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In November of last year, scientists warned of a “severe” solar storm, the strongest in over two decades, colliding with the Earth.Solar storms are the result of a surge in solar activity, with the Sun unleashing a barrage of charged particles that can trigger spectacular auroras — and wreak havoc with communications satellites and radio signals — when they reach the Earth’s magnetosphere.Beyond being ferocious enough to delay the launch of a Mars-bound NASA spacecraft, the storm wreaked absolute havoc with GPS systems back on the ground for hours at a time. As detailed in a new paper published in…
An Oregon man falsely posing as a professional football player and his young accomplice scammed roughly $1.3 million out of at least 26 women across four states, the FBI alleges. The duo’s efforts to bolster the con online eventually got sucked into Google’s misinformation-plagued AI Overviews feature, which parroted it back as fact — a blunder that the accused scammers seemingly tried to use to further ensnare victims.The FBI says that the alleged fraudsters, 35-year-old Daejon Labrayae Love and 18-year-old Taylor Jamie Chan, cooked up a convoluted scheme in which Love masqueraded as a player for the San Francisco 49ers…
President Donald Trump sowed a fair bit of confusion after posting not one but two AI-generated videos of a supposed US strike on Iran’s Kharg Island.Trump, as it turned out, was simply hallucinating a fantasy, forcing a US official to clarify Monday that the depicted “attacks” on the island, Iran’s main hub of oil exports, hadn’t actually occurred, The Independent reported.Trump made no effort to clarify that the videos were AI-generated when he posted them on Truth Social. In his first post, made on Sunday night, he only wrote in the caption: “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!”Both of the…
Capturing the zeitgeist has never been actor Gal Gadot’s strong suit. The Israeli performer’s most recent appearances on the silver screen — two lauded starring roles as Wonder Woman not withstanding — have quickly garnered her a reputation for being the butt of the joke, from singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” in an infamous viral March 2020 video to some truly harrowing line deliveries that have spawned countless impressions on social media.Now, as the use of AI in the creative field has become one of the most divisive topics in entertainment today, Gadot is once again having yet another foot-in-mouth moment.…
It’s no secret that AI is becoming increasingly unpopular around the world, as the tech’s garbled output has become impossible for the average person to avoid. For a rising cohort of workers, AI is also becoming inescapable on the job. According to one piece of research, staffers aren’t exactly thrilled with that reality.The new survey, conducted by the Indeed-owned workplace review site Glassdoor, found that mentions of “AI” in employer reviews has skyrocketed over the last few years — though sentiments, tellingly, are becoming overwhelmingly negative as time goes on.Since 2019 when Glassdoor first began tracking references to “AI” or…
When Nvidia unveiled its new DLSS 5 feature, which uses AI to overhaul the visuals of video games, gamers knew what they were getting into.The official demos Nvidia had shared previously looked uncanny, disjointed from the game’s original aesthetic, and worst of all, bore that unmistakable AI sheen. Gamers reviled it as “slop tracing” — a play on Nvidia’s ray tracing graphics tech — and it spurred so much backlash that even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who nowadays is usually too busy hyping the AI boom to pay attention to the company’s gaming roots, got dragged into defending it.Now, adding…
The South African airline Airlink is defending its dramatic flyover of two full sized passenger jets that passed just yards above a packed stadium in Cape Town.Footage of the ambitious stunt consumed social media, with multiple angles showing how closely the aircraft — two Embraer SA passenger jets — passed within the rooftop of the 55,000 capacity venue. It was a tight enough call that many saw it as a near-crash rather than a piece of precision maneuvering. In response to the backlash, Airlink, which is backed by Qatar Airways, is reassuring that the flyover was super carefully planned and as…
The Federal Bureau of Investigation looks almost unrecognizable under director Kash Patel’s leadership.The agency’s head has been embroiled in a seemingly endless list of controversies, from allegations of excessive drinking to buying up location data on everyday American citizens to furthering of harebrained conspiracies.Patel lacked virtually any degree of relevant working experience for the job before the Senate confirmed him — and now, the agency is opening the doors for even more highly questionable hirings.As inside sources told CBS News, the FBI has quietly lowered standards of its background checks for potential federal agents and other personnel. The bureau is…
There was a time in the United States when the richest moguls, regardless of their many personal shortcomings, embraced philanthropy in a cynical effort to keep the angry mobs at bay. Andrew Carnegie famously built libraries, John D Rockefeller helped fund research that eventually eradicated hookworm, while JP Morgan donated vast collections of art and books to museums and other cultural institutions.Today’s robber barons aren’t in such a giving mood. Sure, there are some figures like Microsoft’s Bill Gates — who has plenty of his own problems, to be clear — but they seem to be quickly becoming the minority.Case in…
Two are dead and over 25 buildings damaged after a cataclysmic explosion at a cannabis facility in Sand Springs, Oklahoma last week. According to initial reporting by KTUL, the blast happened at 1:30am, and literally blew the roof off the building, sending out shockwaves that could be felt up to 30 to 40 miles away.“It was like around 1:20, 1:25. And it was just a big boom,” local man Donovan Ruffin, who lives a mile away from the blast, told the news channel. “Me and my wife woke up at the same time. And as soon as I heard it,…