How Walmart, Delta, Chevron, T-Mobile, Starbucks, Nestle and AstraZeneca are using AI to monitor employee messages […] can see how employees of a certain age group or in a particular geography are responding to a new corporate policy or marketing campaign […] AI models, built to read text and process images, can also identify bullying, harassment, discrimination, noncompliance, pornography, nudity and other behaviors

A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco

Viagra may help reduce Alzheimer’s risk, according to a new study Previously: Viagra was originally developed for the treatment high blood pressure (hypertension) and angina pectoris (chest pain due to heart disease)

Women who had their first period at age 12 or younger had a decreased risk for dementia. Women who experienced menopause after the age of 50 had a 24 percent decreased risk for dementia.

smokers who quit smoking before age 40 can expect to live almost as long as those who never smoked

24 million Americans have an autoimmune diseases. Can these therapies cure them?

Growing evidence indicates that the benefits stemming from dance are in both physical and mental dimensions, and these advantages are not limited to specific people. Compared to the non-exercise group, dance can ameliorate VO2peak [maximum rate of oxygen consumption attainable during physical exertion], blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, physical fitness, cognitive disorders, and mental health. For physically inactive females, Ljubojevic et al. observed that an 8-week Zumba achieved effective enhancements in body composition and respiratory functionality. Similar improvements were also identified within the diseased population. A pilot study demonstrated that dance can improve body mass index(BMI) and body fat percentage(Fat(%)), while also enhancing their physical activity. People with Parkinson’s disease can achieve physical(balance, functional mobility, and cognition) and mental(self-esteem, quality of life, and motor symptoms) improvements from dancing.

One year in the life of a part-time hermit

Balancing cube

Scientists can reverse aging in mice — Using proteins that can turn an adult cell into a stem cell, Sinclair and his team have reset aging cells in mice to earlier versions of themselves.

We found that, on the whole, those who made it to their hundredth birthday tended to have lower levels of glucose, creatinine and uric acid from their sixties onwards.

Chernobyl’s mutant wolves appear to have developed resistance to cancer, study finds

Indian model Poonam Pandey fakes death to raise cervical cancer awareness

Previously: The courts believed that the actors who portrayed the missing film crew and the native actress featured in the impalement scene were killed for the camera. Compounding matters was the fact that the supposedly deceased actors had signed contracts with the production which ensured that they would not appear in any type of media, motion pictures, or commercials for one year following the film’s release. This was done in order to promote the idea that Cannibal Holocaust was truly the recovered footage of missing documentarians.

Adults who are married report being far happier than those in any other relationship status, according to a Gallup Poll — “In my practice over the last decade I’ve noticed a gradual shift from the ‘romantic marriage’ to the ‘companionate marriage,’ meaning that people are increasingly choosing spouses at the outset who are more like best friends than passion-partners”

A Grand Bargain Is Emerging in the Supreme Court’s Trump Cases The Supreme Court unanimously, or nearly so, holds that Colorado does not have the power to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, but in a separate case it rejects his immunity argument and makes Trump go on trial this spring or summer on federal election subversion charges

Add coffee stains to your documents

stract.com

Did you know that there’s a building on wheels in New York City?

Why China Can’t Export Its Model of Surveillance — It’s Not the Tech That Empowers Big Brother in Beijing—It’s the Informants

Epicurus considered pleasure to be the highest value, the attainment of which must be subordinated to all actions. He understood it as the absence of pain and suffering, as the absence of anxiety and emotional turmoil, as inner order, harmony and unshakeable peace of mind. […] Epicurus became very popular in Athens but, as often happens, over-popularity does not pay.

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005), Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links (1989) [more]

Casey Neistat + Apple Vision Pro

Look at the dot (and breathe) for just 1 minute to improve mental focus for your next task

Scientists have 3D bioprinted functioning human brain tissue

When the human genome was sequenced in 2001, many thought that it would prove to be an ‘instruction manual’ for life. But the genome turned out to be no blueprint. In fact, most genes don’t have a pre-set function that can be determined from their DNA sequence. Instead, genes’ activity — whether they are expressed or not, for instance, or the length of protein that they encode — depends on myriad external factors, from the diet to the environment in which the organism develops. And each trait can be influenced by many genes.

