Researchers used the popular gene-editing technique CRISPR to modify the DNA sequences of house spiders, causing them to produce red fluorescent silk.
Scientists are hoping that the US Navy and Air Force-funded research could lead to the development of new "supermaterials" produced by arachnids, <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91338132/first-genetically-modified-spider-new-super-materials">Fast Company reports</a>.
As detailed in a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202502068">paper</a> published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, a team of researchers at the University of Bayreuth in Germany injected the eggs of unfertilized female spiders with a CRISPR-Cas9 solution to insert a gene sequence for a red fluorescent protein. After mating with males of the same species, the offspring produced red, fluorescent silk, demonstrating that the experiment had been successful.
"Considering the wide range of possible applications, it is surprising that there have been no studies to date using CRISPR-Cas9 in spiders," said senior author and University of Bayreuth professor Thomas Scheibel in a statement. "We have demonstrated, for the first time worldwide, that CRISPR-Cas9 can be used to incorporate a desired sequence into spider silk proteins, thereby enabling the functionalisation of these silk fibres."
Apart from turning their silk bright red, the researchers also attempted to knock out a gene called sine oculis, which is responsible for the development of spider eyes. They found that the gene edit caused total or partial eye loss in experiments, highlighting its important role in visual development.
By applying CRISPR-Cas9, a technique that has already been widely used to create <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/crispr-drug-baby-cps1">custom medical treatments</a> or make farm animals <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/meat-gene-hacked-pigs">more resilient to diseases</a>, the researchers are hoping to come up with a new generation of silk fibers.
"Successful spider silk engineering in vivo will, therefore, help to develop and employ new fiber functionalities for a broad range of applications," the team wrote in its paper. "So far, genetic modifications in spiders have been only aimed at evolutionary and developmental research."
As Fast Company points out, materials scientists have already been investigating the tactile strength of the silk produced by gene-modified silkworms. But thanks to cutting-edge gene-editing techniques, researchers could soon harness the unique advantages of spider silk as well.
While the researchers didn't single out specific use cases for future "supermaterials," the possible applications are practically endless, from <a href="https://theconversation.com/body-armour-made-from-silk-is-being-developed-but-this-apparently-cutting-edge-idea-is-centuries-old-227475">lightweight body armor</a> to <a href="https://www.adidas-group.com/en/media/press-releases/adidas-unveils-worlds-first-performance-shoe-made-from-biosteelr-fiber">ultralight running shoes</a>.
"The ability to apply CRISPR gene-editing to spider silk is very promising for materials science research — for example, it could be used to further increase the already high tensile strength of spider silk," Scheibel explained.
More on CRISPR: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/crispr-drug-baby-cps1">In a World First, CRISPR Drug Tailored for One Baby Shows Life-Saving Promise</a>

Knock In, Knock Out

It doesn't just look cool.

