Explosive Strength

Scientists have discovered a star in the Andromeda Galaxy that explodes every year — the first of its kind in the known universe.

“When we first discovered that M31N 2008-12a erupted every year, we were very surprised,” San Diego State University astrophysicist Allen Shafter said in a press release.

Blowing Up

Shafter and colleagues describe the peculiar star in a new paper published in the journal Nature.

M31N 2008-12a’s explosive routine, they believe, is due to its codependent relationship with a nearby star. It constantly sucks away its companion’s hydrogen, which explodes violently about once per year.

Big Bang

The constant explosions have created an extraordinary “super-remnant” of stellar debris that’s 400 light-years across.

The researchers suspect that the star is gearing up for an eventual supernova that will destroy it completely — and give scientists new insight into the type of activity that leads to a supernova.

“They are, in effect, the measuring rods that allow us to map the visible universe,” Shafter said. “Despite their importance, we don’t fully understand where they come from.”

READ MORE: This Star in Andromeda Has Exploded Every Year for Millions of Years [Astronomy]

More on Andromeda: When Galaxies Merge, the Black Holes in Their Hearts Fuse Together

The post Scientists Discovered a Star That Explodes Every Year appeared first on Futurism.

More here:
Scientists Discovered a Star That Explodes Every Year

Follow the Money

The senators and representatives who support or have co-sponsored the Green New Deal, the ambitious package of proposals to combat global climate change, have received far less money from the fossil fuel industry than their opponents, according to HuffPost.

The clear divide between legislators who’ve received large donations from oil, gas, and coal companies and those who haven’t shows that, as far as U.S. leaders are concerned, cash is still king.

Break it Down

The 12 senators who have agreed to co-sponsor the Green New Deal have taken a total of $1.1 million worth of fossil fuel campaign contributions over the course of their careers. The remaining 88 senators have taken a combined $59 million, according to HuffPost, which comes out to an average of 7.3 times as much money per lawmaker.

That doesn’t mean that the proposal’s supporters are off the hook — co-sponsoring senator Ron Wyden leads the pack with a total of over $290,000 of accepted fossil fuel industry donations. However, he and Bernie Sanders, who accepted the fourth-most fossil fuel donations among co-sponsors over his career, have both rejected such donations over the past two years, according to HuffPost.

Party Lines

The split over support for the Green New Deal — and accepting the fossil fuel industry’s money, is most clear among party lines — with the vast majority of oil, gas and coal donations going to Republicans.

“The Green New Deal shows the level of ambition that climate and energy policy could have if Big Oil, Gas, and Coal’s grip on Washington were weakened,” David Turnbull, a spokesman for Oil Change USA, told HuffPost. “The cosponsors of the Green New Deal have by and large bucked the influence of the out-of-control fossil fuel industry, and that shows in their willingness to stand up for bold climate solutions like what we see in the Green New Deal resolutions.”

READ MORE: Senators Not Backing Green New Deal Received On Average 7 Times As Much Fossil Fuel Cash [HuffPost]

More on the Green New Deal: Here’s What AOC’s Friends and Enemies Are Saying About the “Green New Deal”

The post Senators Opposing Green New Deal Are Drowning in Fossil Fuel Cash appeared first on Futurism.

Read more here:
Senators Opposing Green New Deal Are Drowning in Fossil Fuel Cash

Targeted Ads

Facebook’s massive stash of user data allows advertisers to target their ideal customers with specially-crafted messages. However, several investigations have found that Facebook helps advertisers target specific unsavory demographics, including literal neo-Nazis, according to The Los Angeles Times.

In a recent attempt to test Facebook’s advertising service, the LA Times found that it could pay just $25 to advertise to thousands of Facebook users interested in Nazi leaders Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Josef Mengele, as well as fans of Nazi music.

Déjà Vu

Every time Facebook is caught in another advertising scandal — like when Pro Publica found in 2017 that Facebook let advertisers target “Jew haters,” when The Intercept found in 2018 that Facebook let advertisers target “white genocide” conspiracy theorists, and this new development by the LA Times — the massive corporation offers a weak acknowledgment that such things shouldn’t happen.

“Most of these targeting options are against our policies and should have been caught and removed sooner,” Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne told The LA Times. “While we have an ongoing review of our targeting options, we clearly need to do more, so we’re taking a broader look at our policies and detection methods.”

Meanwhile, Facebook raked in $55 billion from advertising sales in 2018, according to the LA Times.

Who’s Driving This Thing?

In August, Facebook announced that it was deleting over 5,000 audience categories to prevent abuse or inappropriate uses of its advertising services. The LA Times reports that Facebook has maintained since 2017 that human employees review every single advertising category on the site.