This AI learnt language by seeing the world through a baby’s eyes

An underground website called OnlyFake is claiming to use “neural networks” to generate realistic looking photos of fake IDs for just $15

Zero-knowledge security model: an introduction

TikTok is fumbling critical business partnerships and cluttering its app with unpopular features.

Many night-flying insects hear the sonar sounds of attacking bats and take evasive action. Among moths, evasive flight is often accompanied by the production of ultrasonic sounds. Three functions of these sounds have been proposed: to startle the bat, to warn of distastefulness, or to “jam” the bat’s sonar system.

Scientists now think they know why tardigrades are so indestructible

Last month, Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon office responsible for investigating unexplained aerial events, stepped down. He said he was tired of being harassed and accused of hiding evidence, and he lamented an erosion in “our capacity for rational, evidence-based critical thinking.” No, aliens haven’t visited the Earth. Why are so many smart people insisting otherwise?

Finance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer’ — “(In the) multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone [he saw] was fake”

Chinese spy pigeon in lockup during 8 months

Our data revealed that overall, a ketogenic diet was associated with a significant upregulation of pathways and enrichment in cells associated with the adaptive immune system. In contrast, a vegan diet had a significant impact on the innate immune system […] Our study revealed that a 2-week dietary intervention can impose a striking shift in host immunity, superseding genetics, age, sex, ethnicity, race and even body mass index.

The innate immune system is the body’s first line of defense against germs entering the body. It responds in the same way to all germs and foreign substances […] The adaptive immune system takes over if the innate immune system is not able to destroy the germs. It specifically targets the type of germ that is causing the infection. But to do that it first needs to identify the germ. This means that it is slower to respond than the innate immune system, but when it does it is more accurate. It also has the advantage of being able to “remember” germs, so the next time a known germ is encountered, the adaptive immune system can respond faster.

A fentanyl cook — who calls himself Miguel — carries out macabre experiments on a handful of consumers, who test the merchandise before it’s shipped off to the United States. They start with one dose: one third pure and the rest, cut. The “human guinea pigs” inject it in front of him. If they say, “No, it didn’t rock me, it didn’t put me to sleep, add more,” the percentage increases.

Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?

the “only physician-owned Diaper Spa in the world” and says it is open to “all diaper-wearing individuals who seek acceptance, respite, and care” […] All clients are required to wear adult diapers.

How many people randomly had a dream about a plane crash the night before 9/11 and have believed they were psychic ever since?

A typical lawn sprinkler features various nozzles arranged at angles on a rotating wheel; when water is pumped in, they release jets that cause the wheel to rotate. But what would happen if the water were sucked into the sprinkler instead? In which direction would the wheel turn then, or would it even turn at all? That’s the essence of the “reverse sprinkler” problem that physicists like Richard Feynman, among others, have grappled with since the 1940s. Now, applied mathematicians at New York University think they’ve cracked the conundrum. […]

“We found that the reverse sprinkler spins in the ‘reverse’ or opposite direction when taking in water as it does when ejecting it, and the cause is subtle and surprising.” […] found that the reverse sprinkler rotates a good 50 times slower than a regular sprinkler, but it operates along similar mechanisms, which is surprising. […]

The reverse sprinkler problem is associated with Feynman because he popularized the concept, but it actually dates back to a chapter in Ernst Mach’s 1883 textbook The Science of Mechanics (Die Mechanik in Ihrer Entwicklung Historisch-Kritisch Dargerstellt). Mach’s thought experiment languished in relative obscurity until a group of Princeton University physicists began debating the issue in the 1940s.

{ ArsTechnica | Continue reading }

acrylic on canvas { David Hockney, A Lawn Being Sprinkled, 1967 }

Meta is the world’s ‘single largest marketplace for paedophiles’, says New Mexico attorney general — Internal company documents obtained by the attorney general’s office as part of its investigation have also revealed that the company estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day.

Meta’s Reality Labs loses record $4.65 billion ahead of Apple’s Vision Pro launch — Meta continues to sink billions of dollars a quarter into developing the metaverse. The metaverse division has now lost more than $42 billion since the end of 2020.

