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The tech overlords pushing the AI boom are quickly wearing out what little welcome they had.You may have noticed big-name AI labs pushing new commercials lately. Meta’s new 60-second ad spot insists that the “future is for everyone,” even as CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal net worth eclipses the GDP of Hungary. Anthropic’s new commercial for Claude assures viewers that there’s “hope in hard questions,” seemingly embracing the discomfort that comes when your software is used to bomb elementary schools in Iran.For as magnanimous as these new PR stunts appear on the surface, a vast swathe of the public they’re meant…

Over the past year or so, a puzzling idea has taken hold among billionaires ranging from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos: that instead of trying to force data centers on communities that don’t want them down on Earth, it would be much easier just to launch them into space.The economics and logistics of the scheme, many experts have pointed out, are absolutely absurd. And even beyond those practical concerns, if corporations actually did somehow manage to fill the planet’s orbit with the facilities, scientists are now warning that the environmental cost would be devastating.A new petition organized by the group…

Fake AI-generated doctors and health gurus have taken over Facebook and Instagram, sharing unproven medical advice and peddling dubious supplements.A recent New York Times investigation into the phenomenon reviewed hundreds of these ads, finding that they tend to follow a loose formula to draw people in.The AI videos usually feature AI avatars that present themselves as credible figures like doctors or Eastern medical gurus. Many prominently feature American flags or are set in familiar suburban settings. Some of the AI avatars are made to look like average people who’re really enthusiastic about the supplement they’re taking, filming themselves in a parking…

An expedition to study frog habitats in Northern California’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest was cut short last week, with a father-son duo accused of taking two federal biologists hostage.The pair, identified as Joseph Charles Henrichsen and his adult son Phoenix Henrichsen, have been charged with kidnapping two US forest service researchers at gunpoint, NBC reports.Using a semi-automatic rifle, the Henrichsens are alleged to have kidnapped the biologists on the morning of Thursday, July 16. The as-yet-unidentified researchers were reportedly zip-tied and held in a remote camper-trailer, while Joseph Henrichsen used a phone belonging to one of the biologists to contact authorities.“I’ve…

Zillionaire eccentric Bryan Johnson, fresh off of being diagnosed with an incurable disease, says he just “cloned” himself “as a newborn.” Yep, you heard that right.The immortality influencer shared in an X update that he has a “baby” version of himself growing in a petri dish that he says will allow him to become his “own blood boy” — doesn’t he already have a son who does that for him? — and potentially even “grow organs for transplantation.”“This may be scary to some people… a dystopian future,” Johnson wrote. “But, for others, they will see it as the inevitable future…

Scientists have discovered a puzzling object in a distant star system that defies classification.Hear us out. The object in question orbits a brown dwarf. A brown dwarf is a substellar type of object that larger than a gas giant but smaller than the smallest stars. And this brown dwarf, in turn, orbits the system’s main star.Since the newly-identified object doesn’t orbit a planet, it technically isn’t a “moon” by any normal definition, but it’s not clearly a planet either, making its classification elusive.“This system is somewhat hard to define using Solar-System-based words like ‘planet’ and ‘moon,’” said European Southern Observatory…

Meta’s camera-equipped AI glasses have quickly turned into a massively controversial accessory. They’ve been used by all kinds of charlatans and brutes to harass strangers, from pickup artist “manfluencers” filming themselves approaching strangers to juvenile pranksters recording members of the public without their consent.Consequently, the backlash to Meta’s “pervert glasses” has reached a fever pitch, with owners choosing to leave them at home to avoid embarrassment.Sensing a threat to its bottom line, Meta has slowly started treating the issue with some degree of seriousness. Now it’s vowing to crack down on creeps misusing its allegedly “privacy-first” glasses, as Business Insider…

Robotics company Realbotix has long struggled to beat the allegations that its voluptuous humanoid robots are designed with prurient interests in mind.Its $175,000 robotic companion, dubbed Aria, is platinum blonde, well-endowed, and tends to be decked out in tight-fitted sportswear at tech conventions. Yet the company insisted she’s not a sex doll, leading to plenty of incredulity online.It’s also hard to ignore that Realbotix has an extensive X-rated past. bIts subsidiary RealDoll showed off the first-ever male sex bot back in 2022, which features robotic genitals. (Before robots, Realbotix rented out dubious “digital land” in the metaverse.)Now, as New York…

For over two decades, a notorious fugitive accused of horrible crimes in Rhode Island hid out in one of the places you’d most expect — the corner office of a Big Pharma company.Reported by Stat News, a 70-year old chief medical officer at the California-based firm Immix Biopharma was found to be afugitive sex predator who disappeared during his 2005 trial. Though he went by Richard Graydon in the more than twenty years since, his real name turns out to be Ronald Fischer — an anesthesiologist accused of raping numerous women on his various yachts (yes, plural).“Although I believe my…

Can companies seize your private property to build data center infrastructure? According to legal scholar Aaron Walayat at the University of Dayton, it’s certainly a possibility.In a new piece for The Conversation, Walayat warns that power companies in states like George and Pennsylvania have been considering the use of eminent domain — the government’s prerogative to seize land without its owners’ consent — to build more transmission lines used to power data centers.If a landowner refuses a power company’s payout, the power company can turn to the local government to seize the land if it’s for “public use,” paying the landowner…