entire world, estimating it will take $10 trillion in investments to fully realize.

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The oceans are inundated with plastic. Despite the numerous flashy proposed solutions, there unfortunately still isn’t any surefire way to clean it all up. One of the most buzzed about ideas—underwater vacuuming—has recently come up against intense scrutiny for its potential collateral damage to marine ecosystems and wildlife. Meanwhile, even the more delicate alternatives often hinge upon large, cumbersome surface skimmers. To tackle some of these issues, scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) have created a robotic trash collector inspired by some of the oceans’ oldest and most resilient residents—jellyfish.

Recently detailed in the research journal Scientific Advances, the team’s “Jellyfish-Bot” already shows promise in helping cleanup the copious amounts of human-generated trash littering the planets’ aquatic environments. But unlike many other underwater cleaners, the prototype is incredibly small, energy-efficient, and nearly noiseless. Additionally, the hand-sized device doesn’t need to actually physically interact with its cleanup targets. Instead, the robot takes a cue from jellyfishes’ graceful movements via six limbs employing artificial muscles called hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic actuators, or HASELs.

As New Atlas explains, HASELs are ostensibly electrode-covered sacs filled with oils. When the electrodes receive a small current—in this case, about 100 mW—they become positively charged, then safely discharge the current into the negatively charged water around them. Alternating this current forces the oil in the sacs to move back and forth, thus making the actuators flap in a way that generates momentum to move trash particles upward. From there, humans or other gathering tools can scoop up the detritus.

“When a jellyfish swims upwards, it can trap objects along its path as it creates currents around its body,” study author and postdoc in the MPI-IS Physical Intelligence Department Tianlu Wang explained in a statement. “In this way, it can also collect nutrients.”

Wang went on to describe how their robot similarly circulates water around it. “This function is useful in collecting objects such as waste particles,” Wang adds. “It can then transport the litter to the surface, where it can later be recycled.”

[Related: Ocean plastic ‘vacuums’ are sucking up marine life along with trash.]

Apart from generating currents, the Jellyfish-Bots’ actuators could also be divided up into separate responsibilities. In the team’s demonstrations, the prototypes could use all six of its limbs for propulsion, or rely on two of them as claws to lightly grasp targets like an N95 face mask.

The biggest drawback at the moment is simply the fact that a controlled Jellyfish-Bot still requires a wired connection for power, thus hampering its scope. Although researchers have been able to incorporate battery and wireless communications modules into the robots, the untethered versions cannot currently be directed in a desired path. Still, it’s easy to envision future iterations of the Jellyfish-Bot clearing this relatively small hurdle. If that is accomplished, then fleets of the cute cleanup machines may soon be deployed as a safe, efficient, and environmentally harmless way to help tackle one of the environment’s most pressing threats.

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It’s often one of the earliest science facts learned in grade school: Wood is a natural insulator. For those who need a refresher, that simply means the material generally isn’t a great conductor for electricity. But as elementary as that information may be, a team of researchers have added an asterisk to the rule of thumb: It turns out some wood, once tweaked, can conduct electricity. What’s more, they can be converted into natural transistors.

According to a paper recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, engineers at Sweden’s Linköping University successfully altered balsa wood by first leeching it of lignin—a natural binding substance found in wood and other plantlife. Once the lignin is removed, what remains is a network of tubing that transports water throughout the balsa known as lumina. The remaining hollowed balsa can be submerged in a liquid solution containing an electrically conductive polymer. What results is a material that can transport electrolyte-containing water through its lumina, and a new, natural transistor.

[Related: This rechargeable battery is meant to be eaten.]

Before balsa, the team attempted to engineer conductive wood with other samples, including birch and ash. These alternatives, however, didn’t not possess the same levels of structural integrity after being submerged in the polymer solution, nor did they properly absorb the polymer. The team also noted that, unlike its other test options, balsa displays a compositional ubiquity throughout the year’s seasons.

But don’t expect to see wood transistors in your next iPhone. Compared to modern silicon transistors, the team’s wood variation is much larger and slower. As New Scientist explains, a single fingernail-sized computer chip today frequently contains billions of transistors, each of which can switch on and off billions of times a second. A single balsa transistor, by comparison, is roughly three centimeters long. On top of that, it takes one second to switch off, and around five seconds to switch back on.

[Related: Watch this metallic material move like the T-1000 from ‘Terminator 2’.]

Still, wood transistors show immense promise in other areas, such as forestry and agricultural monitoring. Wood conductors are also more sustainable than existing alternatives, and could even be used to monitor flora resistance to climate change and other environmental issues. Going forward, researchers told New Scientist they hope to one day grow wood samples with conductive polymers already inside them via using different versions that enter the wood without needing to remove lignin.

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A commercial lunar rover, developed by the private Japanese company ispace in partnership with the United Arab Emirates, appears to have failed to achieve a soft lunar landing, and is presumed to have crashed on the moon’s surface. The mission’s apparent conclusion comes after four-month, 239,000 mile sojourn, and if successful, could have signaled a new era of lunar exploration.

“We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said during the company’s livestream.

Launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on December 11, ispace’s Hakuto-R lander attempted to make a soft landing (i.e. not crash) inside the Atlas Crater located on the southeastern edge of the moon’s Mare Frigoris, or the “Sea of Cold” just before 1pm EST. The ispace team failed to subsequently establish communication with the lander, and as of writing, remains unable to do so.

“Recognizing the possibility of an anomaly during the mission, the results will be weighed and evaluated against the criteria and incorporated into future missions already in development between now and 2025,” the company said in an announcement shortly following its December 11 launch aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9.

Had it been a success, the UAE’s 22-pound Rashid rover would have deployed for a 14-day lunar daytime survey of the area. According to the European Space Agency—which aided in designing the rover’s wheels, and will provide lander communications for ispace—the rover would have documented its trip via two high resolution cameras alongside both a microscopic and thermal imaging camera. Rashid also boasted a “Langmuir probe” intended to “sample the plasma environment prevailing just above the lunar surface,” per the ESA.

[Related: ispace’s private lander might be the first to touch down on the moon.]

As CNN notes, only the US, China, and the former Soviet Union have ever successfully pulled off a controlled moon landing. America still remains the only nation to place humans on the moon’s surface. In 2019, the Israeli private space company SpaceIL attempted what would have been the first commercial moon soft landing with its Beresheet robotic lander. Beresheet’s engine failed during its descent approximately four miles above the lunar surface.

The hoped-for success of ispace’s Hakuto-R could have presented literal and figurative uncharted territory for both Earthbound nations and their moon. Alongside NASA astronauts’ impending return via the Artemis program ahead of hopes for a permanent lunar base, many space law experts are rushing to establish a new set of regulations to protect the lunar environment, as well as historic spaces like the Apollo 11 landing site.

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Imagine throwing on a coat that actively warms you before walking down a frigid street in winter, or slipping on wearable gloves that simulate sensation and change form while playing a VR video game. Both accessories are closer to reality than ever, and could be manufactured using the same, first-of-its-kind smart material.

Designed by researchers at the University of Waterloo and detailed in a recent paper published in Nano-Micro Small, the new fabric is billed as the world’s first stimuli-responsive material (SRM) capable of reacting to two external influences—in this case, both heat and electricity. In doing so, the novel SMP can not only change color and shape, but can return to its original form after the stimuli is removed. Check out a video of the material in action below:

To achieve their breakthrough, researchers employed a device similar to a traditional loom to manufacture a fabric composed of thin, interwoven recycled plastic polymer and stainless steel threads. Compared to previous, similar materials, the new fabric is activated via lower electrical voltage, thus making it cheaper and more energy-efficient. According to researchers’ paper, the lower voltage could enable the material to eventually be integrated in smaller, more portable devices like biomedical tools and environmental sensors.

Thanks to its convenience and simplicity, temperature sensitivity is one of the most common stimuli to employ while researching shape- and color-changing smart materials. As the team explains in their paper, however, precise stimulation is usually extremely difficult. Making their new SRM reactive to electricity thereby allows for much more localized responses via remote control.

[Related: This rechargeable battery is meant to be eaten.]

To imbue their new fabric with its color-changing ability, additional threads containing thermochromic microcapsules (TMC) were woven alongside the strands of electrically conductive stainless steel. When heated, the TMC’s outer shell becomes translucent to expose its inner coloration. Once cooled, the shell again becomes opaque, thus returning to its original exterior hue.

“The mentioned features make the fabric an outstanding candidate for wearable devices, textiles, sensing, anti-counterfeiting, human-scale orthopedic device fields, and biomimetic applications,” researchers contended in their findings. To show off the latter potential, the team even constructed a cute, dragonfly-shaped form by subjecting their smart fabric to heat and electrical charges.

“Through the ability to sense and react to environmental stimuli such as temperature, this is proof of concept that our new material can interact with the environment to monitor ecosystems without damaging them,” said Milad Kamkar a professor of chemical engineering and paper co-author.

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Last week’s much-hyped test flight of SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever constructed, ended in a fiery explosion minutes after launch, falling far short of the SpaceX team’s optimistic goal of a watery landing near Hawaii. The truncated conclusion was not entirely surprising, however—SpaceX CEO Elon Musk himself estimated a 50 percent chance of failure while speaking at a conference last month. Regardless of how one views the launch postmortem, one thing is for certain—Starship made its presence known to locals last week, and left an absolute mess in its wake.

[Related: Watch SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket explode.]

Hailed as a success by many SpaceX fans and a dud by some of its critics, Friday’s historic Starship launch was nothing if not “truly terrifying” for those living near the Boca Chica, Texas, launchsite. According to a report from The New York Times, “virtually everywhere” in the neighboring town of Port Isabel was covered in a layer of thick dust and sand grain. The force from Starship’s 33 Raptor engines also generated enough power to resemble a “mini earthquake,” residents told the The NY Times, and resulted in at least one store owner’s window shattering. Starship’s takeoff blasted a 25-feet deep crater into the launch site, sending up plumes of dust and dirt, alongside bowling ball-sized debris that smashed into at least one empty parked NASA Spaceflight van nearby. This isn’t the first instance of SpaceX-induced damage, either—in 2021, a SpaceX disintegrating Falcon 9 rocket stage’s pressure vessel landed on a Washington State farm, leaving a four-inch dent in the ground.

As Space.com explained over the weekend, locals have also voiced concerns over future Starship launches’ effects on local flora and fauna. SpaceX’s Starbase facilities are located near wildlife refuge areas—while such rocketry complexes are often built in similar remote areas, safety steps and safe-distance requirements generally minimize harm and disruption. On April 19, one day before Starship’s rescheduled launch, 27 environmental, community, and indigenous organizations signed an open letter expressing concerns over the massive rocket’s effects on both locals and the environment. This includes sacred land for local indigenous peoples.

“We, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, oppose SpaceX operations destroying our sacred lands,” Tribal Chairman, Juan B. Mancias, said in the co-signed statement, adding “The Tribe was never consulted by any of these companies or electeds about rockets… who never responded to our request for a meeting.”

“SpaceX routine operations and testing are already destroying wildlife refuges and sacred lands of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and are threatening Rio Grande Valley communities with explosion risks,” reads a portion of the letter. “SpaceX [cut] off access to the beach from local families, preventing the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe from accessing sacred lands for ceremonies, destroying more than 60 acres of wildlife habitat for threatened and endangered species, and threatening public safety with rocket shrapnel blown into fishing spots and the community.”

Last June, the Federal Aviation Administration concluded SpaceX’s upcoming orbital launch plans would result in “no significant impact” to the nearby region, pending 75 action steps to mitigate environmental concerns. Musk claims his private spacefaring company will have another Starship ready to launch from the same facility in “1 to 2 months.”

Update 4/25/23:  The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed to CNBC on Monday afternoon that it has grounded the company’s Starship Super Heavy launch program pending results of the “mishap investigation” which was “triggered by debris entering adjacent properties.”

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Reports from the Centers for Disease Control show gun violence is the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States. In 2021, a separate study indicated over a third of its surveyed adolescents alleged being able to access a loaded household firearm in less than five minutes. When locked in a secure vault or cabinet, nearly one-in-four claimed they could access the stored gun within the same amount of time. In an effort to tackle this problem, a 26-year-old MIT dropout backed by billionaire Peter Thiel is now offering a biometrics-based solution. But experts question the solution’s efficacy, citing previous data on gun safety and usage.

Last Thursday, Kai Kloepfer, founder and CEO of Biofire, announced the Smart Gun, a 9mm pistol that only fires after recognizing an authorized user’s fingerprints and facial scans. Using “state-of-the-art” onboard software, Kloepfer claims their Smart Gun is the first “fire-by-wire” weapon, meaning that it relies on electronic signals to operate, rather than traditional firearms’ trigger mechanisms. Kloepfer claimed the product only takes “a millisecond” to unlock and said the gun otherwise operates and feels like a standard pistol, in a profile by Bloomberg. He hopes the Smart Gun could potentially save “tens of thousands of lives.”

In a statement provided to PopSci, Biofire founder and CEO Kai Kloepfer stated, “Firearm-related causes now take the lives of more American children than any other cause, and the problem is getting worse.” Kloepfer argued that accidents, suicides, homicides, and mass shootings among children reduced when gun owners have “faster, better tools that prevent the unwanted use of their firearms,” and claims the Smart Gun is “now the most secure option at a time when more solutions are urgently needed.”

[Related: A new kind of Kevlar aims to stop bullets with less material.]

Biometric scanning devices have extensive, documented histories of accuracy and privacy issues, particularly concerning racial bias and safety. Biofire claims that, to maintain the device’s security, the weapon relies upon a solid state, encrypted electronic fire control technology utilized by modern fighter jets and missile systems. Any biometric data stays solely on the firearm itself, the company says, which does not feature onboard Bluetooth, WiFi, or GPS capabilities. A portable, touchscreen-enabled Smart Dock also supplies an interface for the weapon’s owner to add or remove up to five users. The announcement declares the Smart Gun is “impossible to modify” or convert into a conventional handgun. The Smart Gun’s biometric capabilities are powered by a lithium-ion battery that purportedly lasts several months on a single charge, and “can fire continuously for several hours.” 