Apparently, literal Nazis somehow managed to make the cut.

READ MORE: Facebook decided which users are interested in Nazis — and let advertisers target them directly [The Los Angeles Times]

More on Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg Insists That Facebook Promotes Privacy

The post Facebook Reportedly Let Marketers Advertise to Nazis appeared first on Futurism.

View original post here:
Facebook Reportedly Let Marketers Advertise to Nazis

New Heights

Virgin Galactic’s supersonic space plane, the VSS Unity, took off on its fifth test flight today. Mothership WhiteKnightTwo released the suborbital space plane at around 44,000 feet — and VSS Unity reached a new maximum altitude of 55.85 miles (89.9km.)

The second generation SpaceShipTwo, dubbed VSS Unity, reached an altitude of 51.4 miles (82.7  km) during its fourth test flight in December 2018. This time, the space plane traveled with a much heavier payload — close to full commercial weight — and a third crew member, Beth Moses, the first woman to enter space on a commercial US spacecraft.

Congratulations to our Chief Astronaut Instructor, Beth Moses / @VGChiefTrainer. Today, you became the 571st human to travel into space. pic.twitter.com/0Zn7iTfOe9

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) February 22, 2019

Expanding the Envelope

“Although we passed a major milestone in December, we still have a way to go in testing the many factors that can affect a flight,” reads a press release. “So, for this flight, we will be expanding the envelope to gather new and vital data essential to future tests and operations, including vehicle center of gravity.”

Take a look at the flight path our SpaceShipTwo will take during our fifth supersonic powered test flight. The flight window opens again tomorrow. More info on our flight test program can be found here https://t.co/FPuuC0NHoM pic.twitter.com/riEiledjo6

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) February 21, 2019

Virgin Galactic is developing the SpaceShipTwo platform to be part of its space tourism fleet, giving those who can afford a ticket — $250,000 isn’t cheap — a taste of micro-gravity.

But it’s not quite a ride to the International Space Station — that’d require it to fly to more than four times its current maximum altitude.

READ MORE: SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, Prepares For Fifth Supersonic Powered Test Flight [Virgin Galactic]

More on SpaceShipTwo: Did Virgin Galactic’s Spaceplane Reach Space? Depends Who You Ask

The post Virgin Galactic’s Space Plane Soars to New Heights appeared first on Futurism.

More here:
Virgin Galactic’s Space Plane Soars to New Heights

Deadly Deer

“Zombie deer disease” is spreading across the globe.

Known more formally as chronic wasting disease (CWD), the infection eats away at the brains of deer, elk, and moose. It causes the animals to show signs of dementia, manifesting as difficulty walking and eating, before they ultimately die — and experts are now warning that the disease could make the jump from animals to humans.

Global Issue

“Zombie deer disease” is spread by prions, pathogenic proteins that can’t be killed because they aren’t alive. They’re neither bacteria nor viruses, but once they infect an animal, they cause its cells to fold abnormally and clump together. Essentially, the prions “turn the brain into Swiss cheese,” evolutionary biologist Peter Larsen told VOX.

CWD spreads between animals through direct or indirect contact with an infected animal’s saliva, blood, urine, or other bodily fluids. As of January, 24 states and two Canadian provinces had reported cases of CWD, as have Norway, Finland, and South Korea.

In some locations, as many as 25 percent of animals are infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Zombie Apocalypse

To date, no human has contracted CWD, even if they’ve eaten meat from an infected animal. However, a study published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases in August did show that prions from an infected animal could infect human cells in a petri dish, so experts are concerned CWD could make the leap to humans.

“It is probable that human cases of chronic wasting disease associated with consumption with contaminated meat will be documented in the years ahead,” Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told the Minnesota legislature earlier this month. “It’s possible the number of human cases will be substantial and will not be isolated events.”

Act Now

Another prion disease — bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as “mad cow disease” — did make the leap to humans following an outbreak in cattle in the 1990s, and people are still dying because of it.

Experts are now urging lawmakers to invest in the development of better tests for CWD — ones that can detect the infection in live animals, soil, and processing centers — to avoid a similar scenario.

As Osterholm told VOX, “We don’t want to find out 10 years from now that we should have been doing something in 2019 but didn’t.”

READ MORE: “Zombie Deer Disease,” a Mad Cow-Like Infection Spreading in the US, Explained [VOX]

More on disease outbreaks: The WHO Is on the Lookout for the Disease That May Be the Next Global Pandemic

The post “Zombie” Deer Disease Could Spread to Humans, Experts Warn appeared first on Futurism.