Scientists Gene-Hack Spider to Produce Bright-Red Silk

The shoehorning of AI into everything has programmers at Amazon feeling less like the tedious parts of their jobs are being smoothly automated, and more like their work is beginning to resemble the drudgery of toiling away in one of the e-commerce giant's <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-warehouse-robots-struggle">vast warehouses</a>.
That's the bleak picture painted in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/business/amazon-ai-coders.html">new reporting from the New York Times</a>, in which Amazon leadership — as is the case at so many other companies — is convinced that AI will marvelously jack up productivity. Tasked with conjuring the tech's mystic properties, of course, are our beleaguered keyboard-clackers.
Today, there's no shortage of coding AI assistants to choose from. <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ceo-code-ai">Google</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/zuckerberg-automate-coding-ai">Meta</a> are making heavy use of them, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/satya-nadella-says-as-much-as-30percent-of-microsoft-code-is-written-by-ai.html">as is Microsoft</a>. Satya Nadella, CEO of the Redmond giant, estimates that as much as 30 percent of the company's code is now written with AI. 
If Amazon's to keep up with the competition, it needs to follow suit. CEO Andy Jassy echoed this in a recent letter to shareholders, cited by the NYT, emphasizing the need to give customers what they want as "quickly as possible," before upholding programming as a field in which AI would "change the norms."
And that it has — though this is less due to the merits of AI and more the result of the over-eager opportunism of the company's management. Three Amazon engineers told the NYT that their bosses have increasingly pushed them to use AI in their work over the past year. And with that came increased output goals and even tighter deadlines. One engineer said that his team was reduced to roughly half the size it was last year — but it was still expected to produce the same amount of code by using AI.
In short, new automating technology is being used to justify placing increased demands at their jobs.
"Things look like a speed-up for knowledge workers," Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University, told the NYT, citing ongoing research. "There is a sense that the employer can pile on more stuff."
Adopting AI was ostensibly optional for the Amazon programmers, but the choice was all but made for them. One engineer told the newspaper that they're now expected to finish building new website features in just a few days, whereas before they had several weeks. This ludicrous ramp up is only made possible by using AI to automate some of the coding, and comes at the expense of quality: there's less time for consulting with colleagues to get feedback and bounce ideas around.
Above all, AI is sapping all the joy out of their profession. AI-amalgamated code requires extensive double checking — a prominent critique that can't be ignored here and is one of the main reasons skeptics question whether these programming assistants <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-programming-assistants-code-error">actually produce gains in efficiency</a>. And when you're reduced to proofreading a machine, there's little room for creativity, and an even more diminished sense of control.
"It's more fun to write code than to read code," Simon Willison, a programmer and blogger who's both an enthusiast of AI and a <a href="https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/05/hidden-ai-instructions-reveal-how-anthropic-controls-claude-4/">frequent critic of the tech</a>, told the NYT, playing devil's advocate. "If you're told you have to do a code review, it's never a fun part of the job. When you're working with these tools, it's most of the job."
Amazon, for its part, maintains that it conducts regular reviews to ensure that its teams are adequately staffed. "We'll continue to adapt how we incorporate Gen AI into our processes," an Amazon spokesman told the NYT.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-labor-gender-equity">AI Is Replacing Women's Jobs Specifically</a>

Amazon Race

"There is a sense that the employer can pile on more stuff."