Meta’s $197 Billion Surge Is Biggest in Stock-Market History — It was only a couple of years back the Facebook owner suffered the single biggest market value destruction in stock-market history. But the company has come a long way since then, on Thursday it dazzled shareholders with yet another impressive quarterly earnings report as the social media giant focuses on cutting back costs and shoring up billions in profits. The stock rose as much as 21% Friday, poised to add roughly $200 billion to its market capitalization. This would be the biggest single-session market value addition, eclipsing the $190 billion gains made by Apple and Amazon in 2022.

The private data of European citizens can legally be surveilled by U.S. intelligence agencies, but unlike Americans, Europeans have no recourse under American law if agencies overreach. As Europe began to implement its stringent 2018 data-privacy law, that imbalance sat badly with EU authorities […] The 2020 ruling officially halted the flow of personal data between the EU and the United States, and created the risks of large fines for companies that continued to put European data on U.S. servers. Meta, most prominently, was hit with a $1.2 billion fine in May for continuing to transfer European user data to its U.S. servers. Biden’s proposal for a new data court created a path for Europeans to access American surveillance protections, and in July, European officials declared it adequate to the task, reopening a smoother transatlantic data trade. The court never officially opened for business, at least not publicly. […] The court’s location is a secret, and the Department of Justice will not say if it has taken a case yet, or when it will. Though the court has a clear mandate — ensuring Europeans their privacy rights under U.S. law — its decisions will also be kept a secret

“In the past 20 years, price per earnings was something you could grasp; today [it’s] all over the place. It’s a modern accident, an accident of history, we have no idea how to value companies. It’s mostly narratives and stories about the future to raise money so you can sell to someone else. Think of the number of people who made a lot of money in venture capital off of companies that ended up making no money. Someone got stuck with that bill at the end of the meal.” […] Currently the American national debt stands at $34.14 trillion—about $100,000 for every person in the U.S.

Craig Wright Dr. has long claimed he is the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. However, due to a lack of conclusive proof, few in the industry believe him. A trial in London may bring us closer to finding the answer.

Crypto Mining Consumes a Mind-Boggling 2% of U.S. Electricity

Germany: Police seize bitcoins worth €2 billion

Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet. Google Search’s “cached” links have long been an alternative way to load a website that was down or had changed, but now the company is killing them off.

Can This A.I.-Powered Search Engine Replace Google? It Has for Me. — A start-up called Perplexity shows what’s possible for a search engine built from scratch with artificial intelligence.

unelected political elites such as lobbyists, civil servants, journalists, and the like exhibit egocentrism bias, rather than partisan confirmation bias, astheir perceptions about others’ opinions systematically correspond to their own policy preferences.

The US is dealing with an “out-of-control” epidemic of sexually transmitted infections […] it is the recent rise in syphilis that is concerning health officials most.

Why flying insects gather at artificial light

How to do things if you’re not that smart and don’t have any talent

For millennia, people slept in two shifts – once in the evening, and once in the morning. How did the habit disappear?

Should you flush with toilet lid up or down? Study says it doesn’t matter

NJ animal shelter will name feral cat after an ex, then neuter it

Half of all surgical patients receiving anesthesia are females. Anesthetics affect sexually dimorphic brain regions involved in sleep and arousal. We demonstrate that the female brain in mice and humans is resistant to the hypnotic effects of volatile anesthetics. Sex differences in anesthetic sensitivity are largely due to acute effects of sex hormones. […] It may explain the higher incidence of awareness under anesthesia in females.

A new study suggests a link between gut inflammation and changes in the brain and declines in memory, further supporting a connection between the gut and brain in Alzheimer’s disease. […] as levels of calprotectin, an inflammatory marker, increased in the volunteer study participants’ stool samples, so did the amount of amyloid plaque accumulating in the brains of those with Alzheimer’s disease. […] Even volunteers who did not have Alzheimer’s disease had lower scores on a memory test correlated with higher levels of calprotectin. […] The concept that the gut and brain are functionally connected has become more prominent in the last 10 years and this study offers some of the first evidence that asymptomatic gut inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease may be linked.