According to Daniel Webster, Bloomberg Professor of American Health in Violence Prevention and a Distinguished Scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Biofire may have developed an advancement in gun safety, but Webster considers Biofire’s longterm impact on “firearm injury, violence, and suicide” to be “a very open ended question.”

[Related: Two alcohol recovery apps shared user data without their consent.]

“I’d be very cautious about [any] estimated deaths and injuries advertised by the technology,” Webster wrote to PopSci in an email. While Biofire boasts its safety capabilities, “Many of these estimates are based on an unrealistic assumption that these personalized or ‘smart guns’ would magically replace all existing guns that lack the technology… We have more guns than people in the US and I doubt that everyone will rush to melt down their guns and replace them with Biofire guns.”

Webster is also unsure who would purchase the Biofire Smart Gun. Citing a 2016 survey he co-conducted and published in 2019, Webster says there appears to be “noteworthy skepticism” among gun owners at the prospect of “personalized” or smart guns. “While we did not describe the exact technology that Biofire is using… interest or demand for personalized guns was greatest among gun owners who already stored their guns safely and were more safety-minded,” he explains.

[Related: Tesla employees allegedly viewed and joked about drivers’ car camera footage.]

For Webster, the main question boils down to how a Biofire Smart Gun will affect people’s exposure to firearms within various types of risk. Although he concedes the technology could hypothetically reduce the amount of underage and unauthorized use of improperly stored weapons, there’s no way to know how many new guns might enter people’s lives with the release of the Smart Gun. “How many people [would] bring [Smart Guns] into their homes because the guns are viewed as safe who otherwise wouldn’t?” he asks. Webster also worries Biofire’s new product arguably won’t deal with the statistically biggest problem within gun ownership.

While some self-inflicted harm could be reduced by biometric locks, the vast majority of firearm suicides occur via the gun’s original owner—according to Pew Research Center, approximately 54-percent (24,292) of all gun deaths in 2020 resulted from self-inflicted wounds. Additionally, guns within a home roughly doubles the risk for domestic homicides, nearly all of which are committed by the guns’ owners.

“Biofire is strongly committed to expanding access to safe and informed gun ownership and emphasizes the importance of education and training to every current and future gun owner,” the company stated in its official announcement. The company plans to begin shipping their Smart Gun in early 2024 at a starting price of $1,499, “in adherence with all applicable state and local regulations.”

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Heads up, everyone: a 600-pound, decommissioned satellite is on track to fall from orbit on Wednesday. While most of it is expected to burn up upon reentry, “some components are expected to survive,” according to NASA. Don’t worry; there’s probably no need to run for shelter, as the agency estimates that the odds for personal harm are around 1 in 2,467.

Per the space agency’s announcement, the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on April 19 at approximately 9:30 pm EDT, give or take roughly 16 hours. First launched into low-Earth orbit in 2002, RHESSI was tasked with observing solar flares and coronal mass ejections through X-rays and gamma rays emitted by the sun. The data collected by RHESSI helped scientists better understand the events’ physics, as well as how they are created. According to NASA, such flares routinely emit the energy equivalent of billions of megatons of TNT “within minutes.” Here on Earth, these blasts frequently disrupt electrical grids and systems across the globe.

“RHESSI even made discoveries not related to flares, such as improving measurements of the Sun’s shape, and showing that terrestrial gamma-ray flashes—bursts of gamma rays emitted from high in Earth’s atmosphere over lightning storms—are more common than previously thought,” NASA writes in their announcement.

[Related: The FCC is finally pulling the reins on space junk.]

During its 16-year-long tenure above earth, RHESSI recorded over 100,000 X-ray events, but was finally decommissioned in 2018 following increasing communications difficulties. For the past five years, RHESSI has quietly orbited Earth alongside an estimated 30,000 fellow pieces of debris. As Space.com also pointed out on Monday, its impending atmospheric reentry once again highlights the growing issue of space junk above everyone’s heads. While RHESSI’s return is planned and closely monitored, the larger problem has attracted increasing attention, particularly following the undirected reentry of a 23-ton portion of Chinese rocket detritus in 2021. That same year, an unannounced Russian military exercise sent shards of an exploded satellite hurtling towards the International Space Station. The ISS crew was briefly forced to lockdown, although neither they nor the space station was injured.

There are currently a number of suggestions for decluttering the crowded skies, including shooting nets to drag debris back towards Earth, and using tiny, clawed satellite robots to help clean up the mess. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission officially launched its Space Bureau tasked with a variety of responsibilities, including handling orbital trash. In a statement, the new bureau’s director, Julie Kearney, explained, “The first thing we’re really focused on, of course, is modernizing regulations to match our new realities and supporting tech innovation,” while also “simultaneously focusing on space, orbital debris and space safety.”

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Around 3,500 Americans ingest batteries every year, according to the National Capital Poison Center. It’s apparently such a perennial issue that there’s even a specific hotline number to call in the event of such an emergency (1-800-498-8666, just in case). And while it’s unlikely your wristwatch’s power source will ever be safe to eat, that doesn’t mean all batteries will remain inedible—in fact, some are being designed with digestion specifically in mind.

A team of researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology recently unveiled what is being billed as the world’s first fully rechargeable, edible battery. As detailed in a paper published with Advanced Materials, the new device utilizes riboflavin (often found in shiitake mushrooms) as its anode and quercetin (seen in capers) as the cathode. Activated charcoal amplified the electrical conductivity alongside a water-based electrolyte. Nori seaweed—most often seen in sushi—served as the short circuit prevention separator, while beeswax-encased electrodes and food-grade gold foil contacts also contributed to the design.

[Related: MasterChef inspired an edible medical sensor.]

“Edible electronic devices will have major implications for gastrointestinal tract monitoring, therapeutics, as well as rapid food quality monitoring,” reads the paper’s abstract, adding that although recent research proved the feasibility of edible sensors and circuits, “fully edible electronic devices edible power sources are [still] required, of which there have been very few examples.”

According to the team’s findings, their proof-of-concept battery was capable of producing 0.65 volts, which is safely low enough for the human body to handle. The ingestible could provide 48 μA of current for 12 minutes, or alternatively, a few microamps for over an hour. Such a power supply could provide enough energy for small electronics akin to edible pill-shaped modules and other gastrointestinal procedure alternatives. In a statement, researcher coordinator Mario Caironi explained that such a product could help power monitors for both human health conditions and food storage. Additionally, given their safety, more powerful iterations could be utilized within children’s toys, where ingestion risk is higher.

[Related: Watch this metallic material move like the T-1000 from ‘Terminator 2’.]

In the team’s statement, co-author Ivan Ilic also explained that despite the battery’s relatively low power, its digestibility provides a promising example of a battery that doesn’t use any toxic materials. “While our edible batteries won’t power electric cars, they are proof that batteries can be made from safer materials than current Li-ion batteries,” they said, adding that “We believe they will inspire other scientists to build safer batteries for a truly sustainable future.”

Moving forward, the team is already designing future iterations featuring greater capacities at smaller sizes in the hopes of soon powering edible, soft robots for use in medical procedures.

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Montana is one step away from instituting a state-wide wholesale ban of TikTok. On Friday, the state’s House of Representatives voted 54-43 in favor of passing SB419, which would blacklist the immensely popular social media platform from operating within the “territorial jurisdiction of Montana,”  as well as prohibit app stores from offering it to users. The legislation now heads to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, who has 10 days to sign the bill into law, veto it, or allow it to go into effect without issuing an explicit decision.

Although a spokesperson only said that Gov. Gianforte would “carefully consider any bill the Legislature sends to his desk,” previous statements and actions indicate a sign-off is likely. Gianforte banned TikTok on all government devices last year after describing the platform as a “significant risk” for data security.

TikTok is owned by the China-based company, ByteDance, and faces intense scrutiny from critics on both sides of the political aisle over concerns regarding users’ privacy. Many opponents of the app also claim it subjects Americans to undue influence and propaganda from the Chinese government. Speaking with local news outlet KTVH last week, Montana state Sen. Shelley Vance alleged that “we know that beyond a doubt that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is operating as a surveillance arm of the Chinese Communist Party and gathers information about Americans against their will.”

[Related: Why some US lawmakers want to ban TikTok.]

As Gizmodo also notes, however, there is still no definitive proof TikTok or ByteDance is surveilling US users, although company employees do have standard access to user data. Regardless, many privacy advocates and experts warn that the continued focus on TikTok ignores the much larger and more pervasive data privacy issues affecting Americans. The RESTRICT Act, for example, is the most notable federal effort to institute a wholesale blacklisting of TikTok, but critics have voiced numerous worries regarding its expansive language, ill-defined enforcement, and unintended consequences. The bill’s ultimate fate still remains unclear.

If Montana’s SB419 ultimately moves forward, it will go into effect on January 1, 2024. The bill proposes a $10,000 per day fine on any app store, or TikTok itself, if it continues to remain available within the state afterwards. The proposed law does not include any penalties on individual users.

In a statement reported by The New York Times, a TikTok spokesperson said the company “will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.”

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Scammers are increasingly relying on AI voice-cloning technology to mimic a potential victim’s friends and loved ones in an attempt to extort money. In one of the most recent examples, an Arizonan mother recounted her own experience with the terrifying problem to her local news affiliate.

“I pick up the phone and I hear my daughter’s voice, and it says, ‘Mom!’ and she’s sobbing,” Jennifer DeStefano told a Scottsdale area CBS affiliate earlier this week. “I said, ‘What happened?’ And she said, ‘Mom, I messed up,’ and she’s sobbing and crying.”

[Related: The FTC has its eye on AI scammers.]

According to DeStefano, she then heard a man order her “daughter” to hand over the phone, which he then used to demand $1 million in exchange for their freedom. He subsequently lowered his supposed ransom to $50,000, but still threatened bodily harm to DeStefano’s teenager unless they received payment. Although it was reported that her husband confirmed the location and safety of DeStefano’s daughter within five minutes of the violent scam phone call, the fact that con artists can so easily utilize AI technology to mimic virtually anyone’s voice has both security experts and potential victims frightened and unmoored.

As AI advances continue at a breakneck speed, once expensive and time-consuming feats such as AI vocal imitation are both accessible and affordable. Speaking with NPR last month, Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor of computer science at Arizona State University, explained that “before, [voice mimicking tech] required a sophisticated operation. Now small-time crooks can use it.”

[Related: Why the FTC is forming an Office of Technology.]

The story of DeStefano’s ordeal arrived less than a month after the Federal Trade Commission issued its own warning against the proliferating con artist ploy. “Artificial intelligence is no longer a far-fetched idea out of a sci-fi movie. We’re living with it, here and now,” the FTC said in its consumer alert, adding that all a scammer now needs is a “short audio clip” of someone’s voice to recreate their tone and inflections. Often, this source material can be easily obtained via social media content. According to Kambhampati, the clip can be as short as three seconds, and still produce convincing enough results to fool unsuspecting victims.

To guard against the rising form of harassment and extortion, the FTC advises to treat such claims skeptically at first. Often these scams come from unfamiliar phone numbers, so it’s important to try contacting the familiar voice themselves immediately afterward to verify the story—either via their own real phone number, or through a relative or friend. Con artists often demand payment via cryptocurrencies, wire money, or gift cards, so be wary of any threat that includes those options as a remedy.

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Imagine yourself trapped in a building’s rubble following an earthquake. It’s a terrifying prospect, especially if time is of the essence for search and rescue operations. Now imagine  one of your rescuers turns out to be a cyborg cockroach. 

Regardless of how you feel about insects, a team of scientists at Osaka University in Japan apparently believe these resilient little bugs can come in handy in times of disaster. According to the researchers’ paper recently published within the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, society is closer than it’s ever been to deploying cybernetically augmented bugs to aid in real world scenarios such as natural disasters and extreme environment explorations. And everyone owes it all to their legion of semi-controllable cyborg Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

[Related: Spider robots could soon be swarming Japan’s aging sewer systems.]

Insects are increasingly inspiring robotic advancements, but biomimicry still often proves immensely complex. As macabre as it may seem, researchers have found augmenting instead of mechanically replicating six-legged creatures can offer simpler, cost-effective alternatives. In this most recent example, scientists implanted tiny, stimulating electrodes into the cockroaches’ brains and peripheral nervous systems, which were subsequently connected to a machine learning program. The system was then trained to recognize the insects’ locomotive states—if a cockroach paused at an obstacle or hunkered down in a dark, cold environment (as cockroaches are evolutionarily prone to do), the electrodes directed them to continue moving in an alternative route. To prevent excess fatigue, researchers even fine-tuned the stimulating currents to make them as minimal as possible.

Importantly, the setup didn’t reduce the insects to zombie cockroaches, but instead simply influenced their movement decisions.  “We don’t have to control the cyborg like controlling a robot. They can have some extent of autonomy, which is the basis of their agile locomotion,” Keisuke Morishima, a roboticist and one of the study’s authors, said in a statement. “For example, in a rescue scenario, we only need to stimulate the cockroach to turn its direction when it’s walking the wrong way or move when it stops unexpectedly.”

[Related: This bumblebee-inspired bot can bounce back after injuring a wing.]

While the scientists currently can’t yet control their cockroaches’ exact directions this way, their paper concludes the setup “successfully increased [their] average search rate and traveled distance up to 68 and 70 percent, respectively, while the stop time was reduced by 78 percent.” Going forward, they hope to improve these accuracy rates, as well as develop means to intentionally direct their enhanced cockroaches. Once that’s achieved, then you can start worrying about the zombie cyborg cockroach invasion.

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Sony’s semiconductor branch announced plans to move forward with a “strategic investment” in Raspberry Pi. This is not just out of passion for DIY-centric products, but instead with goals to increase security capabilities via AI integration. Sony Semiconductor Solutions hopes to soon offer its AITRIOS “edge AI sensing technology built around image sensors” for Raspberry Pi 4 devices, according to an official statement on Wednesday.

“Our pre-existing relationship encompasses contract manufacturing, and the provision of image sensors and other semiconductor products,” said Raspberry Pi Ltd. CEO Eben Upton in the statement. “This transaction will allow us to expand our partnership, bringing Sony Semiconductor Solutions’ line of AI products to the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, and helping our users to build exciting new machine-learning applications at the edge.”

