Technology

Are generative AI models mass plagiarism machines? Many people would argue yes. For creating products that regurgitate other people's content, AI companies get billions of dollars in investments, while the creators whose works were purloined by the machines get nada. That's the way Bill Gross, a tech entrepreneur, sees it anyway, and he says he […]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has finally issued pain management recommendations for doctors, nurses, and other clinicians who insert intra-uterine devices (IUDs) in patients — but for many of us who've undergone the excruciatingly painful procedure, it feels like too little, too late. As the Washington Post and other outlets report about the […]

Equation Station In a new study, scientists take on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) community, determining that they may have a crisis of imagination. Speaking to Universe Today, Columbia astronomer and paper co-writer David Kipping suggested that so-called "SETI optimists" may be missing the forest for the trees as they seek answers within our Milky […]

In mice trials, researchers have discovered a molecule that they say can restore both cognition and even memories lost to Alzheimer's disease. In a press release about the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the University of California at Los Angeles explained that the synthesized molecule works much […]

Tears of a Cat In a new study, researchers found that cats seem to experience grief when other pets they live with die — and those feelings can even extend to dogs. As NPR reports, researchers from Michigan's Oakland University found that after another cat or dog in their household passed away, cats ate and played […]

Digging Deep A team of researchers have recovered the deepest sample ever taken of the Earth's mantle from a section of seafloor in the Atlantic Ocean. At more than three quarters of a mile in continuous length, the cylindrical sample is also the largest of its kind. The drilling was carried out last year, but […]

SpaceX has launched over 6,000 Starlink internet satellites into low-Earth orbit and is planning to launch as many as 42,000 additional ones in the upcoming years. But how exactly their presence in the Earth's orbit impacts the environment remains a mystery. Regulation, in particular, hasn't caught up with commercial entities like SpaceX building out mega-constellations […]

The rivalry between two chess players in Russia turned almost deadly when one player was accused of poisoning a game board with liquid mercury, making her opponent sick. The suspect, chess player Amina Abakarova, 40, was captured on surveillance video taking something out of her bag and then smearing a substance on a chess board […]

  Facebook has been overrun with "slop," AI-generated images of dubious, nonsensical junk. Images like "shrimp Jesus, an 18-wheeler overflowing with babies, or a police officer holding a massive holy bible while wading through flood water, are regularly going viral on the ancient social media network. In an effort to chase down where all of […]

Total Snitch A security researcher has demonstrated that Microsoft's Copilot AI can easily be manipulated into pulling an organization's sensitive data, including emails and bank transactions. On top of that, Wired reports, it can also be weaponized into a powerful phishing machine that requires little of the effort usually needed to carry out these kinds […]