Although Florida has more than an estimated 1.25 million alligators, attacks by the reptiles are rare – there were 442 unprovoked bite attacks from 1948 to 2021, with 26 of the bites resulting in death

First aircraft to fly on Mars perished on 18 January during its 72nd flight — It was supposed to make only five flights and last about a month, but ultimately it traversed 17 kilometres of the red planet and flew for a total of nearly 129 minutes between 2021 and 2024. An image that the helicopter took of the ground after the flight ended shows the shadow of one of the blades, with at least one-quarter of it missing. The helicopter can still communicate with Earth, at least for now, but it will not fly again.

STOP KNOWING HOW TO READ

Hair Sample That Put a Man in Prison Turned Out to Be Dog Hair

Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect’s Face — and Tried to Run Facial Recognition on It

5 Deaf Children Have Hearing Restored by AAV-Based Gene Therapy — Hearing loss affects more than 1.5 billion people worldwide

undergraduates’ IQs have steadily fallen from roughly 119 in 1939 to a mean of 102 in 2022, just slightly above the population average of 100 […] a degree has become increasingly meaningless, as more people have one.

Every year spent in school or university improves life expectancy, study says — Analysis also says not attending school is as deadly as smoking or heavy drinking

Why do some people feel tired all the time?

the U.S. government just sold its helium stockpile, that supplies up to 30% of the country’s helium. MRI machines need thousands of liters of liquid helium to function

San Francisco sues California over ‘unsafe,’ ‘disruptive’ self-driving cars — Waymo and Cruise have both cited self-reported data that their robot cars have a superior track record to human drivers

Initially focused on cybercrime, the proposed UN Treaty has alarmingly evolved into an expansive surveillance tool. — Historically, cybercrime legislation has been exploited to target journalists and security researchers, suppress dissent and whistleblowers, endanger human rights defenders, limit free expression, and justify unnecessary and disproportionate state surveillance measures.

It’s only a matter of time before disinformation leads to disaster

The frequently repeated view that men are attracted to women with low waist–hip ratios (WHRs) and low body mass indices (BMI) (in well-nourished populations) because these traits indicate health and fertility does not appear to be well supported. Indeed, a low WHR and BMI are most likely to occur in young women in their late teens who have never been pregnant (nulligravidas), women who have demonstrably lower fertility and greater liability to infection than women in their 20s. […]

A nubile woman is a nulligravida who has recently completed physical growth, puberty, and sexual development. This is usually accomplished 3–4 years after menarche in the mid to late teens when female reproductive value is maximal. As noted, women in the nubile age group have the lowest WHRs and, in well-nourished populations, have lower BMIs than women in their 20s, traits strongly associated with attractiveness. […]

Using data for 1.7 million first births from 1990 U.S. natality and mortality records, we compared outcomes for women with first births (primiparas) aged 16–20 years (when first births typically occur in forager and subsistence groups) with those aged 21–25 years. The younger primiparas had a much lower risk of potentially life-threatening complications of labor and delivery and, when evolutionarily novel risk factors were controlled, fetuses which were significantly more likely to survive despite lower birth weights.

{ Evolutionary Psychology | Continue reading }

Harvard morgue theft ring stole body parts, sold brains, turned human flesh into leather, officials say

Can autoimmune diseases be cured? Scientists see hope at last — After decades of frustration and failed attempts, scientists might finally be on the cusp of developing therapies to restore immune ‘tolerance’ in conditions such as diabetes, lupus and multiple sclerosis.

‘Can you walk a kilometre?’ The question that predicts fracture risk “We’ve discovered that trouble walking even short distances appears closely tied to higher fracture risk over the following five years”

Forensics gone wrong: When DNA snares the innocent

Most people who regularly drink more than the recommended limit of 14 units of alcohol per week (about six pints of normal strength beer [4% ABV] or about six average [175ml] glasses of wine [14% ABV]) will have a fatty liver. In people with fatty liver, after only two to three weeks of giving up alcohol, the liver can heal and looks and functions as good as new.