[Related: Getting started with Raspberry Pi.]

Unlike mostly cloud-based AI systems, Sony’s edge AI largely resides on-chip. In doing so, machine learning and other AI capabilities use less energy, operate at reduced latencies, and by only providing metadata to cloud services, are far more secure and private than other options according to Sony. Sony’s dedicated AITRIOS site offers example uses such as inventory monitoring and retention, customer counting, as well as license plate and facial recognition.

Launched in 2012, Raspberry Pi was first marketed as an easy, cheap and accessible education tool for students and those looking to get into computer programming. Since then, the line of computer products has expanded—now boasting a massive DIY community for projects ranging from SIM-free “smart” phones to cow-shaped web servers.

Raspberry Pi products have long included camera functionality. Most recently, Sony also partnered with the company on a line of 12-megapixel modules boasting autofocus capabilities. Likewise, Internet of Things (IoT) projects like Pi-based biometric scanners are nothing new. That said, Sony’s latest investment comes amid the rapid rise of AI integration in consumer products, which has lead to concerns regarding privacy, surveillance, and misinformation.

Prem Trivedi, Policy Director at New America’s Open Technology Institute, voiced his concerns to PopSci via email regarding increasingly accessible surveillance products such as AITRIOS-enabled devices. “Sony’s limited description of its ‘privacy conscious’ integration of AI and sensing technology highlights the need for companies to better explain to consumers how their privacy safeguards are designed and implemented,” he stated. “Furthermore, federal legislation is necessary to strengthen privacy protections — particularly for historically marginalized communities who are disproportionately impacted by surveillance.”

Although restricting cloud information to only metadata is a solid step in terms of privacy, it will be interesting to see how enthusiasts utilize Sony AITRIOS capabilities in their own Pi projects. The new partnership could add fuel to rumors that a Raspberry Pi 5 is finally on the horizon, as the programming and hacking enthusiast hub Hackster.io also notes. Current reports estimate a release could come as soon as the end of the year.

Update 4/14/23: A quote from New America’s Open Technology Institute has been added to this story.

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Robots can have trouble grasping the concept of “grasping.” It’s so bad that even a toddler’s motor skills are usually far more developed than some of the most advanced bots. For example, as instinctually easy as it is for a human to pick up an egg, robots usually struggle to compute the intricacies of force and manipulation while also not expending too much energy. To solve this issue, researchers at the University of Cambridge recently found a novel solution by streamlining what a robot hand could do.

As detailed in a paper published with Advanced Intelligent Systems, the team has developed a low-cost robotic hand capable of passively grasping and holding various objects via sensors embedded in its “skin.” What’s more, no finger articulation is needed to accomplish its tasks, thus drastically simplifying its design, programming, and energy needs.

“We want to simplify the hand as much as possible,” Fumiya Iida, a professor in the university’s Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory and one of the paper’s co-authors, said in a statement. “We can get lots of good information and a high degree of control without any actuators, so that when we do add them, we’ll get more complex behavior in a more efficient package.”

To pull it off, researchers first implanted tactile sensors within a soft, 3D-printed, anthropomorphic hand that only moved via its wrist. The team then performed over 1,200 tests to study its grasping and holding abilities. Many of these tests focused on picking up small, 3D-printed plastic balls by mimicking pre-determined movements demonstrated by humans. After the plastic balls, the hand graduated to attempting to pick up bubble wrap, a computer mouse, and even a peach. According to their results, the hand successfully managed 11 of the 14 additional test objects.

[Related: Human brains have to work overtime to beat robots at Ping-Pong.]

According to first author Kieran Gilday, the team’s robot appendage learns over time that certain combinations of wrist motion and sensor data leads to success or failure, and adjusts as needed. “The hand is very simple, but it can pick up a lot of objects with the same strategy,” they said in the statement.

While by no means perfect, the simplified robotic hand could prove useful in a variety of environments and industries, such as manufacturing. Moving forward, researchers hope to potentially expand the robot hand’s capabilities through combining it with computer vision and teaching it “to exploit its environment” to utilize a wider array of objects.

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Boasting 6,637 feet between its two towers, Turkey’s 1915 Çanakkale Bridge officially nabbed the title as world’s longest suspension bridge when it opened to the public on March 18, 2022. Barely a year after earning the crown, however, Italy may be stepping up to construct an even longer engineering feat—one that’s over 2,000 years in the making, no less. However, critics argue that its odds for completion may be as figuratively long as its literal span.

As Wired explained on Tuesday, following governmental approval for restarting project planning and construction,the country is closer than it’s ever been to finally tackling a bridge that would cross the Strait of Messina to connect the island of Sicily with the mainland. 

According to current plans, the bridge would measure 3,300 meters across upon completion—over 60 percent lengthier than the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge. Not only that, but the pylon towers’ height of 380 meters would also make it the tallest bridge in the world.

“Sicily is considered a territory apart from the rest of Italy and the bridge—a physical link—would unify it with the continent,” Federico Basile, mayor of Messina, told the Financial Times in January.

But there are a few catches. First and foremost, according to Wired’s recap, is that this is far from the first time such a bridge has been proposed. In fact, the first considerations for how to tackle such a structure goes back as far as 1866. Politicians have repeatedly promised to make the suspension bridge a reality, but have so far run into numerous engineering, economic, social, and environmental issues surrounding the project. Its location in an earthquake zone doesn’t help things, either.

[Related: The 1915 Çanakkale Bridge sets engineering records.]

The eco problems could be some of the bridge’s biggest impediments, too. Speaking with Wired, the VP of the Italian branch for the World Wildlife Fund Dante Caserta argues that, “we’re still at a stage where there is no evidence that this is feasible economically, technically, and environmentally.” According to Caserta, the Messina Strait itself encompasses two environmentally protected areas that are vital to seabirds’ and sea mammals’ migratory movements. According to the sustainability organization, Nostra, the Strait of Messina “constitutes a unique source of biodiversity” in the region.

And then there’s the simple economics. Ferries are currently the main form of transport between Sicily and the Italian mainland, but their ports aren’t near where the bridge would be built, i.e. the two closest points on the Strait. That means entirely new roadways would need to be added, which reportedly could end up being half the project’s total cost of roughly $11 billion, according to Reuters.

“There would not be enough traffic to pay for the project through tolls, because over 75 percent of the people who cross the strait do so without a car,” added Caserta. “[S]o doing all this just to shave off 15 minutes doesn’t make sense, especially because it connects two areas with severe infrastructure problems.”

Still, many Italian politicians and organizations remain adamant about the bridge’s final realization. Although some hope construction could begin in the summer of 2024, those estimates are extremely tentative. As close as a bridge linking Sicily with Italy may be, it certainly might be quite a ways off.

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It took years of design and engineering toil to successfully get the largest-ever telescope mirror into space. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope’s trademark, 6.5-meter-in-diameter, gold-coated array orbits the sun 1.5 million kilometers above Earth, routinely providing stunning, previously inaccessible views of the universe. As incredible as its results are, however, a new, promising “mirror membrane” breakthrough is already in the works that could one day show scientists space in a new way.

According to a recent announcement from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, researcher Sebastian Rabien has reportedly designed a lighter, thinner, more cost-efficient reflective material that is hypothetically capable of producing telescope mirrors 15-20 meters wide. Detailed in a paper published with the journal Applied Optics, Rabien first evaporated a currently unspecified liquid within a vacuum chamber, which slowly deposits on interior surfaces before combining to form a polymer that eventually forms the mirror’s base.

[Related: Ice giant Uranus shows off its many rings in new JWST image.]

Telescope mirrors require a parabola shape to concentrate light towards a single spot. To achieve this, Rabien and his team positioned a rotating container containing additional liquid inside the vacuum chamber. That newly introduced liquid forms a “perfect parabolic shape,” which the polymer then grows upon to form the mirror’s base. As Space.com notes, “a reflective metal layer is applied to the top via evaporation and the liquid is washed away.”

“Utilizing this basic physics phenomenon, we deposited a polymer onto this perfect optical surface, which formed a parabolic thin membrane that can be used as the primary mirror of a telescope once coated with a reflecting surface such as aluminum,” explained Rabien in the announcement. 

At this stage, although the material in the study could be easily folded or rolled up to pack away for delivery to space, that optimal parabolic shape would be “nearly impossible” to reform. To solve this issue, researchers developed a new thermal method utilizing localized, light-derived temperature changes to gain an adaptive shape control which could bring the membrane back into its necessary optical shape.

[Related: NASA reveals James Webb Space Telescope first finds.]

In addition to its telescopic applications, the new mirror membranes could be used for adaptive optic systems. These systems rely upon deformable mirrors to compensate for incoming light distortion. Given the new material’s extreme malleability, the mirrors could be shaped via electrostatic actuators in a way that is less expensive than existing methods.

Looking ahead, Rabien’s team hopes to conduct further experiments to improve the membrane’s malleability, as well as improve how much initial distortion it can handle. There are also plans for even larger final products—a goal that could be integral to getting the new advancement into space.

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Dealing with humanoid robots in their current iterations often seems a bit uncanny—the technology feels vaguely like us, but comes up short in a way that boggles the mind. While this may not be as major a problem in manufacturing roles, in industries like elderly care, personality—even if robotic—could go a long way. But it’s more than just how they look—movement is key, too. As robots increasingly become integrated facets of everyday modern life, both their makers and outside researchers want to pinpoint why people respond to them the way they do, and how they can improve.

As researchers recently showed, one way to analyze these interactions is through a few rounds of table tennis. As detailed in a new paper published in the journal eNeuro a team at the University of Florida recorded human brain activity during dozens of hours of matches between both fellow human and robot opponents. They then compared the games to see if those rivals resulted in different neurological readings.

[Related: Meet Garmi, a robot nurse and companion for Germany’s elderly population.]

In a statement, Daniel Ferris, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida and advisor on the project run by Amanda Studnicki, a graduate student at UF, said, “Robots are getting more ubiquitous… Humans interacting with robots is going to be different than when they interact with other humans. Our long term goal is to try to understand how the brain reacts to these differences.”

To do this, Studnicki and Ferris assembled a cap lined with over 100 electrodes attached to a backpack-sized device, then asked human trial participants to don the futuristic hat while playing Ping-Pong. As it turns out, the human brain shows clear signs of working harder if paired against a robot opponent.

While serving against a fellow human, players’ neurons cooperated in unison to interpret subtle body cues, timing, and speed. When squared up against a ball-serving machine, however, the neurons weren’t as aligned, a situation known within neuroscience as “desynchronization.”

[Related: Do we trust robots enough to put them in charge?]

“In a lot of cases, that desynchronization is an indication that the brain is doing a lot of calculations as opposed to sitting and idling,” explained Ferris in a statement on Monday.

The team theorizes that because human brains work so much differently against a robotic opponent, when it comes to sports training nothing beats a fellow member of the species. That said, Studnicki isn’t so sure that will always be the case. “I still see a lot of value in practicing with a machine,” they said in Monday’s announcement. “But I think machines are going to evolve in the next 10 or 20 years, and we could see more naturalistic behaviors for players to practice against.”

Those naturalistic behaviors could come about through continued robotic improvements alongside similar brain activity monitoring. The closer to synchronization, the more seamless and less uncanny people’s experiences with robots could become. The ball, after all, is firmly in robot makers’ court.

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Last summer, The Markup published a study revealing that roughly one-third of the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America utilized the Meta Pixel. In doing so, a small bit of coding provided the namesake social media giant with patients’ “medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments” for advertising purposes. 

The most recent deep dive into third-party data tracking on medical websites, however, is even more widespread. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, you could be hard-pressed to find a hospital website that doesn’t include some form of data tracking for its visitors.

As detailed in a new study published in Health Affairs, a survey of 3,747 non-federal, acute care hospitals with emergency departments taken from a 2019 American Hospital Association survey showed that nearly 99 percent used at least one type of website tracking code that offered data to third-parties. Around 94 percent of those same facilities included at least one third-party cookie. Outside companies receiving the most data included Google-owners at Alphabet (98.5 percent), Meta (55.6 percent), and Adobe Systems (31.4 percent). Other third-parties regularly included AT&T, Verizon, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle.

[Related: Two alcohol recovery apps shared user data without their consent.]

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prohibits data tracking “unless certain conditions are met,” according to The HIPAA Journal. That said, the Journal explains most third-parties receiving the data aren’t HIPAA-regulated, and thereby the transferred data’s uses and disclosures are “largely unregulated.”

“The transferred information could be used for a variety of purposes, such as serving targeted advertisements related to medical conditions, health insurance, or medications,” explains The HIPAA Journal before cautioning, “What actually happens to the transferred data is unclear.”

In an emailed statement provided to PopSci, Marcus Schabacker, President and CEO of the independent healthcare monitoring nonprofit ECRI says they are “deeply disturbed” by the study’s results. “Besides the severe violation of privacy, ECRI is concerned this data will allow nefarious, bad actors to target vulnerable people living with severe health conditions with advertisements for non-evidence-based snake oil ‘treatments’ that cost money and do nothing—or worse, cause injury or death,” Schabacker adds.

[Related: How data brokers threaten your privacy.]

The ECRI urged hospitals to “immediately” stop data tracking by removing third party coding and “along with advertisers, take responsibility or be held liable for any harm that can be traced back to a data sharing arrangement.” Additionally, Schabacker argued that the revelations once again underscored the need to update health tech and information regulations, including HIPAA, which they allege does not address many “questionable practices” that have arisen since near ubiquitous pixel-tracking strategies.

As The HIPAA Journal also notes, litigation is all-but-assured. In 2021, three Boston-area hospitals agreed to pay over $18 million in settlement against allegations they shared users’ data to third parties without patients’ consent, and that “many more lawsuits against healthcare providers are pending.”

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Climate change is giving us stronger, more destructive ocean waves, which in turn exacerbate already serious coastal erosion issues. With this in mind, researchers are designing a new underwater engineering project that could help literally swing the pendulum back in humanity’s favor. As first highlighted by New Scientist on Sunday, a team at the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Marine Science are working on MetaReef—a system of upside-down, submersible pendulum prototypes capable of absorbing underwater energy to mitigate wave momentum.