Read the rest here:
“Zombie” Deer Disease Could Spread to Humans, Experts Warn

Medical Records

When two hospitals in Arizona went bankrupt in June, all of their medical records went into storage — meaning that patients can’t access them.

The Florence Hospital at Anthem and Gilbert Hospital took on various investors that are currently fighting over who’s to blame for the hospitals’ bankruptcy. Meanwhile, patients and their doctors are left waiting with no ability to pull their own medical records, according to The Arizona Republic — a worrisome indication of how reliant health care providers have become on digital records and how quickly those records can vanish.

Dangerous Standoff

The hospitals’ main largest investors were Indigo-DLI Holdings, Somerset Capital Group, and Medhost, the latter of which hosted the servers of medical records. The three companies are currently going back and forth with Resolute Commercial Services, which was appointed by a judge to manage the whole mess.

Each of the companies except for Indigo-DLI Holdings told The Arizona Republic that they sympathized for customers waiting on records, like 21-year-old Caitlin Secrist, who is waiting on a medical file from Florence Hospital that she needs before she can get a potentially life-saving surgery for her pancreatitis.

“My client does not object to any patient obtaining a copy of his/her records at the patient’s expense,” Indigo attorney Kyle Hirsch said in a written statement. “My client does object to being forced to pay the cost of patient record fulfillment.”

Single Payer

As The Arizona Republic reported, such a suggestion is utterly ridiculous — no single file could be pulled without hosting the entirety of the medical records servers. It would cost $45,000 to keep the servers up for 90 days.

“Without those records, we can’t go forward. We can’t make me better,” said Secrist, who has found a Johns Hopkins surgeon willing to perform a risky operation to treat the pancreatitis that has hospitalized her over a dozen times and nearly killed her twice if and only if she can obtain her complete medical history from the bankrupt hospitals.

“Having my life, practically, in the hands of a judge and people I don’t even know, who don’t even know my situation, it’s upsetting,” she said.

READ MORE: Arizona college student could die because she can’t get copies of her medical records [The Arizona Republic]

More on medical records: The Government Wants To Share Your Health Data. That’s Not A Terrible Idea.

The post Hospital Goes Out of Business, Pulls Medical Records Offline appeared first on Futurism.

Visit link:
Hospital Goes Out of Business, Pulls Medical Records Offline

Actor Arrested

Data from Uber helped land actor Jussie Smollett in jail.

On Wednesday, Chicago police officially charged Smollett, an actor with a role on the hit Fox series “Empire,” with filing a false police report, a felony crime.

The next day, Smollett turned himself in to authorities, and they shared details on how they built their case — and it turns out that Uber data played a significant role.

Rideshare Snitch

If you haven’t been following this bizarre case, around 2 am on Jan. 29, Smollett filed a police report in which he claimed to be the victim of a heinous hate crime.

According to Smollett, two men beat him, placed a noose around his neck, and poured what appeared to be bleach on him, all while yelling racial and homophobic slurs at the openly gay, African-American actor.

From surveillance footage recorded around the time and location of the incident, authorities knew the two suspected attackers had used an Uber.

“We followed up on the rideshare and that was the lead that we needed in order to identify the two persons of interest,” Chicago police commander Edward Wodnicki said during Thursday’s press conference, according to CNET.

Once they had the suspects’ names, the authorities were able to bring them in for questioning. From there, they pieced together what they believe is the real story of what happened on Jan. 29: Smollett hired the men to fake the attack.

Connected Criminals

Smollett is now out on bail and is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. However, he’s already faced backlash from the public, celebrities, and even President Donald Trump in the wake of Wednesday’s charges. And on Friday, “Empire” announced plans to cut all his character’s scenes from the remaining two episodes of its current season.

However this strange series of events plays out, it’s a striking example of the growing role technology is playing in the legal system.

Authorities’ case against Smollett hinged on rideshare data, text messages, and surveillance footage, and as society becomes even more connected to tech in the future, we can expect lawbreakers will have a harder time getting away with their crimes thanks to these digital fingerprints.

READ MORE: Uber Data Helped ID Accomplices in Jussie Smollett Staged Attack, Police Say [CNET]

More on Uber data: Uber Releases a Staggering 2 Billion Trips-Worth of Traffic Data

The post Police: Uber Data Helped Prove Jussie Smollett Faked Hate Crime appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to read the rest:
Police: Uber Data Helped Prove Jussie Smollett Faked Hate Crime

Risky Business

Marijuana is becoming more accepted — and that could be a problem for the alcohol industry, according to new research.