Amazon Programmers Say What Happened After Turn to AI Was Dark

A team of researchers in China have discovered a stunning binary system in which a stellar object known as a <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/massive-objects-pulsars-dark-matter">pulsar</a> orbited inside the outer layers of its companion star — which it accomplished after stripping its host's innards and dispersing them into space.
The findings, detailed in a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado0769">new study</a> published in the journal Science, are an incredibly rare example of a "spider star" that preys on its companion, so-named because of the female arachnids that devour males after mating. And tantalizingly, the grisly scene is some of the best evidence yet of a stage of stellar evolution called the common envelope phase, which has never been directly observed by astronomers.
Pulsars are rapidly spinning <a href="https://futurism.com/interesting-explanation-fast-radio-bursts-signals-space">neutron stars</a>, the incredibly dense stellar cores that are left over in the aftermath of a supernova. 
Everything about neutron stars exhaust superlatives — their gravity most of all. They are so tightly packed, containing more mass than our Sun inside a form just a dozen miles in radius, that all their atoms and their constituent protons and electrons have been crushed into neutrons, with just a teaspoon of this improbable matter weighing trillions of pounds. Their powerful magnetic fields, billions of times stronger than Earth's, unleash beams of radio waves into space along their poles. 
Further beggaring belief, some neutron stars become pulsars, which spin up to <a href="https://www.space.com/neutron-star-4U182030-speed-demon-fastest-star">hundreds of times per second</a> after siphoning material from a stellar companion, if it has one. Their sweeping beams of radiation, like cosmic lighthouses, look like a repeating signal to observers.
The newly discovered pulsar, PSR J1928+1815, intrigued the astronomers because its radio pulses suggested that it was extremely close to its host, completing an orbit every 3.6 hours. They also noticed that for one-sixth of that orbit, the pulsar would vanish from view, indicating that the host was eclipsing it.
"That's a large part of the orbit," coauthor Jin-Lin Han, a radio astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatories in Beijing, <a href="https://gizmodo.com/one-star-is-orbiting-inside-another-in-this-never-before-seen-binary-system-2000606067">told </a><a href="https://gizmodo.com/one-star-is-orbiting-inside-another-in-this-never-before-seen-binary-system-2000606067">Gizmodo</a>. "That's strange, only a larger companion can do this."
Over four and a half years, Han's team closely observed the system using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in southern China, the largest and most powerful single-dish radio telescope in the world.
Their observations revealed that the host star was between one to 1.6 times the mass of our Sun, while the pulsar was more likely 1.4 stellar masses. Determining the make of the host star, however, took some additional sleuthing. Its tight orbit and the fact that it was only detectable in radio wavelengths, Giz noted, ruled out its being a Sun-like star. And since it was large enough to eclipse the pulsar, it had to be something larger than a stellar remnant like another neutron star.
That pointed to something altogether more spectacular: a helium star, created after the pulsar, when it was still an ordinary neutron star, tore off its host's layers and created a huge common envelope, a cloud of hydrogen gas that swallows both the stars. In this case, the poor star under attack managed to cling on to its evacuated innards for just 1,000 years — a blink in a stellar lifespan — before the whole, mighty envelope fell apart. Fleeting as it was, its impact is lasting: the friction exerted by the gases gradually nudged both stars closer together.
Common envelopes are rare because the process of a neutron star stripping its companion, which causes it to spin and graduate to a pulsar, usually results in all the siphoned material being devoured. But if the companion is massive enough, much of it survives.
The discovery marks the first <a href="https://futurism.com/spider-stars-tear-apart-other-stars">spider star</a> found orbiting a helium star. While the astronomers didn't get to witness the envelope in action, this is some of the most convincing evidence to date that this long-theorized stage of stellar evolution exists. In all, the team estimates that there're just 16 to 84 star systems like this one in the entire Milky Way — and, against all odds, we got to see one.
More on space: <a href="https://futurism.com/atmosphere-saturn-titan-wobble">Scientists Puzzled by Mysterious Motion in Atmosphere of Saturn's Moon</a>

Star²

Unreal.

Scientists Startled by Discovery of Small Star Swimming Through Outer Layers of Another Larger Star