Although still in its laboratory design phases, MetaReef is already showing promising results. To test early versions of their idea, the team tethered together 11, half-meter-long plastic cylinders to the bottom of a narrow, 50-meter long tank. Each cylinder is made from commercial PVC pipes, filled with air to make them less dense than water, and subsequently waterproofed with polyurethane foam. A steel cable then anchors each cylinder with just enough tension to keep them in place underwater, while also able to swing back and forth depending on currents’ strength and direction.

[Related: Maritime students gear up to fight high-seas cyberattacks.]

It’s not as simple as just anchoring a series of tubes under the waves, however. Researchers needed to hone both the cylinders’ size and distance between one another to ensure optimal results that wouldn’t accidentally create a watery echo chamber to exacerbate current strengths. Once the parameters were fine tuned, a piston at one end of the tank generated waves that interacted with the cylinders. By absorbing the tidal energy, the team’s MetaReef managed to reduce wave amplitudes by as much as 80 percent.

Of course, ocean current interactions are much more complicated than pistons splashing water in a relatively small tank. Speaking with New Scientist, Mike Meylan,  a professor of information and physical sciences, warned that especially strong storms—themselves increasingly frequent—could easily damage pendulum systems deployed in the real world. That said, researchers are confident that MetaReef’s customizability alongside further experimentation could yield a solid new tool in protecting both threatened coastlines, and valuable structures such as offshore platforms. This malleability is contrasted with artificial coastal reefs, which while effective, are much more static and limited in placement than MetaReef, or similar designs.

The team is presenting their findings this week at the annual International Workshop on Water Waves and Floating Bodies held in Giardini Naxos, Italy. Although societal shifts in energy consumption remain the top priority to stemming the worst climate catastrophes, tools like MetaReef could still offer helpful, customizable aids that deal with damage already done to our oceanic ecosystems.

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AI text-to-image generators have come a long, arguably troubling way in a very short period of time, but there’s one piece of human anatomy they still can’t quite grasp: hands. Speaking with BuzzFeed earlier this year, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, an artist and associate professor of AI and the arts at the University of Florida, explained that until now, AI programs largely weren’t sure of what a “hand” exactly was. “Hands, in images, are quite nuanced,” she said at the time. “They’re usually holding on to something. Or sometimes, they’re holding on to another person.” While there have been some advances in the past few months, there’s still sizable room for improvement. 

Although that might sound odd at first, a quick look at our appendages’ complexities can quickly reveal why this is the case. Unless one can nail numerous points of articulation, varieties of poses, skin wrinkles, veins, and countless other precise details, renderings of hands can rapidly devolve into an uncanny valley of weirdness and inaccuracy. What’s more, AI programs simply don’t have as many large, high-quality images of hands to learn from as they do faces and full bodies. But as AI still contends with this—often to extremely puzzling, ludicrous, and outright upsetting results—programmers at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, China, are working on a surprisingly straightforward solution: train an AI to specifically study and improve hand generation.

[Related: A simple guide to the expansive world of artificial intelligence.]

In a recently published research paper, the team details how they eschewed the more common diffusion image production technology in favor of what are known as neural radiance fields, or NeRFs. As New Scientist notes, this 3D modeling is reliant on neural networks, and has previously been utilized by both Google Research and Waymo to create seamless, large-scale cityscape models.

“By introducing the hand mapping and ray composition strategy into [NeRF,] we make it possible to naturally handle interaction contacts and complement the geometry and texture in rarely-observed areas for both hands,” reads a portion of the paper’s abstract, adding that the team’s “HandNeRF” program is compatible with both single and two interacting hands. In this updated process, multi-view images of a hand or hands are initially used by an “off-the-shelf skeleton estimator” to parameterize hand poses from the inside. Researchers then employ deformation fields via the HandNeRF program, which generates image results of our upper appendages that are more lifelike in shape and surface. 

Although NeRF imaging is difficult to train and can’t generate whole text-to-image results by itself, New Scientist also explains that potentially combining it with diffusion tech could provide a novel path forward for AI generations. Until then, however, most programmers will have to figure out ways to work around AI’s poor grasp—so to speak—of the human hand.

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A new investigation from Reuters alleges Tesla employees routinely viewed and shared “highly invasive” video and images taken from the onboard cameras of owners’ vehicles—even from a Tesla owned by CEO Elon Musk.

While Tesla claims consumers’ data remains anonymous, former company workers speaking to Reuters described a far different approach to drivers’ privacy—one filled with rampant policy violations, customer ridicule, and memes, they claim.

Tesla’s cars feature a number of external cameras that inform vehicles’ “Full Self-Driving” Autopilot system—a program that has received its own fair share of regulatory scrutiny regarding safety issues. The AI underlying this technology, however, requires copious amounts of visual training, often through the direction of human reviewers such as Tesla’s employees, according to the new report. Workers collaborate with company engineers to often manually identify and label objects such as pedestrians, emergency vehicles, and roads’ lane lines, alongside a host of other subjects encountered in everyday driving scenarios, as detailed in the Reuters findings. This, however, requires access to vehicle cameras.

[Related: Tesla is under federal investigation over autopilot claims.]

Tesla owners are led to believe camera feeds were handled by employees sensitively: The company’s Customer Privacy Notice states owners’ “recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle,” while Tesla’s website states in no uncertain terms, “Your Data Belongs to You.”

While multiple former employees confirmed to Reuters the files were by-and-large used for AI training, that allegedly didn’t stop frequent internal sharing of images and video on the company’s internal messaging system, Mattermost. According to the report, staffers regularly exchanged images they encountered while labeling footage, often Photoshopping them for jokes and turning them into self-referential emojis and memes.

While one former worker claimed they never came across particularly salacious footage, such as nudity, they still saw “some scandalous stuff sometimes… just definitely a lot of stuff that, like, I wouldn’t want anybody to see about my life.” The same former employee went on to describe encountering “just private scenes of life,” including intimate moments, laundry contents, and even car owners’ children. Sometimes this also included “disturbing content,” the employee continued, such as someone allegedly being dragged to a car against their will.

Although two ex-employees said they weren’t troubled by the image sharing, others were so perturbed that they were wary of driving Tesla’s own company cars, knowing how much data could be collected within them, regardless of who owned the vehicles. According to Reuters, around 2020, multiple employees came across and subsequently shared a video depicting a submersible vehicle featured in the 1977 James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me. Its owner? Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

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The fate of the RESTRICT Act remains unclear. Also known as the “TikTok ban,” the bill has sizable bipartisan political—and even public—support, but critics say the bill in its current form focuses on the wrong issues. If it becomes law, it could change the way the government polices your internet activity, whether or not you use the popular video sharing app. 

Proponents of the RESTRICT Act, which stands for “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology,” have called China’s social media app dangerous and invasive. But Salon, among others, has noted that “TikTok” does not appear once throughout the RESTRICT Act’s 55-page proposal. Salon even refers to it as “Patriot Act 2.0” in regards to its minefield of privacy violations.

[Related: Why some US lawmakers want to ban TikTok.]

Critics continue to note that the passage of the bill into law could grant an expansive, ill-defined set of new powers to unelected committee officials. Regardless of what happens with TikTok itself, the new oversight ensures any number of other apps and internet sites could be subjected to blacklisting and censorship at the government’s discretion. What’s more, everyday citizens may face legal prosecution for attempting to circumvent these digital blockades—such as downloading banned apps via VPN or while in another country—including 25 years of prison time.

In its latest detailed rundown published on Tuesday, the digital privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation called the potential law a “dangerous substitute” for comprehensive data privacy legislation that could actually benefit internet users, such as bills passed for states like California, Colorado, Iowa, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah. Meanwhile, the digital rights nonprofit Fight for the Future’s ongoing #DontBanTikTok campaign describes the RESTRICT Act as “oppressive” while still failing to address “valid privacy and security concerns.” The ACLU also maintains the ban “would violate [Americans’] constitutional right to free speech.”

As EFF noted earlier this week, the current proposed legislation would authorize the executive branch to block “transactions [and] holdings” of “foreign adversaries” involving information and communication technology if deemed “undue or unacceptable risk[s]” to national security. These decisions would often be at the sole discretion of unelected government officials, and because of the legislation’s broad phrasing, they could make it difficult for the public to learn exactly why a company or app is facing restrictions.

In its lengthy, scathing rebuke, Salon offered the following bill section for consideration:

“If a civil action challenging an action or finding under this Act is brought, and the court determines that protected information in the administrative record, including classified or other information subject to privilege or protections under any provision of law, is necessary to resolve the action, that information shall be submitted ex parte and in camera to the court and the court shall maintain that information under seal.”

[RELATED: Twitter’s ‘Blue Check’ drama is a verified mess.]

Distilled down, this section could imply that the evidence about an accused violator—say, an average US citizen who unwittingly accessed a banned platform—could be used against them without their knowledge.

If RESTRICT Act were to be passed as law, the “ban” could force changes in how the internet fundamentally works within the US, “including potential requirements on service platforms to police and censor the traffic of users, or even a national firewall to prevent users from downloading TikTok from sources across our borders,” argues the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Because of the bill’s language, future bans could go into effect for any number of other, foreign-based apps and websites. As Salon also argues, the bill allows for a distressing lack of accountability and transparency regarding the committee responsible for deciding which apps to ban, adding that “the lack of judicial review and reliance on Patriot Act-like surveillance powers could open the door to unjustified targeting of individuals or groups.”

Instead of the RESTRICT Act, privacy advocates urge politicians to pass comprehensive data privacy reforms that pertain to all companies, both domestic and foreign. The EFF argues, “Congress… should focus on comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation that will have a real impact, and protect our data no matter what platform it’s on—TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else that profits from our private information.”

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The copy of the original white paper explaining Bitcoin’s technological, philosophical, and economic underpinnings has been available online since its publication in 2008—but for some reason, a file version is potentially also buried in every Apple product running MacOS. First spotted by the blogger Andy Baio, a simple copy-paste of the following commands entered into Terminal will reveal the cryptocurrency explainer tucked away within macOS systems folders: 

open /System/Library/Image\

Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

PopSci can also confirm the PDF’s existence on Ventura 13.2.1 after testing out the prompt. As Ars Technica noted on Thursday, the PDF is included within a system app called VirtualScanner.app, which is “almost certainly” related to the “import from iPhone” Continuity Camera feature first rolled out with Mojave.

[Related: A beginner’s guide to how cryptocurrencies work.]

Penned under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin white paper’s author (or authors) have never been confirmed, but their impact on global economics has been felt ever since. Designed to be a decentralized alternative form of digital currency, Bitcoin relies on transactions recorded within a globally shared blockchain ledger, and is “mined” over time via users’ computers. As PopSci explained in 2016:

“Every 10 minutes, new Bitcoin enter the system. ‘Miners’ donate spare or dedicated processing power to help validate transactions around the globe. Bitcoin come as rewards for that work. In the early days, you could just do this with a PC. Now the process is complex and requires powerful hardware.”

While many Bitcoin and general cryptocurrency enthusiasts abound, critics often point to the monetary system’s extreme volatility. The value of single Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $68,789 on November 10, 2021. Barely a month later, its value sank to $46,164. As of writing, one Bitcoin is worth roughly $28,000.

According to his post on Wednesday, Baio accidentally came across the PDF Easter egg while attempting to fix their printer. After double checking with over a dozen Mac-using friends, Baio confirmed the file could be located in every version of macOS they had, stretching all the way back to 2018’s Mojave (10.14.0) update. Any Mac featuring High Sierra or earlier, however, appears to be sans “Satoshi.”

As to why Nakamoto’s white paper is buried within macOS, it’s anyone’s guess. “ Is there a secret Bitcoin maxi working at Apple?” asks Baio, before surmising, “Maybe it was just a convenient, lightweight multipage PDF for testing purposes, never meant to be seen by end users.”

In any case, Baio reveals a “little bird” informed him someone internally flagged the issue almost a year ago, which was subsequently assigned to the same engineer who embedded the whitepaper PDF. Clearly, nothing has happened to it since then, although that could very well change if enough people make a fuss about it.

PopSci has reached out to Apple for comment, and will update accordingly.

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Relationships are all about trust, and a new study shows AI-aided conversations could help build rapport between two people—but only as long as no one suspects the other is using AI.

According to a Cornell University research team’s investigation published this week with Scientific Reports, using AI-assisted responses (i.e. “smart replies”) can change conversational tone and social relationships, as well as increase communication speeds. And although more positive emotional language is often used in these instances, people who merely suspect responses to be influenced by AI are often more distrusting of their conversation partners, regardless of whether or not they are actually being used.

[Related: OpenAI’s newest ChatGPT update can still spread conspiracy theories.]

In the team’s study, researchers gathered 219 participant pairs and asked them to work with a program modeled after Google Allo (French for “hello”), the first, now-defunct smart-reply platform. The pairs were then asked to talk about policy issues under three conditions: both sides could use smart replies, only one side could use them, and neither could employ them. As a result, the team saw smart reply usage (roughly one in seven messages) boosted conversations’ efficiency, positive-aligned language, as well as positive evaluations from participants. That said, those who suspected partners used smart replies were often judged more negatively.

In the meantime, the study indicated you could also be sacrificing your own personal touch for the sake of AI-aided speed and convenience. Another experiment involving 299 randomly paired conversationalists asked participants to speak together under one of four scenarios: default Google smart replies, “positive” smart replies, “negative” replies, and no smart replies at all. As might be expected, positive smart replies begat more positive overall tones than conversations with the negative smart replies, or zero smart replies.

[Related: Microsoft lays off entire AI ethics team while going all out on ChatGPT.]

“While AI might be able to help you write, it’s altering your language in ways you might not expect, especially by making you sound more positive,” Jess Hohenstein, a postdoctoral researcher and lead author, said in a statement. “This suggests that by using text-generating AI, you’re sacrificing some of your own personal voice.”

