Scientists Create Novel Organism with Primitive Nervous System
https://lemmy.world/post/44550492
Scientists Create Novel Organism with Primitive Nervous System - Lemmy.World
>In 2020, scientists at Tufts created tiny novel living forms called xenobots
from frog cells, capable of traversing a watery environment, healing their own
injuries, and even gathering other cells to build xenobot siblings. >Now,
researchers at Tufts and the Wyss Institute have taken the quest to reimagine
life forms a step further, adding nerve cells and observing how they
self-organize and alter xenobot behavior. The resulting neurobots take on new
shapes and show unique behaviors…
Top counterterrorism official Kent resigns over Trump’s Iran war, says Iran posed no imminent threat
https://lemmy.world/post/44387849
Top counterterrorism official Kent resigns over Trump’s Iran war, says Iran posed no imminent threat - Lemmy.World
>“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started
this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent said
in a statement posted on social media… >“They’re not smart people, or they’re
not savvy people,” Trump said. . . . >“It speaks to our hubris,” Kent told
reporters while campaigning for Congress. “For us not to have learned from all
this just shows that there are people making money and making their careers at
the other end of it. They’ve been doing it on the backs and dead bodies of U.S.
soldiers.” >During his 2022 congressional campaign, Kent paid Graham Jorgensen,
a member of the far-right military group the Proud Boys, for consulting work. He
also worked closely with Joey Gibson, the founder of the Christian nationalist
group Patriot Prayer, and attracted support from a variety of far-right figures.
>Early during his first campaign, Kent acknowledged that a political consultant
set up a call that was joined by Nick Fuentes, a popular right-wing influencer
who has said that Jews are holding the U.S. “hostage” and once proclaimed that
“Hitler was awesome, Hitler was right.”
Researchers Trick Perplexity's Comet AI Browser Into Phishing Scam in Under Four Minutes
https://lemmy.world/post/44212524
Researchers Trick Perplexity's Comet AI Browser Into Phishing Scam in Under Four Minutes - Lemmy.World
>…“This is what we call Agentic Blabbering: the AI Browser exposing what it
sees, what it believes is happening, what it plans to do next, and what signals
it considers suspicious or safe.” >By intercepting this traffic between the
browser and the AI services running on the vendor’s servers and feeding it as
input to a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), Guardio said it was able to
make Perplexity’s Comet AI browser fall victim to a phishing scam in under four
minutes. . . . >“If you can observe what the agent flags as suspicious,
hesitates on, and more importantly, what it thinks and blabbers about the page,
you can use that as a training signal,” Chen explained. “The scam evolves until
the AI Browser reliably walks into the trap another AI set for it.”
How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world
https://lemmy.world/post/44190351
How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world - Lemmy.World
>Niantic’s AI spinout is training a new world model using 30 billion images of
urban landmarks crowdsourced from players. . . . >“Five hundred million people
installed that app in 60 days,” says Brian McClendon, CTO at Niantic Spatial, an
AI company that Niantic spun out in May last year. According to the video-game
firm Scopely, which bought Pokémon Go from Niantic at the same time, the game
still drew more than 100 million players in 2024, eight years after it launched.
. . . >Now Niantic Spatial is using that vast and unparalleled trove of
crowdsourced data—images of urban landmarks tagged with super-accurate location
markers taken from the phones of hundreds of millions of Pokémon Go players
around the world—to build a kind of world model, a buzzy new technology that
grounds the smarts of LLMs in real-world environments. >The company’s latest
product is a model that it says can pinpoint your location on a map to within a
few centimeters, based on a handful of snapshots of the buildings or other
landmarks in view. The firm wants to use it to help robots navigate with greater
precision in places where GPS is unreliable. . .
