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Prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket have long garnered a reputation for allowing users to make all kinds of ethically dubious bets, from the outcomes of deadly conflicts to raging wildfires.And as the New York Times reports, Kalshi will even allow users to bet on whether clinical trials for potentially lifesaving drug trials will succeed.But to researchers, it’s yet another morally bankrupt concept that could put real people in danger. There’s even risk that those enrolled in these trials could choose to drop out if the market were to bet against a positive outcome.“Turning loose a betting market in an ongoing…

Temperatures in Japan have gotten so extreme that zoo animals are dropping dead — though this may be as much an indictment of the conditions that the animals are made to live in as it is climate change.On Monday, Tokyo’s Tama Zoological park announced that three of its female lions had died of what’s suspected to be heat-related illness. Their deaths occurred within five days of each other, as the country is gripped by a grueling spell of intense heat.Per multiple reports, preliminary autopsies showed that the lions, named Mugi, Ichigo, and Ruena, had suffered from systemic dehydration and multiple…

Whether magicians, thieves, or just fed up citizens, somebody has made an entire city’s worth of ALPRs vanish in the night.According to new reporting by MPR News, police in the city of Winona, Minnesota are incensed after their entire fleet of Flock license plate readers went missing.In a press release shared on Facebook, the Winona Police Department groused that “all eight of our city’s Flock cameras were missing.”The police department’s first clue came on the night of August 1st, when an eagle-eyed officer “noted that there’d been no recent activity on the cameras.”

Being unbelievably wealthy comes with powerful perks — like getting away with being too cheap to pay people the money they’re owed.This, allegedly, is what Elon Musk is doing with one of the contractors who helped build his sprawling Colossus data centers near Memphis. The contractor, Ohio-based Darana Hybrid, has filed two liens against SpaceXAI — formerly known as xAI, before being merged into SpaceX — demanding that Musk’s firm pay more than $136 million for the work it’s done since 2024, the Memphis Business Journal first reported.“The contractors are alleging they haven’t been paid for years of construction work,” Dima…

Texas is tripling down on the construction of AI data centers, at any cost.But there’s a glaring problem that’s grinding construction plans to a halt: a woefully inadequate power grid that won’t be able to support all of these new facilities.As The Texas Tribune reports, governor Greg Abbott announced a moratorium for all new data center approvals on Monday. It certainly wasn’t a response to the spiking bipartisan opposition to data centers that has gripped the nation. Instead, Abbott’s goal was to give regulators time to perform an audit on how to hook up new data centers to the Texas…

Google’s notorious AI Overview just handed would-be Flock vandals a perfect excuse to carve into the company’s controversial AI-integrated license plate readers (ALPRs).ALRPs are wildly unpopular, especially online, where privacy-minded communities trade memes and videos cheering on destruction of the surveillance equipment. One of the more popular bits in this space centers on the idea that Flock’s ALPR’s are supposedly packed with valuable metals like gold, copper, and zinc — so, the tongue-in-cheek riffing goes, why not crack one open and cash in at the nearest scrapyard?Clever or not, the meme hinges on a spurious claim. ALPRs do contain trace…

At long last, a Moon landing for SpaceX — just not the kind it was hoping for.After months of anticipation, a discarded upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is believed to have careened into the Moon on early Wednesday morning. It exploded on impact, causing a flash that may have been visible from Earth, and created a large crater.Astronomers, who have been closely monitoring the stray rocket, projected it would smash into the lunar surface at 5,400 miles per hour, which is about seven times the speed of sound here on our home planet. At such a velocity,…

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei apparently can’t believe that not everyone at the company is as noble-minded as he is.According to new reporting from Axios, which cites a source familiar with the matter, Amodei is concerned that the new hires at the $965 billion AI firm are joining for the money instead of its greater mission.Shocker, right? Anthropic pays some of the best salaries in the business, and now Amodei fears it’s becoming a victim of its own success. Being the most valuable AI firm in the world sure sounds tough.But it’s also a sentiment tinged with irony. Anthropic’s professed mission…

Google’s notorious AI Overview just handed would-be Flock vandals a perfect excuse to carve into the company’s controversial AI-integrated license plate readers (ALPRs).ALRPs are wildly unpopular, especially online, where privacy-minded communities trade memes and videos cheering on destruction of the surveillance equipment. One of the more popular bits in this space centers on the idea that Flock’s ALPR’s are supposedly packed with valuable metals like gold, copper, and zinc — so, the tongue-in-cheek riffing goes, why not crack one open and cash in at the nearest scrapyard?Clever or not, the meme hinges on a spurious claim. ALPRs do contain trace…

For certain BMW owners, enormous car payments aren’t the only rude reminder that they don’t actually own their ride yet: now, irritating in-vehicle commercials will send them the same message.Starting last week, the German automaker started blasting a promotion for the new Spider-Man movie into its customers’ cars without warning — because nothing says riding in luxury like a full-vehicle pop-up ad. BMW, showing that it was about as in-touch as its drivers are familiar with turn signals, teased the promotion as a “special surprise.” According to The Autopian‘s coverage and the heaps of complaints online, the ad appears on the…