Malte Jung, one of the study’s co-authors and an associate professor of information science, added that this implies the companies controlling AI-assist tech algorithms could easily influence many users’ “interactions, language, and perceptions of each other.”

This could become especially concerning as large language model programs like Microsoft’s ChatGPT-boosted Bing search engine and Google Bard continue their rapid integration into a suite of the companies’ respective products, much to critics’ worries.

“Technology companies tend to emphasize the utility of AI tools to accomplish tasks faster and better, but they ignore the social dimension,” said Jung. “We do not live and work in isolation, and the systems we use impact our interactions with others.”

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Update 04/06/2023: Comments from Monument’s CEO have been added to this article.

According to recent reports, two online alcohol recovery startups shared users’ detailed private health information and personal data to third-party advertisers without their consent. They were able to do so via popular tracking systems such as the Meta Pixel. Both Tempest and its parent company, Monument, confirmed the extensive privacy violations to TechCrunch on Tuesday. They now claim to no longer employ the frequently criticized consumer profiling products developed by companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.

In a disclosure letter mailed to its consumers last week, Monument states “we value and respect the privacy of our members’ information,” but admitted “some information” may have been shared to third parties without the “appropriate authorization, consent, or agreements required by law.” The potentially illegal violations stem as far back as 2020 for Monument members, and 2017 for those using Tempest.

Within those leaks, as many as 100,000 accounts’ names, birthdates, email addresses, telephone numbers, home addresses, membership IDs, insurance IDs, and IP addresses. Additionally, users’ photographs, service plans, survey responses, appointment-related info, and “associated health information” may also have been shared to third-parties. Monument and Tempest assured customers, however, that their Social Security numbers and banking information had not been improperly handled.

[Related: How data brokers threaten your privacy.]

Major data companies’ largely free “pixel” tools generally work by embedding a small bit of code into websites. The program then subsequently supplies immensely personal and detailed information to both third-party businesses, as well as the tracking tech’s makers to help compile extensive consumer profiles for advertising purposes. One study estimates that approximately one-third of the 80,000 most popular websites online utilize Meta Pixel (disclosure: PopSci included), for example. While both Tempest and Monument pledge to have removed tracking code from their sites, TechCrunch also notes the codes’ makers are not legally required to delete previously collected data.

“Monument and Tempest should be ashamed of sharing this extremely personal information of people, especially considering the nature and vulnerability of their clients,” Caitlin Seeley George, campaigns managing director of the digital privacy advocacy group, Fight for the Future, wrote PopSci via email. For George, the revelations are simply the latest examples of companies disregarding privacy for profit, but argues lawmakers “should similarly feel ashamed” that the public lacks legal defense or protection from these abuses. “It seems like every week we hear another case of companies sharing our data and prioritizing profits over privacy. This won’t end until lawmakers pass privacy laws,” she said.

“Protecting our patients’ privacy is a top priority,” Monument CEO Mike Russell told PopSci over email. “We have put robust safeguards in place and will continue to adopt appropriate measures to keep data safe. In addition, we have ended our relationship with third-party advertisers that will not agree to comply with our contractual requirements and applicable law.”

Tracking tools are increasingly the subject of scrutiny and criticism as more and more reports detail privacy concerns—last year, an investigation from The Markup and The Verge revealed that some of the country’s most popular tax prep software providers utilize Meta Pixel. The same tracking code is also at the center of a lawsuit in California concerning potential HIPAA violations stemming from hospitals sharing patients’ medical data.

Correction 04/06/2023: A previous version of this article’s headline stated Tempest and Monument “sold” user data. A spokesperson for the companies stated they “shared” data with third-party companies.

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The world’s first fleet of autonomous commuter buses is slated to go into service next month in Scotland. This follows at least one successful trial run in January alongside financial backing boosts from the UK government. On May 15, Stagecoach’s self-driving vehicles will begin operations along a 14-mile route that includes Edinburgh’s historic Forth Road suspension bridge. According to the BBC, a total of five single-decker vehicles will be in service, carrying roughly 10,000 passengers per week.

Stagecoach—akin to Greyhound in the US—announced their autonomous buses will travel along pre-selected roads and bus lanes at a top speed of 50mph, while handling traffic lights and roundabouts. Although each bus requires no human drivers, two staff members will still be aboard at all times—one to sit in the driver’s seat to monitor piloting systems, while another to assist passengers, take tickets, and help as needed.

[Related: An autonomous EV with no steering wheel is hitting the road in California.]

The project comes as part of the UK government’s Project CAVForth endeavor. “CAV” stands for “connected autonomous vehicles.” Launched in 2019, CAVForth’s rollout of the autonomous bus fleet next month will mark a culmination of over four years’ of research, planning, and development. Similar CAV projects are planned in Sunderland and Belfast.

“This is an exciting milestone for this innovative and ambitious project, and I very much look forward to seeing Project CAVForth take to the roads next month,” Scotland’s Minister for Transport, Kevin Stewart, said in a statement, adding that the route “will really help Scotland establish its credentials on the world stage.”

Fully autonomous vehicles have long been a goal for major automakers and companies, with plenty of startups vying for a stake in the industry. Investors aren’t only looking to roadways for autonomous options—plans are also underway to develop similar systems for the freight train industry. Still, the technology frequently makes headlines for less-than-desirable reasons, and often faces both public and regulatory pushback.

Some of the most notable recent markers stem from issues pertaining to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta autopilot mode, which company CEO Elon Musk has touted as being close to driving owners “to your work, your friend’s house, to the grocery store without you touching the wheel” as recently as last fall. In February, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a recall of FSD Beta technology that affected over 360,000 vehicles.

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A team of UCLA researchers has designed a new way to integrate traditionally inflexible semiconductor and sensory components into their devices’ structural materials. Enter a new dimension to origami-based robotics.

While origami has long inspired robotic design, it usually comes with some caveats—notably the placement and size of bits like computer chips. As “foldable” as a device may be, these rigid parts generally meant semiconductors needed installation after a robot’s shape was finalized. However, the multidisciplinary team managed to integrate flexible, conductive materials into extremely thin sheets of polyester film in order to create entirely new networks of transistors. According to UCLA’s description, the sheets could then be programmed with computer functions to emulate semiconductors’ usual roles within a robot. They recently detailed these findings in a paper published in Nature Communications.

[Related: A tiny, foldable solar panel is going to outer space.]

To test out their advancements, researchers built three versions of their Origami MechanoBots, or OrigaMechs: a bug bot that reverses course whenever its antennae detects an impediment, a two-wheeled robot capable of traveling along prearranged geometric pathways, and even a Venus flytrap-inspired mechanism that closes its jaws when detecting pressure from its “prey.”

According to the team’s paper, the foldable semiconductor-like materials’ utility could go above and beyond their lightweight flexibility. In the future, similar robots could also operate within extreme environments unsuitable for traditional semiconductors, including situations involving strong magnetic or radiative fields, high electrostatic discharges, as well as particularly intense radio frequencies.

“These types of dangerous or unpredictable scenarios, such as during a natural or manmade disaster, could be where origami robots proved to be especially useful,” said Ankur Mehta, the study’s principal investigator and director of UCLA’s Laboratory for Embedded Machines and Ubiquitous Robots.

[Related: This fabric doubles as 1,200 solar panels.]

Because of their thin design, the new robotic material could also prove useful in future missions to space, where cargo capacity and size restraints are incredibly pivotal factors to consider. There’s even talk of using them within future toys and educational games. According to Mehta, the sky is truly the limit for the polyester OrigaMechs:

“While it’s a very long way away, there could be environments on other planets where explorer robots that are impervious to those scenarios would be very desirable,” he said. 

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Virgin Orbit, the private satellite launch company founded in 2017 by multibillionaire Richard Branson, filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday. The news follows the spacefaring venture’s announcement last Friday that it was terminating 675 employees, or roughly 85 percent of its total workforce.

The bankruptcy filing arrives nearly four months after the company’s disastrous, highly publicized orbital launch attempt from Spaceport Cornwall in southwest England. Meant to be the first of many similar missions from within the UK, Virgin Orbit’s unique satellite delivery system ultimately encountered a “devastating launch failure,” losing its entire nine satellite payload.

[Related: A historic first satellite launch in the UK has failed.]

Unlike would-be competitors at SpaceX and Blue Origin, Branson’s Virgin Orbit eschewed more traditional vertical rocketry in favor of a single rocket attached to the underside of a modified Boeing 747 jet. Once the plane’s human crew flew to a sufficient altitude, said rocket would detach, ignite its own engines, and cruise into low-Earth orbit to deliver its cargo as the 747 landed. While January’s “Start Me Up” mission rocket failed in its objectives, the human crew returned safely to Earth.

It’s unclear what will ultimately become of the branch within Branson’s Virgin Galactic enterprise, which listed $243 million in assets and $153 million in debts for its bankruptcy filing. As The New York Times notes, Virgin Orbit’s unique, relatively low-cost, and flexible launch system technology could still appeal to governments, including the US.

[Related: Why the Virgin Galactic spaceship didn’t reach orbit last weekend.]

Despite the setbacks, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said in a statement on Tuesday that “the team at Virgin Orbit has developed and brought into operation a new and innovative method of launching satellites into orbit, introducing new technology and managing great challenges and great risks along.” He added that the company had launched 33 satellites into “precise orbit” since first staring operations. Until January, four of the company’s five previous mission launches from the Mojave Desert in California were deemed successes.

Although Virgin Orbit officials vowed to push forward with future scheduled plans, industry analysts warned that the company’s future looked bleak. According to Virgin Orbit’s website, its most recent public press announcement came in February in the form of an update regarding its “UK mission anomaly.”

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It might be hard to imagine a world without cell phones, but there was most definitely a time when they remained the stuff of science fiction. That is, until 50 years ago to the day, to be more exact. April 3 marks a half century of cell phones, albeit it took a little while for the technology powering Motorola engineer Martin Cooper’s DynaTAC cell phone to become a ubiquitous facet of everyday life.

Affectionately dubbed “the Brick,” the DynaTAC—short for Dynamic Total Area Coverage—contained 30 circuit boards, stood nine inches tall, and weighed 2.5 pounds. As Smithsonian Magazine notes in its own retrospective published Monday, the first truly mobile phone took approximately 10 hours to fully charge. Even then, conversations were capped at around 35 minutes before the Brick needed to refuel.

[Related: Your checklist for maximum smartphone security.]

It would take another decade for Motorola to release a commercial cell phone. Not many could afford it at a $3,500 price point (roughly $10,600 by today’s standards). Four decades on, and there are now more phones than humans, with 18 billion devices estimated in service by 2025.

Of course, smartphones are now standard pocket accessories, and boast countless more features than Cooper’s original DynaTAC, but the “rudimentary” cell phone isn’t completely dead. In 2021, Pew Research Center estimated around 11 percent of US adults owned an old school cell phone, as opposed to a more advanced smartphone. In fact, there is at least some evidence to show that consumers might increasingly prefer a “dumb phone” alternative to the feeling of 24/7 connectivity and instant contact. At least one report indicates a growing percentage of Gen Z is playing around with retro cell phones that boast limited features.

[Related: Scientists turned a smartphone into an affordable microscope.]

After 50 years and billions of phone calls, it might still be difficult to beat the very first cell phone chat from Cooper himself. As Smithsonian Magazine also recounts in its look back, the engineer and inventor allegedly called up the lead cell phone engineer at Motorola’s rival, AT&T. “I’m calling you from a cell phone. But a real cell phone! Personal, hand-held, portable cell phone,” Cooper recounted of his improvised publicity stunt.

His competitor’s reported response? Stunned silence, along with allegations that the phone call never took place.

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The history of robots strutting their stuff on the soccer field stretches as far back as 1992, when Japanese researchers first envisioned the sport as a solid benchmark testing environment for engineering advancements. Since then, the RoboCup has become the annual nexus of fancy mechanical footwork, and MIT just unveiled its newest potential competitor. Unlike many of its two-legged and wheeled counterparts, however, the quadrupedal design makes this but particularly unique, as well as better suited to handle a variety of real-world terrains.

It’s time for DribbleBot’s kickoff.

Publicly unveiled today from researchers in MIT’s Improbable Artificial Intelligence Lab within the school’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), DribbleBot showcases extremely impressive strides in articulation and real-time environmental analysis. Using a combination of onboarding computing and sensing, the team’s four-legged athlete can reportedly handle gravel, grass, sand, snow, and pavement, as well as pick itself up if it falls.

Kicking around a soccer ball provides an interesting additional array of complications for a robot. The way a ball interacts with the terrain beneath it via friction and drag, for example, is different from how a robot’s legs may interact with the same environment. Therefore, a robot needs to be able to simultaneously account for both its own responses, as well as the object it’s attempting to kick.

[Related: Watch this robotic dog use one of its ‘paws’ to open doors.]

The newest robotic versatility comes from a combination of machine learning, onboard sensors, actuators, cameras, and computing power. But before taking to the soccer stadium, DribbleBot needed extensive practice time—in this case, within computer simulations. Researchers built a program mimicking the dog bot’s design alongside real world physics parameters. Once given the greenlight, 4,000 versions of the robot are simulated simultaneously to collect and learn from data. According to researchers, a few actual days’ worth of training adds up to hundreds of simulated days.

Building better DribbleBots isn’t simply for fun and games; the advancements are meant to help out in some of life’s most serious situations. “If you look around today, most robots are wheeled. But imagine that there’s a disaster scenario, flooding, or an earthquake, and we want robots to aid humans in the search-and-rescue process,” Pulkit Agrawal, a CSAIL principal investigator and director of Improbable AI Lab, said in a statement, adding, “Our goal in developing algorithms for legged robots is to provide autonomy in challenging and complex terrains that are currently beyond the reach of robotic systems.”

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The “winding down” of Twitter’s Legacy Verified accounts supposedly began over the weekend. However, the only blue checkmark to take the hit so far appears to be the one for The New York Times—at CEO Elon Musk’s personal direction after a user’s meme brought it to his attention.