How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus — “First, placenta the only temporary organ. Second, it’s the baby’s lung, it’s a waste-disposal system, and it’s a nutrition source.” […] “Half of the fetus is maternal, the other half is paternal, and yet the pregnancy can go on for nine months without the mom’s body destroying it,” Barroeta said. “And that, from an immune standpoint, is fascinating, because if you were to receive a piece of someone else and insert that under your skin, that would not last there for three days, your body will actively reject it.” […] This wall of cells keeps mom and baby working in harmony and not killing each other. […] When evolutionary biologists mapped the genomes of these cells, they found that the protein that allowed these cells to fuse into a wall, called syncytin, didn’t look like it came from human DNA. It looked more like HIV. According to Chuong, this protein actually came from an ancient retrovirus, the most famous of which is HIV.

Buffalofish live beyond 100 — and get healthier as they age. What can humans learn from them?

Last month, former president Donald Trump dismissed an ad on Fox News featuring video of his well-documented public gaffes, claiming the footage was generated by AI. […] AI creates a “liar’s dividend,” said Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies digital propaganda and misinformation. “When you actually do catch a police officer or politician saying something awful, they have plausible deniability” in the age of AI. […] Trump is not alone in seizing this advantage. Late last year, a grainy video surfaced of a ruling-party Taiwanese politician entering a hotel with a woman, indicating he was having an affair. Commentators and other politicians quickly came to his defense, saying the footage was AI-generated — though it remains unclear whether it actually was.

When does “no” mean no? Insights from sex robots

Vomit color chart

Madonna sued over late concert start by fans who ‘had to get up early’ the next morning

You Can Now Face Jail Time in Las Vegas if You Stop Walking in Certain Areas

A Canadian man who says he’s been falsely charged with orchestrating a complex e-commerce scam is seeking to clear his name. His case appears to involve “triangulation fraud”

Teachers say mobile phones make their lives a living hell – so one Massachusetts school barred them

A new paper released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found about 240,000 particles in the average liter of bottled water, most of which were “nanoplastics” — Scientists have also found microplastics in tap water, but in smaller amounts.

Brains Are Not Required When It Comes to Thinking and Solving Problems—Simple Cells Can Do It

Many human morphological and behavioral characteristic — musicality, sense of rhythm, use of dissonances, entrainment, bipedalism, long head hair, long legs, strong body odor, armpit hair, traditions of body painting and cannibalism — are explained as predator avoidance tactics of an aposematic (warning display) defense strategy. […] Unlike crypsis, which is based on the strategy of remaining invisible, silent, odorless, and fleeing as quickly as possible if discovered by a predator, aposematism is the alternative defense strategy of intimidating predators by remaining visible, being noisy, presenting odor, and, rather than fleeing when confronted by a predator, actively approaching and threatening the predator with body size, loud sounds, odors, and fearless behavior. […] Humans are among the very rare terrestrial species that sing, though arguably some carnivores (e.g., wolves and coyotes) can also sing, and sing in choruses […] Early humans came down from the trees, and tree-living birds and primates (including a lesser ape, gibbons) are among the most ardent singers, so it would be logical to propose that our arboreal common (humans and apes) ancestor was a singer. The long-standing question that comes with this suggestion is why do terrestrial apes not sing? […] Many singing and noisy arboreal species (birds and monkeys) maintain silence whenever they visit the ground as a cryptic defense strategy from potential ground predators. Most likely, the ancestors of chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos stopped singing for the same reason—maintaining cryptic cover while on the ground. On the other hand, in a strategically different move, early humans continued singing, therefore changing their survival strategy from cryptic into aposematic. […] I propose that not stopping singing was probably the first and deciding move toward the new aposematic strategy of defense in the hominin lineage, followed by the other elements of aposematic display.

Many AI researchers think fakes will become undetectable

Winston Churchill’s false teeth are up for sale

Search still on for missing jawbone of whale believed mistaken for submarine and bombed during WWII

Lichen survived 18 months attached to outside of International Space Station and raises prospect life could exist on Mars

Trolley Problem Solution

Private equity firms are increasingly buying hospitals across the US, and when they do, patients suffer, according to two separate reports. Specifically, the equity firms cut corners, slash services, lay off staff, lower quality of care, take on substantial debt, and reduce charity care, leading to lower ratings and more medical errors, reports collectively find

Apple again banned from selling watches in U.S. with blood oxygen sensor. […] The ban stems from an intellectual property dispute with Masimo, a medical device company. In October, the International Trade Commission found that Apple’s blood oxygen sensors had infringed on Masimo’s intellectual property. […] Masimo had alleged that Apple had poached several of its top executives and copied its technology after declining a partnership.