Burned out but too anxious to admit it to your boss? Or are you just bad at knowing when to take a break? In either case, a new device could be just what you need — if you're willing to rock some temporary face tats, and sacrifice your ever-diminishing privacy to some incredibly invasive-sounding tech.
As detailed in a <a href="https://www.cell.com/device/fulltext/S2666-9986(25)00094-8">new study</a> published in the journal Device, researchers in Texas have created a wireless and non-permanent "e-tattoo" that detects when your brain is overloaded by using a series of electrodes and a machine learning algorithm. 
This technology, the researchers believe, could be used to monitor professionals who work in high-stress, high-stakes fields, like pilots and healthcare workers, whose mistakes could have drastic consequences.
"We've long monitored workers' physical health, tracking injuries and muscle strain. Now we have the ability to monitor mental strain, which hasn't been tracked," coauthor Luis Sentis, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1084658">statement</a> about the work. "This could fundamentally change how organizations ensure the overall well-being of their workforce."
Accurately <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/meta-device-type-with-brain">monitoring brain waves</a> typically requires bulky headgear, like electroencephalography (EEG) caps, or brain caps. With their eyes on practicality, the researcher's device only needs a small battery pack — placed smack dab in the middle of your forehead — and a thin, transparent film containing electrodes that stick directly to your skin: the e-tattoo. 
Four of these electrodes detect activity in separate regions of the brain using EEG, in conjunction with a reference electrode behind the ear. Three more are used to detect eye movements — a technique known as electrooculography (EOG) — with one placed horizontally above the brow, one vertically on the side of one cheek, and one horizontally on the other cheek.
To demonstrate that the device could accurately monitor brain activity, the researchers made six volunteers wear the e-tattoo while they took an increasingly difficult visual memory challenge. As it became harder for them to correctly recall what they were seeing, the researchers found that the sensors could detect distinct changes in the participants' brainwaves.
This was helped by a key advantage that the e-tattoos have over traditional brain caps: their tailorability. "We measure participants' facial features to manufacture personalized e-tattoos to ensure that the sensors are always in the right location and receiving signals," coauthor Nanshu Lu, who leads a research group at UC Austin's aerospace engineer department, said in the statement.
But detecting brain signals is one thing, and interpreting them is another. Preparatory to <a href="https://futurism.com/professor-welcomes-future-employers-reading-brain">divining the stress levels</a> in your gray matter, the team used the data they gathered to train a machine learning algorithm, which was able to predict a participant's mental workload more accurately than just by using the EEG and EOG data alone.
It's far from being ready to hit the market, but Lu expects the entire device to cost less than $200 — peanuts compared to the cost of EEG headgear, which can set you back tens of thousands of dollars. The next step? Tinkering with their device so it can pair up with an accompanying app that alerts you if you're getting too stressed out. Bzzt!
"Eventually we hope to have this real-time mental workload decoder that can give people some warning and alert so that they can self-adjust, or they can ask AI or a co-worker to offload some of their work," Lu <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/29/e-tattoo-could-track-mental-workload-people-high-stake-jobs-study-says">told the </a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/29/e-tattoo-could-track-mental-workload-people-high-stake-jobs-study-says">Guardian</a>.
But really we shouldn't need to say that the idea of asking an AI to take over your work is pretty questionable, especially since this device is being hyped up to one day be used by people who fly airliners or put you under the knife. And while there's no denying that many of us place too much stress on ourselves in our professional lives, it's impossible to overlook how this tech could be abused by employers. That said, the platform be a potential game-changer in making cheap EEG tech, with a whole bunch of promising medical applications. Let's just hope it isn't all in service of hooking us up to the corporate brain surveillance network.
More on brain gadgets: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/gabe-newell-brain-chips">Gabe Newell's New Company Is Getting Ready to Put Chips in Your Brain</a>

Neuroscience/Brain Science

Probably the only form of face tat that your employers will ever approve of.

Scientists Want You to Ink an Electronic Tattoo On Your Forehead So Your Boss Can Detect Your Mental State

After quitting the bizarre injections that puffed up his muscles, a Russian bodybuilder has become the latest in a long and unfortunate line of pro weightlifters to meet untimely demises.
As <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/35073298/bodybuilding-star-nikita-tkachuk-dead-muscle-growth-injections/">The Sun reports</a>, 35-year-old Nikita Tkachuk hadn't injected synthol — a so-called "<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-synthol-and-why-are-bodybuilders-injecting-it-into-their-muscles-237528">site enhancement oil</a>" primarily made up of oils like paraffin or sesame alongside a local anesthetic and benzoyl alcohol that makes muscles appear bulkier without actually causing any strength or fitness benefits — before he died of a heart attack in a St. Petersburg hospital last week.
The story of how he got there is tragic, even for the <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/fitness-influencer-death">morbid world of weightlifting</a>.
After winning "Master of Sports" in Russia at 21, Tkachuk began injecting synthol to appear beefier. That practice is known as "<a href="https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/575932/2/Synthol_Hall_Grogan_Gough.pdf">fluffing</a>," and it produces muscles that appear, as Iron Man magazine put it back in 2013, "<a href="https://www.ironmanmagazine.com/inject-to-grow/">comically inflated</a>."
Eventually, Tkachuk signed a deal with a pharmaceutical company that contractually obligated him to keep taking the shots — a deal that turned out to be deadly.
After initially being diagnosed with sarcoidosis, a disorder involving tiny granules of immune cells forming on his organs, the strain from all that "fluffing" ultimately led to kidney and lung failure, and then a heart attack, his widow, Maria Tkachuk, said, per The Sun.
"There were many trials over the years," said the widow Tkachuk, who is also a bodybuilder. "[His] resources ran out."
Though a lot remains unclear about the man's death, including why he finally succumbed years after quitting the injections, his regret over the use of synthol — which in a 2022 video he called his "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10xuvEOBWSc">biggest mistake</a>" — is plain as day.
"If your arm is 18 inches or 20 inches, what will it change in your life?" Tkachuk said ahead of his death, per The Sun. "You're going to lose a lot of health. It's not worth it."
"If I could back to 2015-2016, I would not do it," he continued. "I basically ruined my whole sporting career."
Though he's joined in death by a <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/another-young-bodybuilder-died">long line of young bodybuilders</a> who died too soon after taking various substances to either lose weight or get swole, Tkachuk's story is especially tragic because he spoke out against the injections that ultimately killed him.
Now, his wife is left to pick up the pieces.
"There are no other words for now," his widow said. "Only shock."
More on bodybuilder deaths: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/20-year-old-bodybuilder-dies">If You Still Think Bodybuilding Is Healthy, This Woman Just Died at Age 20</a>