A spokesperson for The New York Times confirmed on Sunday the media company would decline to pay $12,000 a year for its verification badge. Upon apparently hearing the news, Musk responded, “Oh ok, we’ll take it off then.” It is unclear if Musk’s information source, DogeDesigner, is verified via the legacy system, or a paid Twitter Blue subscriber. It is now impossible to distinguish between the two tiers.

[Related: Twitter Blue is back and more confusing than ever.]

Twitter has granted verified statuses to thousands of individuals and organizations deemed “notable” since 2009, including governmental bodies, celebrities, professional journalists, and official corporate accounts. The simple system, while not perfect, for years helped users distinguish authentic accounts from imposters, scammers, and parodies. 

Since Musk assumed control of the social media platform in October 2022, Twitter has ushered in a dizzying flurry of updates, backtracks, and conflicting alterations to the verification program, which Musk has described as “corrupt and nonsensical.”

Amid last month’s verification requirement alterations, Twitter announced organizations such as news outlets could retain their gold “organization” badges—part of a recent color-coded policy shift—by ponying up $1,000 a month. The New York Times isn’t alone in skipping the expense— representatives from outlets like The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Politico have said the companies would also not pay for the designation.

[Related: TikTok is taking on the conspiracy theorists.]

The main account for The New York Times now lacks a verification badge, but subsections such as Books, Arts, and Travel still retain their statuses. That said, both Arts and Travel show gold badges—while Books still boasts a blue checkmark. What’s more, blue ticks are now apparently reserved for both legacy verified users and Twitter Blue subscribers. Previously, clicking an individual account’s blue verification symbol showed whether it was a non-paying account, or one paying $8 per month for Musk’s “premium” Twitter experience.

As The Washington Post explained on Friday, the legacy phase-out delay may stem from a “largely manual process by a system prone to breaking.” Described as “similar to an Excel spreadsheet,” the verification database is reportedly “held together with duct tape,” according to one anonymous former employee. 

Twitter is currently worth around $20 billion, according to a recent internal memo. Musk paid $44 billion for the company in October 2022.

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Some of the most recognizable pieces of technology in Dune are the characters’ stillsuits—clothing integrated with a network of tubing that recycles excess bodily fluids to keep wearers hydrated in the planet Arrakis’ hostile desert environment. Although Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic is set tens of thousands of years in the future, it looks like variations on the stillsuit are already making their way into everyday life. As detailed in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science, researchers at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Ecole de Lausanne have developed an innovative new fiber fluid tubing capable of generating its own flow and pressure that can be integrated into everyday garments.

According to the team’s announcement, the fiber pumps rely on a principle known as charge injection electrohydrodynamics (EHD) that induces fluid flows without the need for any moving mechanisms. Here’s how it all goes down (or up, depending on the flow): two corkscrew-like electrodes installed within pump walling ionize and accelerate a specialized, non-conductive fluid’s molecules. Powered by a palm-sized battery and power supply, the fluid ions’ movement coupled with the electrodes’ shape allow for a net forward flow, resulting in the desired circulation.

Previous variations on similar technology often required cumbersome, tethered external pumps. But the new design encompasses the pumps within the tubing itself, offering a wealth of new, portable potentials. Researchers cite such situations as heating or cooling wearers working within extreme hot or cold temperature environments. Therapeutically, tube-laced wearables could aid in easing patients’ inflammation, or boost athletic performance.

“These applications require long lengths of tubing anyway, and in our case, the tubing is the pump,” Michael Smith, a post-doctoral researcher and paper lead author, said in a statement. “This means we can make very simple and lightweight fluidic circuits that are convenient and comfortable to wear.”

[Reddit: Moderators ban AI-generated artwork from ‘Dune’ subreddit.]

The team’s paper also mentions the possibility of integrating the invention into soft exoskeleton technology as “artificial muscles,” which could help with mobility and movement. Yet another example showcased in the team’s research were wearable gloves utilizing temperature changing fluids, which could enhance certain virtual reality activities.

The system already shows immense promise in terms of scalability, as well as utilizes cheap and widely available materials—so much so that the garments are washing machine-safe using everyday store detergents. They may not supply their wearers with biological hydration like stillsuits, but give researchers some time. After all, it took Dune thousands of years to get there.

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Even the most advanced ground-based telescopes struggle with nearsighted vision issues. Often this isn’t through any fault of their own, but a dilemma of having to see through the Earth’s constantly varying atmospheric interferences. As undesirable as that is to the casual viewer, it can dramatically frustrate researchers’ abilities to construct accurate images of the universe—both literally and figuratively. By applying an existing, open-source computer vision AI algorithm to telescope tech, however, researchers have found they are able to hone our cosmic observations.

As detailed in a paper published this month with the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of scientists from Northwestern University and Beijing’s Tsinghua University recently trained an AI on data simulated to match imaging parameters for the soon-to-be opened Vera C. Rubin Observatory in north-central Chile. As Northwestern’s announcement explains, while similar technology already exists, the new algorithm produces blur-free, high resolution glimpses of the universe both faster and more realistically.

“Photography’s goal is often to get a pretty, nice-looking image. But astronomical images are used for science,” said Emma Alexander, an assistant professor of computer science at Northwestern and the study’s senior author. Alexander explained that cleaning up image data correctly helps astronomers obtain far more accurate data. Because the AI algorithm does so computationally, physicists can glean better measurements.

[Related: The most awesome aerospace innovations of 2022.]

The results aren’t just prettier galactic portraits, but more reliable sources of study. For example, analyzing galaxies’ shapes can help determine gravitational effects on some of the universe’s largest bodies. Blurring that image—be it through low-resolution tech or atmospheric interference—makes scientists’ less reliable and accurate. According to the team’s work, the optimized tool generated images with roughly 38 percent less error than compared to classic blur-removal methods, and around 7 percent less error compared to existing modern methods.

What’s more, the team’s AI tool, coding, and tutorial guidelines are already available online for free. Going forward, any interested astronomers can download and utilize the algorithm to improve their own observatories’ telescopes, and thus obtain better and more accurate data.

“Now we pass off this tool, putting it into the hands of astronomy experts,” continued Alexander. “We think this could be a valuable resource for sky surveys to obtain the most realistic data possible.” Until then, astronomy fans can expect far more detailed results from the Rubin Observatory when it officially opens in 2024 to begin its deep survey of the stars.

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Even with their many advances, quadrupedal robots’ legs are most often still just made for walking. Using individual front paws for moving and non-locomotion tasks like pushing buttons or moving objects, however, usually falls outside the machines’ reach, but a team of researchers appear to be designing them to finally bridge that gap.

Roboticists from Carnegie Mellon University and UC Berkeley have demonstrated the ability to program a quadrupedal robot—in this case, a Unitree Go1 one utilizing an Intel RealSense camera—to use its front limbs not only to walk, but also to help climb walls and interact with simple objects, as needed. The progress, detailed in a paper to be presented next month at the International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2023), potentially marks a major step forward for what quadrupedal robots can handle. There’s also some pretty impressive video demonstrations, as well. Check out the handy machine in action below:

To pull off these abilities, researchers broke down their robots’ desired tasks into two broad skill sets—locomotion (movement like walking or climbing walls) and manipulation (using one leg to interact with externalities while balancing on the other three limbs). As IEEE Spectrum explains, the separation is important: Often, these tasks can prove to be in opposition to one another, leading robots to get stuck in computational quandaries. After training how to handle both skill sets within simulations, the team combined it all into a “robust long-term plan” via learning a behavior tree from “one clean expert demonstration,” according to the research paper.

[Related: A new tail accessory propels this robot dog across streams]

Developing cost-effective robots capable of tackling both movement and interaction with their surroundings is a key hurdle in deploying machines that can easily maneuver through everyday environments. In the research team’s videos, for example, the quadrupedal robot is able to walk up to a door, then press the nearby wheelchair access button to open it. Obviously, it’s much easier to rely on a single robot to manage both requirements, as opposed to using two robots, or altering human-specific environments to suit machines.

Combine these advancements with existing quadrupedal robots’ abilities to traverse diverse terrains such as sand and grass, toss in the trick of scaling walls and ceilings, and you’ve got a pretty handy four-legged friend.

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If you give a mouse a video game, scientists can learn quite a bit about the mind. More specifically, mice playing virtual reality video games have helped researchers locate the brain circuitry that is likely responsible for filtering which daily experiences make it into our long-term memory. While there is still far more to investigate, neuroscientists are confident the rodents’ recreational activities have pinpointed key processes and locations involved in memory making.

As detailed in a new report published today in the journal Cell, a team of scientists at Rockefeller University constructed a virtual reality corridor projected in front of mice as they ran atop a rotating Styrofoam ball to control their directions. The test animals received one of three outcomes at the end of their digital journey: unlimited sugar water from a spout, a limited amount of the sweet reward, or a tiny, painless-but-annoying air puff to the face. 

During each run, sensory cues in the form of visual, auditory, and aromatic stimuli prefaced each outcome, gradually teaching the mice what to anticipate at the culmination of each trek down the corridor.

[Related: An experimental AI used human brain waves to regenerate images.]

Once the mice learned which cue anticipated which result, the team tested their ability to remember these external hints over the course of several weeks. During that period, scientists experimented with stimulating and inhibiting the hippocampus and anterior thalamus—while the former is traditionally associated with memory retention, the latter is not. Limiting the abilities of the hippocampus using chemogenetic inhibition showed that the mice had trouble remembering the VR maze’s causes and effects, even in the short-term; doing the same with the anterior thalamus, however, did not. That said, inhibiting the anterior thalamus displayed limitations on mice’s long-term memory abilities, and stimulating this part of the brain actually improved this feat.

The observations proved especially impressive for maze outcomes resulting in only a small amount of sugar water, a reward mice usually forgot more quickly than the unlimited treat access. Researchers found that the thalamus stimulation helped mice remember what should have been a less memorable experience.

[Related: These eight scientists have changed the world with biomedical and global health research.]

“We’ve identified a circuit in the brain that is important for identifying which memories are important and how they are filtered into longer-term storage,” said Rockefeller graduate student Andrew Toader, one of the study’s co-leads, in a statement. “As soon as the mice begin learning a task, the thalamus is performing this selection process and choosing which memories will go on to be stabilized in the cortex long-term.”

Going forward, researchers hope to determine if factors like adrenaline or dopamine aid thalamus in determining memory retention. Additionally, they hope to discover whether or not the memory stabilization process occurs in a short period of time, or continuously over one’s entire life.

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An open letter signed on Wednesday by over 1,100 notable public figures, including Elon Musk and Apple co-creator Steve Wozniak, implores researchers to institute a six-month moratorium on developing artificial intelligence systems more powerful than GPT-4. 

“[R]ecent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one—not even their creators—can understand, predict, or reliably control,” reads a portion of the missive published on Wednesday by the Future of Life institute, an organization attempting to “steer transformative technology towards benefitting life and away from extreme large-scale risks.” During the proposed six-month pause, the FLI suggests unnamed, independent outside experts develop and implement a “rigorously audited” shared set of safety protocols, alongside potential governmental intervention.

[Related: The next version of ChatGPT is live—here’s what’s new.]

But since the letter’s publication, many experts have highlighted that a number of the campaign’s supporters and orchestrators subscribe to an increasingly popular and controversial techno-utopian philosophy known as “longtermism” that critics claim has historical roots in the eugenics movement.

Championed by Silicon Valley’s heaviest hitters, including Musk and Peter Thiel, longtermism mixes utilitarian morality alongside science fiction concepts like transhumanism and probability theory. Critics now worry the longtermist outlook alluded to in FLI’s letter is a diversion from large language models’ (LLMs) real problems, and revealing the co-signers’ misunderstandings of the so-called “artificial intelligence” systems themselves.

Broadly speaking, longtermists believe it morally imperative to ensure humanity’s survival by whatever means necessary to maximize future lives’ wellbeing. While some may find this reasonable enough, proponents of longtermism—alongside similar overlapping viewpoints like effective altruism and transhumanism—are primarily motivated by their hope that humans colonize space and attain virtually unimaginable technological advancements. To accomplish this destiny, longtermists have long advocated for the creation of a friendly, allied artificial general intelligence (AGI) to boost humanity’s progress.

[Related: OpenAI’s newest ChatGPT update can still spread conspiracy theories.]

Many longtermists endorsing FLI’s letter believe rogue AI systems pose one of these most immediate “existential risks” to future humans. As generative language programs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Bard dominate news cycles, observers are voicing concerns on the demonstrable ramifications for labor, misinformation, and overall sociopolitical stability. Some backing FLI’s missive, however, believe researchers are on the cusp of unwittingly creating dangerous, sentient AI systems akin to those seen in popular sci-fi movie franchises like The Matrix and The Terminator. 

“AGI is widely seen as the savior in [longtermist] narrative, as the vehicle that’s going to get us from ‘here’ to ‘there,’” Émile P. Torres, a philosopher and historian focused on existential risk, tells PopSci. But to Torres, longtermist supporters created the very problem they are now worried about in FLI’s open letter. “They hyped-up AGI as this messianic thing that’s going to save humanity, billionaires bought into this, companies started developing what they think are the precursors to AGI, and then suddenly they’re freaking out that progress is moving too quickly,” they say.

Meanwhile, Emily M. Bender, a professor of linguistics at the University of Washington and longtime large language model (LLM) researcher, highlighted similar longtermists’ misunderstandings about how these programs actually work. “Yes, AI labs are locked in an out-of-control race, but no one has developed a ‘digital mind’ and they aren’t in the process of doing that,” argues Bender on Twitter.

[Related: Microsoft lays off entire AI ethics team while going all out on ChatGPT.]

In 2021, Bender co-published a widely read research paper (the first citation in FLI’s letter) highlighting their concerns with LLMs, none of which centered on “too powerful AI.” This is because LLMs cannot, by their nature, possess self-awareness—they are neural networks trained on vast text troves to identify patterns and generate probabilistic text of their own. Instead, Bender is concerned about LLMs’ roles in “concentration of power in the hands of people, about reproducing systems of oppression, about damage to the information ecosystem, and about damage to the natural ecosystem (through profligate use of energy resources).”