“Is it the first (Tesla) dud? I think objectively, yes,” Conner told me in a recent chat.

Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse

Google lays off “hundreds” more as ad division switches to AI-powered sales

Altman believes future AI products will need to allow “quite a lot of individual customization” and “that’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable,” because AI will give different answers for different users, based on their values preferences and possibly on what country they reside in.

AI Sleeper Agents More: AI poisoning could turn open models into destructive “sleeper agents,” says Anthropic

Venice’s Secret Service organized intelligence is not – as commonly thought – an invention of the modern industrial state, but already existed in Renaissance Venice of the 1500s and early 1600s.

data shows a higher number of conflict deaths in Ethiopia than in Ukraine […] 65% of men in Ukraine aged 20 to 24 years have fled the country, or died in the conflict [Global Peace Index ]

Orchids were Darwin’s “abominable mystery.” They continue to elude science—and efforts to save them.

Research indicates that staying up all night might have a transient antidepressant effect. Acute sleep deprivation in mice increased dopamine release and triggered brain changes that could alleviate depression. Some studies show similar results in humans. While a single sleepless night might lift the spirits, chronic sleep loss is detrimental to physical and mental health.

Why I ended up making my own mattress […] that is both organic and vegan

Which word begins with “y” and looks like an axe in this picture?

Seeing Blue at Night May Not Be What’s Keeping You Up After All

The best way to predict if you’ll benefit from psychedelic therapy is a questionnaire asking if you’ve met God. Where did it come from, and what is it really measuring?

The internet largely runs beneath the oceans. Here’s how it works

Amazon Is Selling Products With AI-Generated Names Like “I Cannot Fulfill This Request It Goes Against OpenAI Use Policy”

2023: Artifact, the personalized news reader built by Instagram’s co-founders, is now open to the public, no sign-up required. 2024: Shutting down Artifact

they casted all identical twins to give the audience the illusion that the models walk into this transform capsule and walk out in a different outfit in seconds [more]

Flaubert Versus the World “The only way not to be unhappy is to shut yourself up in Art and count all the rest as nothing.”

AI girlfriend bots are already flooding OpenAI’s GPT store […] The AI girlfriend bots go against OpenAI’s usage policy, which was updated when the GPT store launched yesterday (Jan. 10). The company bans GPTs “dedicated to fostering romantic companionship or performing regulated activities.” […] OpenAI’s store rules being broken on the second day of operation illustrates how hard it could be to regulate GPTs.

OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for “Military and Warfare”

Are fingerprints unique? Not really, AI-based study finds

Authors keep finding what appear to be AI-generated imitations and summaries of their books on Amazon. There’s little they can do to rein in the rip-offs.

Over the last month or so, there’s been an uptick in people complaining that the chatbot has become lazy. Sometimes it just straight-up doesn’t do the task you’ve set it. Other times it will stop halfway through whatever it’s doing and you’ll have to plead with it to keep going. Occasionally it even tells you to just do the damn research yourself. So what’s going on? Well, here’s where things get interesting. Nobody really knows.

OpenAI reveals how many ChatGPT for Enterprise customers it has (so far…) — 260 business customers with more than 150,000 distinct […] pricing for ChatGPT for Enterprise varies and is not openly disclosed on OpenAI’s website, but one user on Reddit was quoted at $60 per seat

the group Public Citizen petitioned the state California to reevaluate OpenAI’s nonprofit status

Volkswagen is bringing ChatGPT into its cars and SUVs

What’s next for AI in 2024

The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit — In September of this year, Google users discovered that the search engine was incorrectly telling people that eggs can melt. Why? Because instead of surfacing websites, Google now grabs snapshots of pages in a drop down menu, allowing users to read search results without clicking on anything. This practice often grabs incorrect information, like an AI-generated answer from Quora that insisted that eggs can melt when they definitely cannot.

More Than Half of the World Will Be Obese By 2035

Researchers have found a gene that links deafness to cell death in the inner ear in humans –- creating new opportunities for averting hearing loss

New research suggests that having books or plants in your video background inspires a greater deal of trust in calls

The United States just grew in size by 1 million square kilometers – that’s almost twice the area of Spain.