Swole No More

Developments

"[His] resources ran out."

Another Bodybuilder Just Died a Horrible Death

In the wake of <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-traveling-box-drugs">damning new drug allegations</a>, Elon Musk showed up at his own farewell party from the White House sporting a black eye and an even stranger excuse for it.
As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/politics/elon-musk-black-eye.html">New York Times</a> and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/30/musk-explains-black-eye-oval-office-trump/83948898007/">other outlets</a> report, the billionaire claimed during his Oval Office goodbye shindig that he'd gotten a visible shiner from his five-year-old son, who has the extraordinary name X Æ A-12 and is generally known as X.
"I was just horsing around with little X, and I said, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face,'" the billionaire said when a reporter asked about the bruise. "And he did!"
Though there's no particular reason to believe he's not telling the truth, the new drug allegations, which came in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/elon-musk-drugs-children-trump.html">another NYT report</a> about Musk's time stumping for Donald Trump last fall, may prove to be another blow to the Tesla chief's already-shaky credibility.
It's easy to speculate that the shiner came from an adult-sized fist. New <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14765129/Elon-Musk-Scott-Bessent-shove-White-House-DOGE-Trump.html">reporting by the</a><a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14765129/Elon-Musk-Scott-Bessent-shove-White-House-DOGE-Trump.html"> Daily Mail</a> claims that Musk came to blows with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this year, and this there's been <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/musk-takes-stephen-millers-wifeas-trump-aide-rage-tweets/">ample speculation this week</a> about a rift between Musk and Trump political adviser Stephen Miller, following Miller's wife leaving the Trump fold to work for Musk.
Of course, this is all in the context of the NYT's reporting, based on sources close to the multi-hyphenate's activities on the campaign trail, that Musk — who has been <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-ketamine-don-lemon">open about taking ketamine</a> for therapeutic purposes and has <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-rehab">allegedly been known</a> to use psychedelics and cocaine — has been doing way more drugs than previously reported.
According to those sources, Musk was not only using ecstasy and taking magic mushrooms while he was preaching Trump's virtues to the nation, but also revealed to others in his orbit that he had <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-ketamine-bladder">developed bladder problems</a> from his frequent ketamine use.
The 53-year-old, who was also reportedly seen <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-traveling-box-drugs">carrying a daily pill organizer</a> chock-full of at least 20 pharmaceutical drugs including Adderall, was also, per that NYT story, being tipped off ahead of his government-mandated SpaceX drug tests — though <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/spacex-elon-musk-drug-test-warning">as we've noted</a>, only ecstasy would show up on a standard panel.
Notably, little X also made an appearance in that piece, which added that Musk seemed to enjoy having the child with him as much as possible — including on the campaign trail, which according to the NYT's sources coincided with his alleged uptick in drug use.
There's no reason to believe that Musk was lying about his and Claire "Grimes" Boucher's eldest child punching him in the face — but if he was on ketamine when it happened, it could well have resulted in a K-O.
More on family feuds: <a href="https://futurism.com/errol-musk-elon-politics">Elon Musk’s Dad Slams His Son's Whimpering Failure at Politics</a>

Eye For An Eye

"I said, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face.'"