“Though not yet mainstream, cannabis adoption is certainly growing in states where it’s legal and does pose a risk to the beverage alcohol industry in the future,” Brandy Rand, U.S. president of the International Wine and Spirits Research (IWSR), a company that collects data on the alcohol industry, said in a press release about its new report on alcohol and cannabis.

In the Weeds

On Thursday, the IWSR published a new report it created in partnership with BDS Analytics, a company focused on cannabis market analytics. Together, the two companies set out to determine the potential impact of legal marijuana on the alcohol industry in the future.

Based on their research, the legalization of marijuana has led to an “explosion of growth” for the cannabis industry over the past few years. In places that have legalized marijuana, they estimate that up to 40 percent of people over the age of 21 now partake in it.

They believe usage of marijuana will continue to increase as acceptance of the drug expands.

Double Down

While an increase in cannabis users won’t necessarily translate to a decrease in alcohol consumption, the alcohol industry needs to be aware that this growing industry could impact its own, according to Rand.

“It’s important that alcohol brands pay attention to their consumers,” she said, “recognizing that some occasions may result in a decrease in alcohol consumption in place of, or alongside, legal cannabis.”

“Consumers will continue to look to cannabis products over alcohol for occasions when they are feeling creative, need to get motivated, or seeking health, medical or wellness benefits,” BDS Analytics’s Vice President Jessica Lukas added.

READ MORE: Cannabis May Pose a ‘Long-Term Risk’ to the Alcohol Industry [Fortune]

More on marijuana: WHO Says UN Should Reclassify Marijuana as Less Dangerous

The post Legal Marijuana Could Threaten the Alcohol Industry, Says Report appeared first on Futurism.

Read more from the original source:
Legal Marijuana Could Threaten the Alcohol Industry, Says Report

Fries With That

We already had a robot that could make fast food burgers. And now we have an artificial intelligence that can take your order for one.

Earlier this month, Colorado-based startup Valyant AI announced the launch of a voice-based AI customer service platform, which is now taking customer orders at the drive-thru at Denver’s Good Times Burgers and Frozen Custard.

“We’re excited to deliver a customer service experience unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before,” Valyant AI CEO Rob Carpenter said in a press release.

Pull Forward

Unlike multipurpose assistants such as Alexa or Siri, Valyant’s fast food AI has just one ability: greet drive-thru customers, take their order, and send them down the line. According to Carpenter, putting an AI in charge of this task could benefit both customers and restaurants.

“Seconds count in the drive-thru, and if customers see a long line, they’ll often keep driving and look for another restaurant,” he said. “By improving ordering accuracy and decreasing wait times, our platform improves the customer service experience and allows Good Times to serve more customers more quickly.”

Good Times COO Scott Lefever believes even the employees benefit from the fast food AI platform.

“By freeing employees to spend more time focused on the customer at the window, we’re providing better and faster service to our customers and a more enjoyable experience for our employees,” he said in the press release.

Fill a Need

Right now, Valyant’s AI is only taking breakfast orders and only at one restaurant, but there’s a clear trend of the fast food industry moving toward automation in general. We’re seeing an increase in self-serve kiosks, robots that cook, and self-cleaning equipment.

These machines aren’t necessarily taking jobs from humans either — according to several reports, fast food companies are having an increasingly difficult time finding and keeping employees.

“The only way to truly deal with this is to reduce the number of labor hours that are required to run your concept,” restaurants analyst Peter Saleh told Business Insider. “And, I feel like the only way to really do that is to implement technology.”

READ MORE: At This Fast-Food Drive-Through, the Person Taking Your Order Might Not Be a Person at All [The Washington Post]

More on fast food: Ordering Food via Touchscreen Is so Fun You Spend More Money When You Do It

The post This Fast Food Drive-Thru Is Now Using AI to Take Orders appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post:
This Fast Food Drive-Thru Is Now Using AI to Take Orders

Vertical farms transform conventional agriculture with biotechnology, data science, and engineering. Here’s why the future of farming may be indoors.

The post The Future of Farming May Take Place Indoors appeared first on Futurism.

More:
The Future of Farming May Take Place Indoors

Time to Upgrade

The U.S. Army is currently developing replacements for its famous Black Hawk helicopter, which has been a mainstay of the military since it was developed in the 1970s.

Decades later, the Black Hawk is too slow and has too short a range to be practical. One of the frontrunners to replace it borrows the best from planes and helicopters — with two rotating wings, each of which houses a propeller allowing for vertical take off, according to Ars Technica.