Brazil Arrests Man Suspected of Laundering Nearly US$2.66 Billion

We are less able to cook than we were 30 or 40 years ago

New Study Finds Microplastics in 88% of protein food samples tested. The samples were drawn from 16 different protein types* destined for U.S. consumers, including seafood, pork, beef, chicken, tofu, and three different plant-based meat alternatives […] suggesting that humans are likely eating microplastics no matter the source of protein they choose.

OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material Related: Generative AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem

Holy shit! I finally figured it out! It took me a long time! When OpenAI filed as a “nonprofit corporation organized exclusively for charitable and/or educational purposes” with an interest in “public benefit” what they meant was that they would ask for (& lobby for) the donations of all intellectual property from all humans, everywhere. Brilliant!

asml’s market value has quadrupled in the past five years , to €260bn ($285bn), making it Europe’s most valuable technology firm [asml is a manufacturer of chipmaking tools] […] At the end of 2023 asml’s operating margin exceeded 34%, staggering for a hardware business and more than that of Apple […] asml holds a monopoly on a key link in the world’s most critical supply chain: without its kit it is next to impossible to make cutting-edge computer processors, such as those that go into smartphones and data centres where artificial intelligence (ai) is trained. With global semiconductor sales forecast to double to $1.3trn by 2032, every big country and every big chipmaker wants asml’s gear.

THE TRUE STORY OF THE ATTACK OF THE NAKED SHORT SELLERS

An attorney for Musk, Alex Spiro, said that Musk is “regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test.” […] imagine being the SpaceX employee in charge of randomly drug testing Elon Musk. Tiptoe into Musk’s office after his night out not getting into Berghain and say “hey Mr. Musk it’s time for your random drug test, here’s a cup.” What if he says no? What if he hands you back the cup and it is just full of cocaine? What are you going to do about it? You work for him and he is not, like, a chill and understanding guy. Spiro’s non-denial comes from this Wall Street Journal story about how Elon Musk “has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms,” as well as using ketamine recreationally, that “his drug use is ongoing, especially his consumption of ketamine,” that people close to him “are concerned it could cause a health crisis,” and that “illegal drug use would likely be a violation of federal policies that could jeopardize SpaceX’s billions of dollars in government contracts.”

A mere 700 IT jobs were added in the US last year compared to 267,000 the year prior

2,778 researchers who had published in top-tier artificial intelligence (AI) venues gave predictions on the pace of AI progress […] The aggregate forecasts give at least a 50% chance of AI systems achieving several milestones by 2028, including autonomously constructing a payment processing site from scratch, creating a song indistinguishable from a new song by a popular musician, and autonomously downloading and fine-tuning a large language model. If science continues undisrupted, the chance of unaided machines outperforming humans in every possible task was estimated at 10% by 2027, and 50% by 2047. […] the chance of all human occupations becoming fully automatable was forecast to reach 10% by 2037, and 50% as late as 2116.

one of the mobile phones that had been sucked out of the Boeing Co. 737 Max 9 jet’s cabin remained in functioning condition after a 16,000-foot tumble, according to a post on X

OpenAI lobbying for copyright law revision in the UK More: In a submission to the House of Lords communications and digital select committee, OpenAI said it could not train large language models such as its GPT-4 model - the technology behind ChatGPT - without access to copyrighted work.

The New York Times Launches a Very Strong Case Against Microsoft and OpenAI [NYT Complaint]

Stanford scientists boost hypnotizability with transcranial magnetic brain stimulation — Around two-thirds of adults show some level of hypnotizability, with about 15% being highly responsive. These high responders can achieve remarkable feats like undergoing surgeries without anesthesia solely under hypnosis.