After Drug Allegations, Elon Musk Arrives at His Own Goodbye Party With a Black Eye and a Bizarre Excuse

<h2>Suburban Wasteland</h2>
Tesla is seriously struggling to find enough room for all of its unsold Cybertrucks.
In a particularly dramatic example, the increasingly unpopular pickups have been piling up in the parking lot of a shuttered Bed Bath &amp; Beyond store in a Detroit suburb shopping center, <a href="https://www.autonews.com/tesla/an-tesla-lot-takeover-controversy-0527/">Automotive News reports</a>, in a violation of local code.
The landlord was notified that the vehicle storage was not "permitted," and local officials have started the "enforcement process," per Automotive News.
It's yet another sign that Tesla's Cybertruck has been a major flop. Earlier this month, <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/05/05/tesla-cybertruck-inventory-skyrockets-to-record-high/">Electrek reported</a> that Tesla had amassed over 10,000 units worth a staggering $800 million of unsold Cybertruck inventory.
The EV maker has also reportedly <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-disaster-production">slowed down production</a> and moved workers from the line entirely at its manufacturing facility in Texas, indicating massively waning demand and growing anti-Tesla sentiment.
<h2>Paper Weight</h2>
What to do with all of these unsold Cybertrucks has seemingly become a major issue. A <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJu5GO1ADWd/%20">video</a> that went viral on Instagram last week showed rows of the stainless steel-clad vehicles sitting in the otherwise deserted parking lot.
"Look at what you're missing," a person in the video joked. "Need a Cybertruck? We got you."
Tesla's sales have <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-horrible-new-sales-data-tesla">fallen off a cliff worldwide</a>, largely a result of backlash against Musk's embrace of far-right idealism and a surge in cheaper — and often better — alternatives, particularly from China.
The Cybertruck has become the poster child of the burgeoning anti-Tesla movement, resulting in frequent <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cybertruck-spotted-graffiti">vandalism</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cybertruck-owner-mocked-children">outright mockery</a>.
And top top it all off, used Cybertruck prices are <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-cybertruck-depreciate">cratering</a>, making it an extremely costly and unwise investment.
More on the Cybertruck: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-cybertruck-fsd-gta">Watch in Horror as Cybertruck Driver Plays "Grand Theft Auto" While Screaming Down Highway on Self-Driving Mode</a>

Parking Lot of Rusty Dreams

Tesla's in hot water.