A or B

The helicopter, called the V-280 Valor and built by a division of aviation manufacturer Textron has the functionality of a sort of plane-helicopter hybrid that could travel faster and farther than the Black Hawk. It also improves on past tiltrotor designs by leaving the rest of the engine in place, cutting down on cost and the mess kicked up by the rotating blades, Ars reports.

But that’s not the only design the military is considering — another prototype, Sikorsky-Boeing’s SB-1 Defiant looks more like a typical helicopter but uses two counterrotating propellers stacked on top of each other to increase its speed.

Bidding War

In particular, the Army needs a helicopter well-suited for recon missions overseas, hence these two prototypes’ focus on top speed.

There’s no indication yet which of the two will get picked up by the armed forces, but we look forward to the new movies like “Tiltrotor Down” that could follow.

READ MORE: Forget Airwolf: One of these is the Army’s next assault “helicopter” [Ars Technica]

More on helicopters: You Can Fly DARPA’s Idiot-Proof Helicopter With 45 Mins of Training

The post A “Tiltrotor” Helicopter May Replace the Army’s Black Hawk appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to read the rest:
A “Tiltrotor” Helicopter May Replace the Army’s Black Hawk

This Cat Does Not Exist

Ceci n’est pas un chat.

Last week, we reported on a mysterious new website, ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com, that shows you a new human face, generated by an AI, every time you hit the refresh button.

It’s a growing trend: more copycat websites like ThisAirbnbDoesNotExist.com and ThisWaifuDoesNotExist.net have also cropped up in its wake.

And now, ThisCatDoesNotExist.com takes the trend to its logical conclusion: creepy, AI-generated pictures of cats that will fuel your nightmares.

This Cat Should Never Exist

Behind all of these websites lies NVIDIA’s generative adversarial network (GAN) called StyleGAN — a machine-learning algorithm that can learn how to sketch human faces, cats, or almost anything else by examining hundreds of thousands of existing images.

But ThisCatDoesNotExist.com is not the most compelling example of the tech. It’s more like the result of what would happen when hundreds of thousands of cat images, including text memes and their human owners’ faces, are mashed together in a a cyber-car-crash. The results are harrowing.

No, seriously. What happened to these innocent cats?

It’s a shame the algorithm wasn’t able to pick out the human faces.

Or meme text.

Uncatty Valley

GANs have been used for much more ambitious projects in the past. Researchers at NVIDIA harnessed the power of the technology to create uncanny faces that are almost completely indistinguishable from the real thing.

But that doesn’t mean bored people on the internet shouldn’t be able to take advantage of the open-source technology for a bit of fun — that is, as long as real-world cats stay out of harm’s way.

READ MORE: ‘This Person Does Not Exist’ Has Spawned a Host of A.I.-Powered Copycats [Inverse]

More on AI faces: Mysterious Site Uses AI to Create Realistic Yet Horrifying Faces

The post A New AI Draws Cats, and They’re Utterly Grotesque appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
A New AI Draws Cats, and They’re Utterly Grotesque

Moon Boon

In 2013, scientists discovered a tiny moon orbiting Neptune. They gave it the forgettable name S/2004 N 1, but it soon earned the nickname of “the moon that shouldn’t be there,” because its size and placement didn’t make sense to astronomers.

Now, a team of planetary scientists has not only given Neptune’s 14th moon a more memorable moniker — Hippocamp — but also unraveled some of the mystery surrounding its origin.

Tiny, but Fast

In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, the researchers shared the results of several years of analysis about Neptune’s tiniest moon.

According to their research, Hippocamp is just 20 miles in diameter and a thousandth of the mass of Proteus, the much-larger moon next to it. It also zips around Neptune at a speed of about 20,000 miles an hour, which is 10 times faster than our Moon circles Earth.

The new name, meanwhile, refers to a mythological sea creature that’s half-horse and half-fish — fitting for a moon orbiting the planet named after the Roman god of the sea.

Splinter Satellite

So that’s what the researchers learned about Hippocamp, but it doesn’t answer the question as to why “the moon that shouldn’t be there” is there.

The answer, according to the researchers, is that it probably wasn’t always.

If Hippocamp was around 4 billion years ago, Proteus would have likely destroyed the smaller moon while clearing its orbit around Neptune. This led the researchers to conclude that Hippocamp likely formed when a chunk of Proteus broke off following a collision with a comet or asteroid.

“This is the first really great example of a moon that got created as a result of an impact,” researcher Mark Showalter told Space.com.