Torres seconds Bender’s stance. “The ‘open letter’ says nothing about social justice. It doesn’t acknowledge the harm that companies like OpenAI have already caused in the world,” they say, citing recent reports of poverty-level wages paid to Kenyan contractors who reviewed graphic content to improve ChatGPT’s user experience.

Like many of the open letter’s signatories, Bender and their allies agree that the current generative text and image technologies need regulation, scrutiny, and careful consideration, but for their immediate consequences affecting living humans—not our supposedly space-bound descendants. 

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A torrent of brands have announced their twist on “AI” integrations, including 170-year-old clothing company Levi’s. The retailer revealed plans last week to begin testing AI-generated fashion models on their website as a potential tool to “supplement human models,” while increasing “diversity” in a “sustainable” way. Critics almost immediately highlighted concerns with the disconcerting corporatespeak, arguing that employing AI software in lieu of a diverse pool of actual human labor betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of equity and representation.

Levi’s has since issued a clarification—on Tuesday, the announcement page included a statement that the group “[does] not see this pilot as a means to advance diversity or as a substitute for the real action” on improving diversity and inclusion, “and it should not have been portrayed as such.” Speaking with PopSci this week, the company maintains the partnership with the “digital fashion studio” Lalaland.ai will still champion another cause—sustainability. Industry experts and insiders, however, remain deeply skeptical of those assertions, as well.

[Related: Why an AI image of Pope Francis in a fly jacket stirred up the internet.]

When first asked earlier this week for clarification on how AI integration promotes environmental sustainability, a spokesperson for Levi’s told PopSci via email, “While we can’t speak for Lalaland.ai, this technology has potential environmental benefits for LS&Co. that could be immediately recognized, including minimizing the carbon footprint of photoshoots.” The company representative went on to reiterate sustainability remains a “top priority” for Levi’s, and that supplementing clothing lines’ rolling style launches with AI-generated models “eliminates extra photoshoots, including the travel needed for the team, shipping the products back and forth, the energy used during the photoshoot, and more.” Lalaland.ai has not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.

The UN estimates between 8 and 10 percent of all global emissions stem from the fashion industry—more than both the aviation and shipping industries combined. Many advocates continue to push for sustainable fashion practices, and even believe some AI integration could help achieve these goals. But, the environmental impact of switching to some AI models for photoshoots is still unknown.

[Related: The universe is getting a weigh-in thanks to AI.]

“As someone who makes a living shooting e-commerce, my first thought was panic. Am I shortly out of a job?” worries Brian Frank, a freelance photographer currently based in Amsterdam. Frank tells PopSci he “did not foresee ‘sustainable’ as the reason. I assumed it would be deemed cheaper,” but conceding “the writing has been on the wall for some time that this was coming.” Still, Frank never thought models would be the starting point, much less for a company as large as Levi’s. “I assumed it would be for a smaller, high-end fashion house,” he says.

But even those running smaller fashion companies aren’t totally convinced. “I understand the benefits of AI technology for tasks such as virtual try-ons, personalized recommendations, and product design. However, for our brand, the final fit must always be on a human,” Andréa Bernholtz, founder of the sustainable swimwear company, Swiminista, writes via email, adding they “firmly believe that an AI cannot feel and move like a human, and it cannot let you know how it truly feels,” and calls the human factor a “non-negotiable.”

Bernholtz says she is excited about the continuing integration of technology within fashion, and believes it can be a powerful tool when combined with sustainable practices to increase efficiency, reduce material waste, and minimize the necessity of physical samples.

[Related: Meet Garmi, a robot nurse and companion for Germany’s elderly population.]

“When discussing sustainability, I must assume [Levi’s is] talking about no more samples produced to be photographed,” continues Frank, arguing that if a design render can be derived directly from AI, then that could eliminate a decent amount of physical waste. 

In Levi’s clarification, the company stated it has no plan to scale back its live photoshoots or the employment of live models, while arguing the Lalaland.ai partnership “may deliver some business efficiencies” for consumers. There is no indication its AI rollout has changed, with plans to begin tests later this year. 

“For now, what we do know is that AI models will never replace our human models, only supplement them where useful,” writes Levi’s in its addendum, adding that, “As with any test, we’ll be paying close attention to the consumer experience and actively listening to consumer feedback. 

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Update 3/31/23: Another food-tech company, Paleo, alleges that they first developed patent pending meat with mammoth myoglobin in 2021, and are now considering legal action against Vow. This post has been updated with their comments, along with a response from Vow

Researchers and ethicists have argued over the how’s, if’s, and should’s of reviving woolly mammoths for years—in the meantime, one startup just reportedly went ahead and cooked up their own version. As first highlighted by The Guardian, an Australian company called Vow has unveiled what it claims to be the first hybrid mammoth meatball made from fragments of the species’ DNA sequence spliced together alongside elephant cells. In doing so, the startup hopes to promote a speedier cultural transition to what could be environmentally friendly, sustainable lab-grown meats while highlighting humans’ impact on species die-off. But another startup is claiming to have developed mammoth myoglobin tech first, and are now considering legal action against Vow.

Industrial animal farming and consumption are widely considered to be some of the largest contributors to greenhouse emissions and water usage. Climate experts have repeatedly urged the importance of transitioning away from this carnivorous mindset towards healthier, sustainable options, but it can often feel like a steep ask for populations so used to their preferred, culturally reinforced diets. While lab-grown meat alternatives are increasingly gaining attention, Vow hoped to draw attention to cutting edge possibilities via resurrecting the iconic Ice Age giant in miniature, meatball form.

[Related: FDA says this lab-grown chicken is safe for human consumption.]

Despite the wild conceit, concocting the mammoth meatball apparently proved to be “ridiculously easy and fast,” said Ernst Wolvetang, a professor at the University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering who worked alongside the cultivated meatmakers. What’s more, it only took a “couple weeks” for Wolvetang’s team to harvest the approximately 20 billion mammoth-elephant meat cells grown within sheep myoblast stem cells.

For author Lincoln Michel, the news came as surprise. “It’s maybe a cliché at this point, but it’s very hard these days for satire to keep up with reality,” he told PopSci. Michel’s 2021 sci-fi novel, The Body Scout, cheekily mentions lab grown cuisine derived from long-extinct animal species against a dystopian, cyberpunk backdrop. “When I wrote The Body Scout, I thought adding mammoth burgers and teriyaki tyrannosaur wings would be a funny comment on the banality of modern capitalism’s vision,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see mammoth snacks a mere two years after publication.”

[Related: How to enjoy fake meat in a way that actually helps the planet.]

Vow already has plans to supply Singapore restaurants by the end of the year with lab-cultivated Japanese quail grown using similar methods. Additionally, the company has reportedly researched over 50 other species to add to their menu, including buffalo, crocodile, kangaroo, and various fish species. Dodo apparently was researchers’ first choice, but didn’t make the cut because they lacked the necessary DNA sequences.

But don’t expect to take part in mammoth taste tests for the conceivable future. As Wolvetang told The Guardian, humans haven’t ingested mammoth protein for thousands of years, so there’s no telling how immune systems would handle such a dish. Instead, the meatball is meant more as a representation of what the cultivated animal protein industry hopes to achieve. If the same methods continue to be applied to commonly eaten animals, then entirely new avenues for nutrition may become available to consumers. As one researcher explained to The Guardian, “By cultivating beef, pork, chicken and seafood we can have the most impact in terms of reducing emissions from conventional animal agriculture.”

Meanwhile, Paleo—a “precision fermentation company” based in Belgium—alleges Vow’s claims as the first to develop meat with mammoth myoglobin is false. “When we learned about [Vow’s announcement], we were surprised,” Hermes Sanctorum, CEO of Paleo, said in a statement provided to PopSci. “We sent out a press release nine months ago to announce that we developed the exact same mammoth protein (myoglobin), based on our fundamental research and innovation.”

Paleo representatives claim to have reached out to Vow prior to their product announcement. Vow allegedly responded by saying its mammoth meatball “was not food,” and dismissed Paleo’s concerns. “When Vow claim that no one has tasted mammoth myoglobin, this is simply not true,” said Sanctorum, adding that, “We developed the mammoth myoglobin and we tasted it in our lab.”

Sanctorum describes the mammoth protein’s “aromatic profile” as “stronger” than other species, meaning it both “smells and tastes meatier” with a “more vibrant” red coloring. Paleo claims it submitted patent applications that have been under review and available publicly for competitors nearly a year ago. In an email to PopSci, a representative for Vow denied the accusations, stating their mammoth meatball was “conceived, developed and created entirely by the hard work and ingenuity of Vow’s own scientists [and collaborators] and using a combination of publicly available genetic data and Vow’s own proprietary production processes,” and stated it will take “appropriate” responses to maintain “its reputation, its innovations, and its people.”

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No, Pope Francis was not recently spotted walking through Vatican City wearing a stylish, arctic white puffer jacket—but you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Meanwhile, the man responsible for the AI-generated gag images is concerned, alongside numerous tech experts and industry observers.

The realistic, albeit absurdist, images of a fashionable pontifex went viral over the weekend via Twitter and other social media outlets, leading at least some to briefly wonder about their authenticity. By Monday, however, BuzzFeed writer Chris Stokel-Walker located the man behind the memes—Pablo Xavier, a 31-year-old construction worker living in the Chicago area who declined to offer his last name for fear of potential backlash.

Xavier explained the simple reason behind Friday afternoon’s Fashion Icon Francis: he was high on psychedelic mushrooms, and thought it would be funny to see what the generative AI art program, Midjourney, could do with prompts such as “‘The Pope in Balenciaga puffy coat, Moncler, walking the streets of Rome, Paris.’” Xavier’s Reddit account has since been suspended since uploading the Midjourney images, although justification for the reprimand remains unclear. In the meantime, multiple outlets and online culture critics have offered their own examinations and critiques of why, and how, a Balenciaga-adorned Pope briefly captured the attention of so many.

[Related: OpenAI’s newest ChatGPT update can still spread conspiracy theories.]

Part of the attention is undoubtedly owed to Midjourney’s latest software updates, which noticeably honed its photorealistic abilities. This is particularly evident when it comes to celebrities and public figures that make multiple appearances within its massive data training sets. But on a more esoteric level, there’s an uncanny valley-like notion that maybe the Pope would wear a simple, stylish overcoat. This is, after all, a religious position long known for its flair—so much so that the papal PR team had to debunk fashion myths in the past. A pure white down jacket is arguably in the realm of possibility,. at least, more so than a rave at the White House, Donald Trump arrested wearing Joker makeup, or the late Queen Elizabeth doing her laundry.

By now, there’s an entire series of “dripped out” Pope fakeries swirling around online, the majority of which are ridiculous enough to preclude them from fooling most people. That said, serious abuse of AI-generated art is already a very real and concerning issue. The rapid adoption of AI art generation technologies by Big Tech companies are leading many critics to urge regulators to clamp down on wanton advancements. Until then, however, the Puffer Jacket Pope is perhaps the least of everyone’s AI concerns.

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A new, colorful material partially made from wood pulp and cotton could one day help lower building temperatures when exposed to sunlight. And while similar films already exist utilizing either white or mirrored finishes, the newest variant offers iridescent hues thanks in part to cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) and the behavior of soap bubbles.

[Related: Scientists think this tiny greenhouse could be a game changer for agrivoltaics.]

Generally speaking, most objects will warm as they absorb the sun’s UV, infrared, and visible light. What isn’t absorbed is then reflected out as visible color. That said, a process known as passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC) can occasionally counteract the rising temperatures caused by absorbing light. PDRC occurs when a surface reflects a large amount of solar light back out as infrared rays without absorbing much else. This allows for surfaces that can be many degrees cooler than the air around it. Recently, researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered they could replicate this ability by capitalizing on certain plant cellulose properties alongside “structural color,” which results from light interacting with a surface’s varying thicknesses. This ability is most commonly seen within soap bubbles, which diffuse light in different directions across their varyingly thick surfaces to create kaleidoscopic patterns.

As New Scientist also notes, adding color pigment to a material usually increases the amount of light, and therefore heat, it absorbs. However, when researchers extracted cellulose nanocrystals from plants, then layered them atop a reflective sheet made of ethyl cellulose, they were able to use their prismatic properties to create red, green, and blue-colored films. Even with their new hues, the coatings remained around 3 degrees Celsius cooler than surrounding temperatures in direct sunlight. 

[ Related: Scientists use quantum computing to create glass that cuts the need for AC by a third.]

With additional experimentation on the layers of ethyl cellulose, the team also managed to produce multicolored films with a variety of textures, such as various woodgrains and finishes. Although the new films’ durability still needs improvement, their potential utility could one day extend to the building facades, vehicles, and indoor wall paints as an eco-friendly alternative to the use of A/C units, which are notorious for both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The team is presenting their latest results at the American Chemical Society’s annual spring meeting, and hopes to continue their research to improve future generations of the material. 

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Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel and one of the most influential minds in computing history, died on Friday at his home in Hawai’i at the age of 94. Known as one of the architects of modern electronics for his work on transistors and microprocessors, his observations on the trajectory of computing advancements—later known as Moore’s law—has proved highly accurate for nearly six decades.

Writing for the 35th anniversary issue of Electronics Magazine in 1965, Moore, a Caltech graduate and engineer, estimated that technological advancements ensured transistors’ physical dimensions would continue shrinking. Roughly double the number of transistors, he forecasted,could fit on the same sized chip every year. A decade later, Moore revised this timespan to two years, but this general idea proved remarkably stable over the ensuing years. As PC Mag notes, Intel’s first commercially available microprocessor contained 2,250 transistors in 1971. Apple’s M2 Max chip, released in January, contains 67 billion transistors.

“Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers—or at least terminals connected to a central computer—automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment,” Moore wrote in his 1965 article, “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,” twenty years before PCs revolutionized computing and forty years prior to the iPhone’s debut.

[Related: Here’s the simple law behind your shrinking gadgets.]

Moore’s law guided the trajectory of Intel and rival processor companies’ innovations for years. The law was recently declared “dead” by Nvidia CEO Jansen Huang as advances have slowed in recent years—an inevitable conclusion to Moore’s observation as transistors’ physical limitations are reached and supply costs increase. However, this is an assertion that is not without its detractors. Intel, for its part, maintains Moore’s law is still in effect, and expects 1 trillion transistors per chip by the end of the decade.