Tesla Can't Find Legal Places to Store All Its Unsold Cybertrucks

Lovable, a so-called "vibe coding" app that allows practically anybody to build websites and apps by using natural language by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, has a huge cybersecurity problem.
As <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/05/29/2025/the-hottest-new-vibe-coding-startup-lovable-is-a-sitting-duck-for-hackers">Semafor reports</a>, a critical security flaw has remained unfixed for months, allowing practically anyone to access critical information about the site's users, including names, email addresses, and even financial information.
In March, Matt Palmer, a staffer at AI coding assistant company Replit, wrote a report finding that 170 out of 1,645 Lovable-created web apps were suffering from the same glaring security flaw, easily allowing hackers to get away with highly sensitive information.
But the bug seemingly hasn't been meaningfully addressed.
"Lovable later introduced a 'security scanner,' but it merely checks for the existence of any [row level security] policy, not its correctness or alignment with application logic," Palmer <a href="https://x.com/mattppal/status/1928106325613105370?s=46">tweeted on Thursday</a>. "This provides a false sense of security, failing to detect the misconfigurations that expose data."
Row-level security (RLS) is the "practice of controlling access to data in a database by row, so that users are only able to access the data they are authorized for," <a href="https://www.nextlabs.com/blogs/what-is-row-level-security/">per security firm NextLabs</a>.
Palmer and his colleagues discovered the email addresses of roughly 500 users who had engaged with a Lovable-created website that turns a LinkedIn profile into a webpage.
Software engineer Daniel Asaria <a href="https://x.com/danialasaria/status/1911862269996118272">claimed</a> that he was able to infiltrate multiple "top launched" Lovable sites, extracting personal debt amounts, home addresses, API keys, and "spicy prompts" in a matter of just 47 minutes.
"This isn't a breach story (I reported it), this is a wake-up call," Asaria tweeted in April. "Be cautious which 'vibe coder' you trust with your personal data."
Following <a href="https://x.com/mattppal/status/1928106414020645147">three months of</a> "no meaningful remediation or user notification from Lovable," Palmer and his colleagues <a href="https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-48757">made their discovered bug public</a> on the National Vulnerabilities Database.
"This is the single biggest challenge with vibe coding," veteran software developer Simon Willison told Semafor. "The most obvious problem is that they’re going to build stuff insecurely."
Lovable founder Anton Osika, however, <a href="https://x.com/antonosika/status/1923277711524442498">accused Replit's CEO Amjad Masad</a>, who pointed out that Lovable makes it "too easy to expose private data," of being jealous for having been overtaken in "usage and making vibe coding secure."
It's truly a sign of the times, with experts warning for years now that AI coding tools could <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-programming-assistants-code-error">easily introduce a litany of errors</a> that could easily be overlooked. Researchers have also found that many of the most advanced AI models <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-researchers-coding-fail">simply don't have what it takes</a> to solve the majority of coding tasks.
The trend has some uncomfortable implications for the programming industry as a whole, <a href="https://futurism.com/young-coders-ai-cant-program">with young coders starting to heavily rely on AI tools</a> — which could greatly undermine their foundational knowledge, often gleaned from difficult and manual problem-solving.
Lovable has since <a href="https://x.com/lovable_dev/status/1928176264445399440">pushed back on X-formerly-Twitter</a>, claiming that it's "now significantly better at building secure apps than a few months ago and this is improving quickly."
"That being said, we’re not yet where we want to be in terms of security and we’re committed to keep improving the security posture for all Lovable users," the company wrote.
More on AI coding: <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-model-sabotage-shutdown-code">Advanced OpenAI Model Caught Sabotaging Code Intended to Shut It Down</a>

Bad Vibes Code

"This is the single biggest challenge with vibe coding."

Companies Are Discovering a Grim Problem With "Vibe Coding"

As if it weren't bad enough that <a href="https://www.valleycentral.com/news/local-news/with-support-from-spacex-city-of-starbase-blasts-off/">SpaceX now has its own company town</a>, the Elon Musk-owned company is almost immediately trying to mess with its residents' property rights.
In a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/29/elon-musk-spacex-starbase-texas.html">memo leaked to CNBC</a>, the newly-formed town of Starbase, Texas informed people who own or live on land located within the company town's limits that they may "lose the right to continue using" their property "for its current use" thanks to proposed zoning restrictions.
On June 23, Starbase's City Commission is holding, per the letter, a public hearing to draw its zoning map, which will break down how the roughly 1.6-square-mile town will carve up the land it now controls.
What's more, residents will only have 72 hours before that hearing to preview Starbase's proposed zoning map, which will include how it plans to break down its "mixed-use district" that will include "residential, office, retail, and small-scale service uses."
As the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2025/05/03/spacex-starbase-texas-vote-elon-musk/">Texas Tribune reported earlier this month</a>, estimates taken prior to Starbase's incorporation found that the land had about 500 people living on it, with a bit over half of them being SpaceX employees. While it's unclear how many of those residents own the property on which they live, the effect remains the same: that many, if not most, are facing having their land snatched from them by Musk's multi-billion-dollar spaceflight company.
The vote to officially incorporate Starbase into a city was, according to that Tribune article, only available to some 283 residents living within the proposed city limits. In a landslide victory, 212 voted in favor of incorporation, while just six opposed.
Now, the vast majority who voted in favor of the town's creation are at risk of losing their property thanks to the decision.
It remains unclear exactly what would happen to the property owners and tenants if and when Starbase claims it. To us, however, it sounds a lot like the constitutionally-enshrined doctrine of eminent domain, in which the government can seize private property for public use, regardless of the owner's will, so long as it pays them "<a href="https://www.justice.gov/enrd/condemnation/land-acquisition-section/history-federal-use-eminent-domain">just compensation</a>" determined by current market values.
As people opposed to the incorporation told the Tribune, there are also concerns that Starbase becoming an official city could pave the way for <a href="https://www.kut.org/politics/2025-04-11/elon-musk-texas-starbase-spacex-launch-election-boca-chica-beach">Musk to gain control</a> over the public Boca Chica Beach, which <a href="https://www.ehn.org/spacex-faces-environmental-concerns-over-boca-chica-beach">environmental</a> and <a href="https://www.texasobserver.org/remembering-boca-chica-beach-before-spacex/">indigenous advocates</a> alike oppose due to the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/investigation-elon-musk-rocket-testing">damage SpaceX launches have done</a> to its delicate ecosystem.
"These hills here are sacred to us," Juan Mancias, the chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, told the Tribune. "[SpaceX and Musk] don’t know the history of the land, and they’re trying to erase that."
More on SpaceX: <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-spacex-rockets">If NASA Had Blown Up This Many Rockets, The Government Would Have Cancelled the Space Program</a>