READ MORE: Tiny Neptune Moon Spotted by Hubble May Have Broken From Larger Moon [SETI Institute]

More on the Moon: New Research: Earth’s Atmosphere Extends Well Beyond the Moon

The post Meet Hippocamp, “The Moon That Shouldn’t Be There” appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original post:
Meet Hippocamp, “The Moon That Shouldn’t Be There”

Great Scott

A great way to generate hype for your product is to name it after something from the “Back To The Future” franchise. That’s why auto-balancing skateboards are called “hoverboards” and Nike’s automatically-tightening shoe uses the phrase “self-lacing.”

Unfortunately, a great way to generate ridicule for your futuristic tech product is to totally break it with a software update, which is also what Nike just did with the aforementioned sneakers, according to The Verge.

Think, McFly!

The $350 shoes were first sold on Sunday. And now, thanks to an update to the app people can use to tighten or loosen the shoes, Android and iPhone users are running into several different bugs that keep them from using it at all.

“It’s pretty sad paying $350.00 for something that doesn’t work properly,” one user wrote in an app store review, according to The Daily Dot. “Hope Nike fixes this fast and sends out something to correct it.”

This is Heavy

Some people report that they can only pair one shoe with their app. Others say that the motors that tighten and loosen the shoes have stopped working altogether, according to The Verge. That means that the very expensive shoe is just about as useful as a slipper.

“App will only sync with left shoe and then fail every time,” one reviewer said. “Also, app says left shoe is already connected to another device whenever I try to reinstall and start over.”

While we all hope to someday see true hoverboards and self-lacing clothes, for now it seems we’re stuck with just another dumb IoT app.

READ MORE: Nike’s self-lacing smart sneakers malfunction days after release [The Daily Dot]

More on self-lacing shoes: Welcome to the Strange, Futuristic World of Nike’s Self-Tightening Shoes

The post Software Bug Immediately Crashes Nike’s Self-Lacing Sneakers appeared first on Futurism.

Continue reading here:
Software Bug Immediately Crashes Nike’s Self-Lacing Sneakers

Pervert Platform

On Sunday, YouTube personality Matt Watson posted a video to the site exposing what he called a “soft-core pedophilia ring.” Based on his research, pedophiles are congregating on suggestive videos of children — and, once connected, using the comments sections to share contact info and links to child pornography.

Watson’s video quickly generated more than 2 million views, and major brands including Disney, Nestle, and Epic Games rushed to pull their advertisements from YouTube — the latest shocking example of how difficult it is for Silicon Valley platforms to police their own communities at scale, even in the face of egregious abuse.

Nefarious Network

Many of the videos drawing these YouTube pedophiles don’t violate any of the platform’s policies — they might feature young girls playing games or doing gymnastics. Others feature illegal content, such as one video in which a prepubescent girl flashes her bare pubic area.

The comments sections of the videos feature lewd messages, suggestive emoji, and timestamps to the moments most likely to appeal to pedophiles. Some commenters leave questions for the children in the videos, and horrifically, the children occasionally respond.

Watson claims in his video that YouTube’s algorithms facilitate this network of pedophiles. Watch one video of children innocently playing, and the algorithm will suggest videos that, from their comments sections, appear popular with YouTube pedophiles.

YouTube’s search function plays a role as well — a WIRED story noted that the site’s autocomplete will add the words “young” and “hot” if a user searches the phrase “girl yoga.”

Disturbed Déjà Vu

Since the release of Watson’s video, YouTube has shared the following statement with various media outlets: “Any content — including comments — that endangers minors is abhorrent and we have clear policies prohibiting this on YouTube. We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling violative comments.”

A number of brands have pulled their advertising from YouTube, too, issuing statements denouncing child exploitation. And that’s great. But advertisers have done this exact same thing before, and yet the problem persists.

That’s due at least in part to how incredibly tough this problem will be to solve. Every minute, users upload 450 hours of content to YouTube, and the combination of humans and machine learning tech the company currently uses to review this content clearly isn’t capable of preventing illegal content from slipping through.

A major loss of advertisers over a long period of time could spur YouTube to find a better system for filtering out this content — assuming one exists — but government fines for facilitating the spread of child pornography might provide additional incentive.

And what about the content that doesn’t violate any rules, like videos of children playing in their backyards? Does YouTube ban any videos featuring minors? How might it enforce that? Should it disable its autocomplete search function so that problematic videos are more difficult for YouTube pedophiles to find?

These are deep questions, but the platform has been dealing with the issue of child exploitation as far back as 2013. Clearly, the various policies it’s already enacted to address the problem aren’t enough — and the strongly worded statements about how “abhorrent” it finds this content won’t be enough either.