NASA shares photos of an extraordinary event witnessed by astronauts on the space station
https://lemmy.world/post/44050332
NASA shares photos of an extraordinary event witnessed by astronauts on the space station - Lemmy.World
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/78084443-d411-48f4-946d-c13dfa3e4675.jpeg] >…A
mysterious phenomenon known as “red sprites” randomly occur in the mesosphere,
hanging like upside-down jellyfish for a scant ten milliseconds. Blue jets spear
from cloud tops toward the stratosphere with eerie, silent urgency. >Both events
happen so fast and high that capturing their details was nearly impossible. Yet
ASIM can spot them from orbit. >One study used its footage and ground
instruments to pinpoint the altitude of a single blue jet. This confirmed that
these upward bolts really do punch beyond the weather layer we know. >Those
measurements feed directly into storm-charging models, which in turn inform
aviation guidelines about where dangerous electrical fields might lurk…
Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate
https://lemmy.world/post/43974104
Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate - Lemmy.World
>Thousands of companies are jockeying for billions of dollars in Defense
Department contracts to build a shield designed to intercept and destroy
missiles launched against the United States. >But amid the intense competition,
a handful of firms have an important inside connection. >At least four of the
companies awarded contracts so far are owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a
private equity firm founded by billionaire Steve Feinberg, who until last year
ran the company and is now the deputy secretary of defense — the
second-highest-ranking official in the Pentagon. . . . >On his first day back in
office, Trump rescinded an executive order signed by President Joe Biden that
required his appointees to comply with an ethics pledge. The pledge barred them
from working on issues related to their former lobbying topics or clients for
two years. Weeks later, Trump fired 17 inspectors general charged with
investigating fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest across the federal
government. Around the same time, he removed the head of the Office of
Government Ethics, the agency that oversees ethics compliance throughout the
executive branch. The office is currently without a head or a chief of staff. .
. . >“This is what President Eisenhower worried about in the 1960s” when he
railed against the military-industrial complex…
The National Park Service Is Removing Signs Staff Reported as ‘Factually Accurate’
https://lemmy.world/post/43936043
The National Park Service Is Removing Signs Staff Reported as ‘Factually Accurate’ - Lemmy.World
>…The administration’s removals to date have included stripping information
about climate change, slavery, the civil rights movement, and the mistreatment
of Native Americans from national park sites, according to court filings from
the National Parks Conservation Association. NPCA sued the Interior Department
this month over its decision to remove content from park sites. >The
organization said in the suit that the content removals “erase the history of
countless people and communities from public spaces” and “limit the availability
of scientific information relevant to ensuring the long-term preservation of the
parks themselves." >“…we can’t talk about times in American history where people
in power hurt other people. We can’t talk about times in American history where
people’s civil rights were violated…” >…In at least one report, a park service
employee suggested the administration review a sign and possibly change it even
though they acknowledged changes could run afoul of legal requirements. >“Text
addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil War,” the report
from a staff member at Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee said.
“This is both historically correct and legislatively mandated but we ask for
further review to confirm it is aligned with SO 3431.”…
Bill to require factual teaching about U.S. Capitol attack clears Va. General Assembly
https://lemmy.world/post/43852979
Bill to require factual teaching about U.S. Capitol attack clears Va. General Assembly - Lemmy.World
>Virginia lawmakers on Monday passed a proposal that would require schools, if
they teach students about the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6,
2021, to relay the facts of what actually happened, without including
misinformation that the 2020 presidential election was stolen or that the attack
was just a peaceful protest.
Qatar’s LNG Blackout Just Broke the Global Gas Market
https://lemmy.world/post/43803771
Qatar’s LNG Blackout Just Broke the Global Gas Market - Lemmy.World
>…On March 2, QatarEnergy — the state-owned energy giant responsible for all of
the country’s liquefied natural gas exports — announced a complete halt to LNG
production…their shutdown effectively removes roughly 20% of the world’s LNG
export capacity from the market in one hit…This goes beyond sentiment and sits
squarely in the let’s-affect-fundamentals territory…This episode will embed a
geopolitical risk premium far deeper into LNG pricing than existed even at the
height of the Russia-Ukraine crisis…The long-term impact could be structural and
include reconfigured trade flows, geopolitical risk premiums baked into
contracts, changes in investment strategies, and a renewed urgency for
diversification of supplies.
