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Numerous scandals this year have sparked a public inquiry into government and military insider trading on prediction markets. In some cases, arrests have been made.But a new investigation by the nonprofit research group Anti-Corruption Data Collective suggests the corruption may be even more rampant than we thought. Reuters reports that the analysis found that more than 150 wallets on Polymarket may have traded on inside US military information — with experts fearing that the practice could be compromising military secrets.Polymarket didn’t respond to Reuters‘ requests for comment.In the analysis, the ACDC focused on “long-shot” bets, which it defines as wagers…

Earlier this week, the European Central Bank issued a dire warning, warning that a “market correction” following years of AI hype and massive spending could be nigh — a crash that could have enormous international consequences.It joined a growing chorus of analysts warning of urgent signs of an impending market collapse, a sobering possibility for the US economy that’s grown incredibly overleveraged on AI. Investors are paying orders of magnitude more for every dollar of average annual profits, indicating that something is seriously amiss.In a Substack post earlier this week, first spotted by Business Insider, financial crisis expert and University…

Elon Musk’s Tesla is giving up on its Solar Roof — the latest sign that the EV company is shifting gears as its mercurial CEO continues to lean into fossil fuels to sustain his AI ambitions.Two sources with inside knowledge of the program confirmed to Electrek that the company is discontinuing its solar roof tiles, a key offering allowing homeowners to turn their roofs into renewable energy generators without relying on more unsightly solar panels. According to one of the sources, Tesla found that the product is simply not financially viable.However, Tesla will continue supplying solar panels, meaning that it…

Flying cars might still be a long way off, but if you find yourself in trouble in northern California, something similar just might come to your rescue.A flight paramedic working in the woodsy reaches of Northern California has now logged at least two trips to emergencies in an eVTOL, a kind of small-rotor electric aircraft that uses battery power to hover, take off, and land, like a cross between a helicopter and a rotor-driven drone.Unlike a bulkier helicopter, however, eVTOLs — short for electric vertical takeoff and landing — are stuffed with numerous small motors which power the craft’s rotors. In…

AI-generated children’s books are exhibiting a weird pattern: a pronounced bias against female animal characters — which, to be fair, is also present in human-authored ones, except the AI is making it even worse.In a study published last year, Melanie Walsh, an assistant professor of informatics at the University of Washington, and her colleagues analyzed 300 children’s books and found that he/him pronouns were used twice as often as she/her pronouns when referring to animal characters. While some animals were more likely to be referred to as male or female — bears tending to be male, for example, and cats female —…

Some patients in the UK are skipping going to the doctor because their office’s AI “receptionist” can’t understand what they’re saying.The health and social watchdog Healthwatch Rotherham said that the troublesome AI receptionist in question, called “Emma,” is being used at a number of clinics in South Yorkshire — and is struggling with locals’ distinct way of speaking.“One of the issues is this system can’t always understand what people’s inquiry is about due to their broad Yorkshire accent,” Kym Gleeson, manager at Healthwatch Rotherham, told the BBC. “Across South Yorkshire, accents do vary quite a lot. There are different twangs…

Police in Omaha, Nebraska are catching a ton of flak after revealing that they deployed electric shock gloves on two separate students during the 2025-2026 school year. One of the students was enrolled in a special education program.After the news broke, Omaha Superintendent Matthew Ray pleaded with the city police department to stop using the electrocution gloves against students. Though Omaha police refer to the gloves as their “safest use-of-force option” for subduing suspects, they agreed not to deploy the devices in schools anymore, according to the Associated Press.Still, questions remain as to how much the district knew about the…

When thinking about successful mass transportation in the United States, Americans will inevitably imagine big cities like New York and Chicago — a stereotype shaped by the sorry state of public transit throughout the rest of the country. But what if there was a way to bring that kind of world-renowned rail and bus infrastructure to thousands of smaller cities dotting the country?Turns out, there is — and all it would take is the stroke of a pen.According to a new joint study conducted by American and Chinese researchers and published in the journal Transportation Research Part A: Policy and…

New research gives us a grim portrait of how rampant AI usage is affecting young students’ academic performance and learning.In a study that tracked nearly 27,000 students in China between the ages of 12 and 18 (grades 7-12), around 80 percent reported using AI models like DeepSeek and ByteDance’s Doubao. The remaining 20 percent, who abstained from using AI, formed the control group.What the researchers from Stockholm University and the University of Hong Kong found, as reported by The Economist, point to an alarming trend. After six months, the homework scores of students who used AI rose by 18 percent…

Elon Musk spent months crusading against Christopher Nolan’s “woke” adaptation of “The Odyssey” before it came out, anticipating that it would bomb at the box office. When that didn’t work and the movie made over a billion dollars, he vowed that his Grok AI — best known for calling itself “MechaHitler” and generating loads of CSAM — would create a full-length version of the ancient Greek saga that would be “historically accurate and true to the art of Homer” before the end of the year.That hasn’t happened yet. But we have gotten a different sort of AI adaptation of “The…