READ MORE: Advertisers Boycott YouTube After Pedophiles Swarm Comments on Videos of Children [The New York Times]

More on YouTube: New Research: YouTube Caused the “Flat Earther” Epidemic

The post While Pedophiles Flock to YouTube, Advertisers Flee It appeared first on Futurism.

Originally posted here:
While Pedophiles Flock to YouTube, Advertisers Flee It

Drawing Board

We’d like to put out an open call: if you have any idea what 6G technology is, please contact us and fill us in.

We ask because U.S. President Donald Trump just tweeted that he wants “6G” cell service in the U.S. “as soon as possible” — even though we don’t even have 5G service yet and no one has started to meaningfully discuss 6G, according to The Verge.

Quick Primer

5G service is expected to be the next big thing for mobile communications and has long been slated for a 2020 rollout. When it finally goes live, it’s expected to improve cell service, mobile download speeds, and provide better support for the internet of things.

Recently, AT&T misleadingly claimed to have deployed a 5G network before quickly backing away from its own announcement. Meanwhile, there haven’t even been meaningful discussions of what a 6G network would look like.

Invisible Hand

Trump also tweeted that he wants American telecom companies to lead the world in mobile network technology through a spirit of earnest and honest competition, which is a stark contrast to his own administration’s plan to block Chinese 5G technology in the U.S., according to The Verge.

Whether it’s American or Chinese telecom companies that build better 5G service, it’s good to know we have a leader so focused on the future that he wants the U.S. to dominate the race to develop technology that no one has even thought about yet.

READ MORE: Trump wants 6G internet ‘as soon as possible’ [The Verge]

More on 5G: There’s a New 5G Smartphone Coming, and it Might Finally Make the Next-Gen Network Mainstream

The post Trump Calls For “6G,” Which Doesn’t Exist appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post:
Trump Calls For “6G,” Which Doesn’t Exist

Cracking Glass

Tesla’s blockbuster of an electric car, the Model 3, has received some glowing reviews. But now the cracks are starting to show.

The nonprofit Consumer Reports decided to pull its “recommended” rating today, citing new “reliability data” collected from a 2018 survey.

It’s not the first time the Model 3 lost the “recommended” label. In 2018, Consumer Reports first removed the “recommended” label from the Model 3 for its sub-par braking distance before changing its mind in May 2018 after the carmaker shipped an over-the-air update.

Main Culprits

The Model 3 is also not the only car that is losing the rating: the Cadillac 300, Dodge Charger, Acura RDX, BMW 5 Series, and Volkswagen Tiguan are also losing Consumer Reports‘ “recommended” rating.

The main culprits with the Model 3: “problems with paint, trim, and electronics” according to an official update.

Owners complained of freezing and malfunctioning screens, small cracks in rear windows, and issues with loose body trim, according to data from Consumer Reports‘ 2018 owner satisfaction survey that includes input from the owners of 470,000 vehicles.

Long Term Reliability

Consumer Reports has dinged Tesla’s quality testing and long term reliability before. Today’s update cites prior problems with Tesla’s offerings, including Model S suspension problems in 2017 models and hardware issues concerning the Model X SUV’s falcon-wing doors.

But that’s not to say the Model 3 is a bad vehicle: Consumer Reports still lists the Model 3 as the “most satisfying car,” and Tesla’s 2015 Model S even broke Consumer Reports‘ rating system by essentially exceeding all expectations.

READ MORE: Consumer Reports reverses itself again, no longer recommends Tesla Model 3 [The Verge]

More on the Model 3: Elon Musk Slashes Tesla Model 3 Price to Long-Awaited $35,000

The post Tesla Model 3 Loses Coveted Consumer Reports Recommendation appeared first on Futurism.

View post:
Tesla Model 3 Loses Coveted Consumer Reports Recommendation

Galaxy Brain

When infamous Chinese scientists He Jiankui edited the genes of human twin babies last year, he was reportedly trying to make them immune to HIV. But researchers familiar with the genetic changes he made are now saying that the specific manipulation he performed may have broader consequences.

The CCR5 gene is linked to HIV susceptibility, but research published Thursday in the journal Cell shows that it also enhances cognition in mouse studies. The gene can also facilitate a human’s recovery after a stroke and may correlate with academic success, according to MIT Technology Review — meaning that the first two enhanced humans with genetically boosted cognition and memory may already be born.

Feigned Ignorance

There’s no direct evidence that He intended to do anything to twin babies Lulu and Nana’s brain — though given his lofty goals for a future without HIV, it seems plausible that he would have also celebrated figuring out how to boost human intelligence. All the same, evidence gathered by MIT Tech Review suggests that He likely knew about the role CCR5 plays in the brain.