Regardless of when Moore’s law finally taps out, its guiding principles helped propel the modern computing industry for years, providing a benchmark for companies as electronics quickly integrated themselves into the fabric of global society. As physical limitations make themselves known, researchers have turned to next generation advancements like quantum computing to continue cutting-edge innovation. “Gordon’s vision lives on as our true north as we use the power of technology to improve the lives of every person on Earth,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement on Friday.

“All I was trying to do was get that message across, that by putting more and more stuff on a chip we were going to make all electronics cheaper,” Moore said in a 2008 interview. Outside of his electronics advancements, Moore started an environmental protection foundation alongside is wife using $5 billion of his own Intel stock, and remained an ardent financial supporter of the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, or SETI.

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The word “pirate” may conjure up the image of humans physically taking over a vessel, but what if instead a ship was simply hacked from afar? That’s a question on the mind of Norwegian researchers, who point out that unfortunately, the international shipping world isn’t exactly known for its quick adoption of cutting-edge tech.

“The maritime industry has a history of being quite reactive and slow, so it is no surprise that we are lacking behind in the matter of cybersecurity as well,” says Marie Haugli-Sandvik.

Haugli-Sandvik, who works within the Department of Ocean Operations and Civil Engineering at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), explains via email to PopSci that this incremental pace is what led her and fellow PhD candidate, Erlend Erstad, to create what is likely the world’s first “maritime digital security” course. According to a report this week from NTNU, the course’s students recently spent two months examining and assessing current oceanic digital threats, then practiced handling a ship cyberattack scenario focusing on risk management and resilience building.

“We see that shipping companies are investing in technological solutions for increased automation and monitoring, which exposes vessels to cyber risks in new ways,” writes Haugli-Sandvik, noting the dramatic increase in maritime cyberattacks over the last few years, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “These cyber threats can both bankrupt companies and affect the safety at sea,” she says.

[Related: ​The ship blocking the Suez is finally unstuck, but we could see bottlenecks like this again]

NTNU estimates 90 percent of all world trade is linked in some way to maritime travel, leaving a massive avenue for cyberthreats to disrupt global commerce, data, and safety. Unfortunately, many cybersecurity courses only focus on more generic IT threats, which is what spurred Haugli-Sandvik and Erstad to create the class.

Haugli-Sandvik says there is positive movement within the community—such as mandatory cybersecurity requirements coming from the maritime industry regulators at International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) in 2024, alongside increased cybersecurity training for maritime personnel—but there remains a sizable lack of targeted training pertaining to sea environments. 

The course instructors hope their students learn just how vulnerable to cyberthreats vessel systems can be, and that they come away with actionable operative training to handle issues. “Seafarers need to enhance their cyber security awareness and skills so that they can protect themselves, the ship, the environment, and their companies,” writes Haugli-Sandvik, adding, “The human element in cyber security is vital to address since there is no longer a question about if you get hit by a cyber-attack, it is a question about when it will happen.”

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Utah’s governor signed two bills into law on Thursday aimed at protecting the state’s underage social media users. Privacy critics, however, argue that the new laws’ constitutional legality and enforcement remain troublingly murky.

As NBC News and elsewhere report, H.B. 311 and S.B. 152 would make any social media companies with over 10 million users age-verify all Utah residents, as well as require parental consent from minors who want to make a profile. Among other sweeping reforms, the laws also require social media companies to allow parents complete access to their children’s posts and private messages. Additionally, the law sets up a curfew on social media use for underage Utahns from between 10:30 PM to 6:30 AM. Although the new legislation is scheduled to take effect in March 2024, it is unclear if the regulations will hold up to judicial scrutiny. 

In a letter sent to Gov. Spencer Cox earlier this month, digital rights advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued Utah’s bills are some of the most egregious they’ve seen so far.  Other states including Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Ohio, and New Jersey are considering similar legislation, as well.

[Related: Social media drama can hit teens hard at different ages.]

“Young people have First Amendment rights,” writes an EFF representative, adding that federal attempts to restrict internet content access “generally have not withstood constitutional scrutiny when challenged” in courts. Privacy advocates also argue Utah’s laws will ironically give social media companies even greater access to users’ private data via ID verification requirements, as well as disadvantage many young Utahans by limiting informational access. Because of the laws’ broad language, EFF argues apps including Duolingo and the hiking service, AllTrails, are subject to the new access restrictions.

“This all feels a little like the ‘ban on dancing’ in Footloose,” argued Evan Greer, director for  online privacy group Fight for the Future.

In an email to PopSci, Greer agreed there are “very real harms” to youth from social media companies, but contended that those problems would be better addressed by cracking down on abusive corporate practices rather than “draconian” restrictions for young people—restrictions Greer said could disproportionately harm LGBTQ+ children and those suffering from abusive environments. “[T]hey also just don’t really make any sense. I’m not sure anyone has actually thought about how any of this will work in practice,” added Greer.

[Related: Why TikTok’s algorithm is so addictive.]

Greer points to various scenarios, such as how to authentically determine a young person’s parent or legal guardian, as well as instances involving custody battles or abuse allegations. “Once you create mechanisms for parents to snoop on their kids’ social media activity, they’ll be abused by others,” said Greer.

Instead of Utah’s latest examples, Greer and likeminded advocates contend politicians should push to pass comprehensive privacy legislation. The FTC and state regulators, they argue, should tighten restrictions on predatory design practices such as apps’ autoplay and infinite scroll features, using personal data for algorithmic recommendations, and intrusive notifications.

“These laws are clearly unconstitutional,” said Greer, “but more importantly they’re going to put children in danger and strip them of their rights.” 

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Third time was unfortunately not the charm for Relativity Space. After two scrubbed attempts, Terran—the aerospace startup’s 110-foot rocket largely composed of 3D-printed materials—completed its first stage liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, it failed to reach its intended 125-mile-high orbit. Instead, the unmanned vehicle’s second stage briefly ignited, before shutting off entirely and subsequently plummeting into the Atlantic Ocean. Still, there’s much to celebrate for the upstart rocket company.

Supporters hope Relativity’s Terran rocket, which is made from 85-percent 3D-printed metal materials, will prove a major step forward for the company as it attempts to compete within the private spacefaring industry alongside the heavy hitters of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. During its second launch attempt earlier this month, Terran came within less than a second of takeoff before aborting the flight after its first stage rockets malfunctioned.

[Related: What to expect from space exploration in 2023.]

Formed in 2015, Relativity Space aims to create a line of entirely 3D-printed, reusable rockets for a variety of potential projects, including a goal to transport the first commercial mission to Mars. According to its official website rundown, the company’s line of hopeful spacefaring vehicles in Long Beach, California, are built using a combination of massive 3D printers, artificial intelligence aids, and autonomous robotics. In doing so, Relativity claims production requires 100 times fewer parts, and can be finished in less than 60 days.

The commitment to 3D-printed material even extends as far as Relativity’s line of Aeon rocket engines, with reduced part counts within the igniters, turbopumps, combustion chambers, thrusters, and pressurization systems. Each engine uses a combination of liquid oxygen and liquid natural gas as propellants.

[Related: How loud is a rocket launch?]

Success, in this case, is… well, relative. As TechCrunch notes, very few space launch platforms ever achieve orbit during the first flight. Additionally, Terran withstood its “Max Q” threshold, a term referring to when the vehicle encounters the most atmospheric stress and resistance, as well as successfully cut off main engines and separated from the first stage as planned. In this sense, Relativity proved that 3D-printed rockets can hold up during some of the most intense moments involved in an orbital launch, which is certainly reason enough to celebrate.

“Maiden launches are always exciting and today’s flight was no exception,” said Relativity Space launch commentator Arwa Tizani Kelly following Wednesday’s launch attempt.

Representatives for Relativity did not respond for comment at the time of writing. It is unknown if Wednesday’s results will affect future rocket launch timelines, including plans to test the company’s larger Terran R spacecraft in 2024.

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Literally weighing the universe may sound like an impossible task, but it can be done—at least to a degree. For decades, astrophysicists turned to what’s known as “integrated electron pressure” as a proxy for measuring the mass of galaxy clusters, which involves the interaction of photons and gravity, among many other complicated factors. But that stand-in is by no means perfect, and often can result in less-than-reliable measurements depending on galaxy clusters’ various influences. Now, however, researchers believe they have developed a (relatively speaking) simple solution to the issue alongside some assistance from artificial intelligence.

As detailed this month in a paper published with Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists, a team composed of researchers from the the Institute for Advanced Study, the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA), Princeton University, and elsewhere have utilized an AI tool called “symbolic regression” to hone their galactic weigh-ins. As a statement from collaborators at the CCA explains, the tool “essentially tries out different combinations of mathematical operators—such as addition and subtraction—with various variables, to see what equation best matches the data.”

[Related: We finally have a detailed map of water on the moon.]

The team first entered a cutting edge universe simulation featuring a host of galaxy clusters into the tool, then the AI located variables that could increase mass estimations’ accuracy. From there, the AI generated a new equation featuring a single new term atop the longstanding version focused on integrated electron pressure. Working backwards, researchers discovered that gas concentration corresponds to areas of a galaxy cluster featuring less reliable mass estimations—i.e. the supermassive black holes located within galactic cores.

“In a sense, the galaxy cluster is like a spherical doughnut,” the CCA’s announcement describes. “The new equation extracts the jelly at the center of the doughnut that can introduce larger errors, and instead concentrates on the doughy outskirts for more reliable mass inferences.”

In any case, the team plugged the AI-scripted new equation into a digital suite containing thousands of simulated universes, and found that it could produce galaxy cluster mass estimates with between 20 and 30 percent less variabilities. “It’s such a simple thing; that’s the beauty of this,” study co-author and CCA researcher Francisco Villaescusa-Navarro said in the announcement. “Simple,” of course, may be a bit of an overstatement to those not in the business of weighing galaxies, but one thing is for certain—a jelly donut sounds pretty good right now.

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How much money have you lost from forgetting to cancel an online subscription following its free trial? Or from getting frustrated while trying to figure out how exactly to end a recurring charge, pledging to do it later, and then subsequently not getting around to it? Don’t feel bad—the Federal Trade Commission sympathizes. And they are trying to do something to ease the pain.

On Thursday, the FTC announced a new “click to cancel” rule provision proposal to simplify the process of ending subscriptions and memberships for consumers. The potential reforms come as regulators are reexamining their 1973 Negative Option Rule, which is often utilized by the agency to push back against companies’ often deliberate tactics to obfuscate the ways in which customers can voluntarily end subscriptions.

[Related: The FTC is trying to get more tech-savvy.]

“Some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didn’t sign up for in the first place,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan in the official statement, adding that the new proposal will save consumers money and time while enabling regulators the ability to issue penalties to businesses for “subscription tricks and traps.”

Arguing the “current patchwork of laws and regulations available to the FTC do not provide consumers and industry with a consistent legal framework,” regulators are suggesting three major changes:

• Requiring a simple mechanism making it as easy to cancel a service’s account as it is to sign up for one, and in “the same number of steps.”
• While still allowing businesses to pitch additional offers or subscription modifications during the cancellation process, those opportunities can only be given after presenting users with a clear means to opt-out of paid memberships.
• Requiring sellers to offer consumers annual reminders enrolled in “negative option programs involving anything other than physical goods, before they are automatically renewed.”

Additionally, the FTC seeks to require companies offering customers online subscription sign-up options to also explicitly offer online cancellation, as opposed to only doing so through email forms, phone calls, or in-person meetings.

[Related: Why the new FTC chair is causing such a stir.]

As helpful as these changes will be for consumers, unfortunately, there is no current estimated timeline on when the reforms could go into effect. Multiple additional steps are needed, including a public comment period, before the FTC begins writing a final rule proposal. In the meantime, now is as good a time as ever to start reviewing what subscriptions—such as streaming services—are still charging to your bank accounts.

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Panera announced a new partnership with Amazon to integrate the tech company’s Amazon One biometric palm scanning services into the fast casual restaurant’s loyalty rewards program. But less than a week ago, the bakery-cafe chain’s newest collaborator was hit with potential litigation regarding alleged digital privacy violations in its NYC brick-and-mortar Amazon Go stores.

After linking one’s MyPanera account to Amazon’s contactless, palm-scanning Amazon One software, customers reportedly will be able to pay for meals, receive menu recommendations based on preferences, and earn rewards points without any physical card requirements. While currently limited to a handful of locations in St. Louis, the popular bakery-cafe chain intends to expand the feature to additional US locations in the coming months.

Palm scanners were first utilized within Amazon Go stores following a public launch in 2018. The workerless convenience shops faced immediate scrutiny from critics for its perceived overreliance on invasive data tech, as well as its impact on human labor forces. In 2021, New York City passed a law requiring businesses that collect, store, or share “biometric identifiers” to alert customers to this fact via signs posted near store entrances. Earlier this month, however, the New York Times revealed many stores still failed to abide by this obligation, allegedly including at least one Amazon Go location. The lawsuit alleges that Amazon only began posting signage following the NYT’s report.

Filed last Thursday in US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit claims Amazon Go amasses customers’ biometric data via Amazon One palm scanners alongside computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion to “measure the shape and size of each customer’s body to identify customers, track where they move in the stores, and determine what they have purchased.”

[Related: ChatGPT is quietly co-authoring books on Amazon.]

“We all have our own favorite bread recipes, but none of them use biometric data as an ingredient,” Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) and an attorney for the proposed lawsuit said via email when asked about the timing of Amazon’s Panera partnership. Cahn believes it’s “absurd” Panera would utilize the palm scanners so soon after Amazon may fight litigation over the tech’s uses.

“I don’t understand why the company isn’t taking customer’s privacy and safety more seriously,” he added.

In an email to PopSci, a Panera spokesperson stressed that the company’s partnership is with Amazon One specifically, and not Amazon Go. “Amazon One is the entirely opt-in, palm-scanning device,” they clarified. They declined to comment on the lawsuit regarding Amazon’s data policies within its Amazon Go locations.

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