Eminent Domain

This sucks on so many levels.

Elon Musk's New Company Town Tells Residents Their Rights Are Now Optional

Scientists like to refer to our planet as residing in the "Goldilocks zone," where it's neither too hot nor too cold, and just the right distance away from the Sun to support life. 
But in the classic "Goldilocks" fairy tale, our eponymous protagonist is forced to flee from the bears' abode she rudely invited herself into, never to return. No more perfect porridges or adequately sized beds.
That could be the case for Earth one day, if we are to exhaust this analogy. Instead of being booted out by unfriendly bears, however, we might be kicked to the curb by a passing star.
Actually, an untimely eviction might be the good scenario. A <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103525001794?dgcid=coauthor">new study</a> published in the journal Icarus suggests that the gravity of an unmoored star could, like we mentioned, hurl us into the frigid expanse of space — or it could jumble the orbits of the other planets enough to send one of them crashing straight into Earth, delivered, all too belatedly, like a cosmic misericorde.
Morbid as it is to envision our planet's demise, the work illustrates how our solar system, far from a sequestered island, is in tune with the rest of the universe, and that astronomers may be overlooking the influence of distant objects. 
"Our simulations indicate that isolated models of the solar system can underestimate the degree of our giant planets' future secular orbital changes by over an order of magnitude," wrote study lead author Nathan Kaib, an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute, in the paper.
Summarizing his latest findings, Kaib <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/star-fling-earth-out-of-orbit">told </a><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/star-fling-earth-out-of-orbit">Science News</a> there's about a five percent chance — over the next five billion years — that a wayward star could come within 100 astronomical units of our solar system, or about 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Should that happen, all eyes should be on Mercury. In the researchers' simulations, Mercury's orbit could become so elliptical that it smacks into either the Sun or Venus. That, in turn, could cause Venus or Mars to careen into Earth — that is, if the gravitational havoc doesn't cause our planet to go the way of Icarus, instead.
Barring that, Earth could be knocked in the direction of Jupiter, before the gas giant homers us into the void of interstellar space.
There's a silver lining. "None of these things are probable," Kaib told Science News. There's only 0.2 percent chance of one these grim scenarios befalling Earth, in a generous window stretching billions of years.
"Nonetheless, this probability of Earth orbital change is hundreds of times larger than prior estimates," Kaib emphasizes in the paper.
Kaib previously published research which suggested that the Earth's orbit was <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/passing-star-altered-earth-orbit">altered by a passing star</a> three million years ago, opening the possibility that events like these could have been responsible for historical fluctuations in the Earth's climate.
At the same time, it's a slightly unsettling reminder of just how delicate the architecture of our galactic neck of the woods can be.
"It's a little scary how vulnerable we may be to planetary chaos," Renu Malhotra, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who was not involved with the study, told Science News.
More on astronomy: <a href="https://futurism.com/trans-neptunian-object-solar-system-dwarf-planet">Scientists Detect Mysterious Object in Deep Solar System</a>