“The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” Alcino Silva, a University of California, Los Angeles neuroscientist who worked on the new research, told MIT Tech. “The simplest interpretation is that those mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function in the twins.”

Side Effects Unknown

Silva argues that He should not have conducted his research because there’s no way to predict what effect it will have on Lulu and Nana’s lives.

“Could it be conceivable that at one point in the future we could increase the average IQ of the population? I would not be a scientist if I said no,” Silva told MIT Tech. “The work in mice demonstrates the answer may be yes. But mice are not people. We simply don’t know what the consequences will be in mucking around. We are not ready for it yet.”

READ MORE: The CRISPR twins had their brains altered [MIT Technology Review]

More on He Jiankui: Next Gene-Edited Baby Due in Six Months, Scientist Says

The post Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Babies “Likely” Boosted Their Brainpower appeared first on Futurism.

Link:
Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Babies “Likely” Boosted Their Brainpower

AI Art

Robots with artificial intelligence have created paintings and sketches for years — one even sold for almost half a million dollars at Christie’s Auction House in December.

But is it really art in the same way some of the greatest achievements of creativity in human history have been called “art”?

That’s a clear no. Or at least that’s what Sean Dorrance Kelly, philosophy professor at Harvard, argues in a new essay for the MIT Technology Review. To Kelly, an AI might be able to come up with a “well-executed Bach cantata” or “a brilliant Go strategy” — but it will never be an “autonomous creative agent” like a free-thinking human.

“Creativity is one of the defining features of human beings,” Kelly wrote. “But this kind of creativity depends upon our valuing it, and caring for it, as such.” But thanks to technology, we are starting to value creativity a whole lot less — the same way machines reduce creativity to a simple binary “yes or no.”

Achieving Human Creativity

Kelly believes AI will never end up amounting to human creativity — and worries that by placing less and less importance on the role of creativity, we risk substituting “machine creativity” for our own.

“Human creative achievement, because of the way it is socially embedded, will not succumb to advances in artificial intelligence,” he wrote. “To say otherwise is to misunderstand both what human beings are and what our creativity amounts to.”

But that’s not black or white either. Once robots learn to think for themselves, independent from human influence — and Kelly believes that’s still many years out — the paradigms may shift.

READ MORE: A philosopher argues that an AI can never be an artist

More on robot art: Robot Art A Fleshy New Humanoid Sketches You, Mimics Your Facial Expressions

The post Philosopher: AI Can Never Create True Art appeared first on Futurism.

See the rest here:
Philosopher: AI Can Never Create True Art

The Hadal Zone

Thousands of feet below the surface of Earth’s ocean lies a vast habitat of strange-looking fish, giant jellies, and microscopic animals.

To this day, the “hadal zone” — 3.7-6.8 miles (6,000-11,000 meters) below the surface — remains largely unexplored. But thanks to NASA and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the world’s leading non-profit dedicated to exploring our oceans, that might soon change.

A brand new submarine called the Orpheus is ready to explore that underwater wilderness with a whole array of scientific instruments — and one day, vehicles like it could explore oceans elsewhere in the solar system, too.

Project Orpheus

Orpheus — named after the Greek hero who survived a trip to the underworld — is a 600 pound drone meant to explore the hadal zone essentially all by itself.

As Business Insider points out, communications from miles beneath the ocean can take longer to reach the surface than broadcasts from the Moon.

It’s also meant to be small, and light so that if all goes right, a very distant relative of that same design could explore the icy oceans of Jupiter’s smallest moon, Europa.

“It’s the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother of the vehicle that may go to Europa,” Tim Shank, WHOI biologist and mission leader, told Business Insider.

Icy Moons

But diving to those kind of extreme depths is difficult, to say the least. A previous submarine called Nereus built by WHOI engineers was lost at a depth of six miles in 2014. Luckily, the Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA are offering up some help for the Orpheus project.

So far, Orpheus has dived to just shy of 600 feet on an untethered mission in September — a long shot from the hadal zone.

But it’s a tiny first step before mankind could make the first discovery of alien life on Jupiter’s ancient moons — so far one of the likeliest places for life to exist in our Solar System.

READ MORE:  NASA is testing a new submarine that will hunt for undiscovered sea life — and scientists eventually want it to look for aliens on Europa [Business Insider]

More on Europa: NASA’s Nuclear-Powered Tunneling Bot Could Hunt for Life on Europa

The post NASA’s New Deep-Sea Submarine Could Eventually Look for Aliens appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original post:
NASA’s New Deep-Sea Submarine Could Eventually Look for Aliens