Just How Healthy Is Salmon? Salmon packs more DHA and EPA omega-3s than almost any other food, apart from other fatty fish such as herring and sardines. […] Research suggests these fatty acids reduce arterial stiffness, which is associated with high blood pressure, and they may also have anti-inflammatory effects that could be protective against obesity and Type-2 diabetes. omega-3s are essential to early life brain development, and emerging evidence suggests that consuming them regularly may guard against age-related cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. […] “The main finding of our work was that there’s not much difference between wild and farmed” […] Farmed Atlantic salmon, for example, tended to have lower mercury levels than wild-caught varieties. However , all the samples contained levels of mercury far below international safety standards. “Even if you ate salmon every day, mercury is not something you should be concerned about” […] Research has found that salmon, whether wild or farmed, does not contain harmful levels of these toxins. That’s partly because it doesn’t live long enough to absorb a lot of them.

Card game rules

How many times must you fold a paper to reach the Moon?

One year ago we flooded a forest (video)

Individuals with increased pain sensitivity were found to be more likely to support and even vote for politicians from the opposing political camp.

a new study says that contact with cigarette smoke, even if it’s on your clothes after coming from a smoky environment, can damage your dog’s health as well.

Examination of more recent IQ data indicate that IQ of university students and university graduates dropped to the average of the general population. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s.

people throughout human history and across diverse societies have seldom invoked “chance” – a concept that has gained significant importance in contemporary, modern societies – as an explanation

The issue with multi-tasking at a brain level, is that two tasks performed at the same time often compete for common neural pathways – like two intersecting streams of traffic on a road. […] Generally, the more skilled you are on a primary motor task, the better able you are to juggle another task at the same time. Skilled surgeons, for example, can multitask more effectively than residents […] When walking, it takes much longer to complete a path if it also involves cognitive effort along the way.

Cybersecurity guru Mikko Hyppönen’s 5 biggest AI threats for 2024 — “With Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Midjourney you can just generate unlimited amounts of completely plausible Airbnbs which no one will be able to find.” […] AI is already writing malware. Hyppönen’s team has discovered three worms that launch LLMs to rewrite code every time the malware replicates. None have been found in real networks yet, but they’ve been published in GitHub — and they work. […] Another emerging concern involves zero-day exploits, which are discovered by attackers before developers have created a solution to the problem. AI can detect these threats — but it can also create them.

sacred sexuality, grimoires, legendary creatures, and more sacred texts

Ex-Meta employee Madelyn Machado recently posted a TikTok video claiming that she was getting paid $190,000 a year to do nothing. Another Meta employee, also on TikTok, posted that “Meta was hiring people so that other companies couldn’t have us, and then they were just kind of like hoarding us like Pokémon cards.”

The big innovation in crypto in early 2024, the thing that has driven up prices, is anticipation that the US Securities and Exchange Commission will approve a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund this month. Then ETF providers — including traditional financial firms like BlackRock and Fidelity — will be able to hold Bitcoins in a pot, and institutional and retail investors will be able to buy and sell shares of that pot to get exposure to Bitcoin’s price without actually owning Bitcoin. This, it is thought, will increase the price of Bitcoin. […] Some investors want to be crypto investors, but a lot of institutional investors very much do not — they do not want to spend time or money on understanding blockchains or keeping track of private keys or complying with SEC requirements about crypto custody — but still want to own Bitcoin. Owning regular shares of stock that happen to be Bitcoins is, for them, very useful; it domesticates Bitcoin into the regular financial system.

Firm develops jet fuel made entirely from human poo

What Did We Get Stuck In Our Rectums Last Year?

What Horrible Things Did We Do To Our Penises Last Year?

In 1967, Singapore’s political and administrative leadership unexpectedly confronted a ‘pre-modern’ public health scare that threatened their still fragile aspirations for national development. Hundreds of people suddenly became overwhelmed by intense alarm. Sufferers (mostly men, but sometimes women; almost entirely ethnically Chinese) suddenly believed that their genitals were disappearing. This medical condition, known as Koro, was sparked by a false rumour among residents of Singapore that eating pork from pigs vaccinated against swine fever caused genital shrinkage. [PDF | more]

I moved to Finland after reading it’s the happiest place on Earth. It’s exceeded all my expectations.

A list of ideas that help explain how the world works (90% of everything is crap, noticing an idea everywhere you look as soon as it’s brought to your attention in a way that makes you overestimate its prevalence, avoiding effort because you don’t want to deal with the emotional pain of that effort failing, people can’t be fully rational because your brain is a hormone machine…)