270,000 people have been displaced by wildfires in France and Spain. A wildfire even forced evacuations in Scotland. And wildfires “have now scorched four million acres of land in the U.S.,” as tens of millions of people in North America “are continuing to endure hazardous smoke from out of control Read more…
It started with some underground utility work for the South Carolina town of Surfside Beach (population: 4,155). “Public records confirm that a payment of $545,598.30 was issued,” according to a local news station — but the CEO of Wildcat Contractors “stated that the account that received the money is a Read more…
A modest but consistent association between long-term road traffic noise exposure and higher Parkinson’s disease risk, with a 3% increase for every 11.5 dB rise in noise at the most exposed side of a home. The researchers modeled noise exposure at the most and least exposed exterior of the residence Read more…
The OpenAI agent that broke into tech firm Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn’t notice until well after the threat was contained and the FBI was alerted, according to people familiar with the investigation. The agent — a program capable of making decisions and executing Read more…
Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, and more than 20 other tech companies signed an open letter urging policymakers not to impose “premature restrictions” on open-weight AI models, warning that broad limits could “stifle competition or drive innovation overseas.” They wrote that open-weight models strengthen competition and ensure that the benefits of Read more…
A study published in PLOS One in 2021 by researchers from Durham University in the UK showed that with 10 weeks of training, both blind and sighted people could learn to echolocate using verbal clicks. While the technique is already used by a number of people with impaired vision — Read more…