<h2>Blast Radius</h2>
In 2018, astronomers took the <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-release-first-image-black-hole">first-ever picture of a black hole</a>, a fascinating and unprecedented glimpse of an event horizon.
And as it turns out, the black hole — dubbed M87* and located some 55 million light-years away — also let out a massive belch of gamma rays while scientists from the <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-capture-amazing-image-black-hole-galaxy">Event Horizon Telescope</a> team, an international collaboration combining data from sensors around the globe, were getting a closer look.
The campaign gathered data from 25 terrestrial and orbital telescopes in April 2018, and scientists are still poring over the results.
"We were lucky to detect a gamma-ray flare from M87 during this Event Horizon Telescope's multi-wavelength campaign," said University of Trieste Giacomo Principe, coauthor of a <a href="https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2024/12/aa50497-24/aa50497-24.html">new paper</a> accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics, in a <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1067819">statement</a>. "This marks the first gamma-ray flaring event observed in this source in over a decade, allowing us to precisely constrain the size of the region responsible for the observed gamma-ray emission."
<h2>Violent Delights</h2>
The team is hoping the gamma ray outburst data will help scientists study the "physics surrounding M87’s supermassive black hole," according to Principe.
The researchers found that the outburst, an energetic flare releasing copious amounts of high-energy radiation, absolutely dwarfed the black hole itself, extending beyond its event horizon by tens of millions of times.
The blast lasted for roughly three Earth days, covering an area roughly 170 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth.
Scientists believe the flare is the result of material consumed by the black hole interacting with its external magnetic field.
Explosions of this type are some of the <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/universe/gamma-ray-bursts-black-hole-birth-announcements/">most violent in the universe</a> but are infamously hard to capture as they are usually only visible in specific wavelengths.
"The activity of this supermassive black hole is highly unpredictable — it is hard to forecast when a flare will occur," said coauthor and Nagoya City University researcher Kazuhiro Hada in a statement.
The team found that the "flare region has a complex structure and exhibits different characteristics depending on the wavelength," according to University of Tokyo astroparticle physicist and team member Daniel Mazin.
It was such a violent event that even the overall ring structure of the black hole itself appeared to change in relation to the flare, suggesting an intriguing relationship between the two.
But there's still a lot we don't understand about the nature of these massive celestial objects.
"How and where particles are accelerated in supermassive black hole jets is a longstanding mystery," said coauthor and University of Amsterdam professor Sera Markoff. "For the first time, we can combine direct imaging of the near event horizon regions during gamma-ray flares from particle acceleration events and test theories about the flare origins."
More on the black hole: <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-capture-amazing-image-black-hole-galaxy">Scientists Capture Amazing Image of Black Hole at Center of Our Galaxy</a>

Black Hole Belch

Woah.

Astronomers Were Watching a Black Hole When It Suddenly Exploded With Gamma Rays

Remember that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/black-plastic-spatula-flame-retardants/680452/">huge panic</a> around black spatulas? It turns out that the whole thing may have just been a crock of crap.
A <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653524022173">study</a> published in October contended that kitchenware made of black plastics, and especially utensils like spatulas, contained alarmingly high amounts of toxic flame retardants due to the recycled materials they were sourced from.
It almost immediately caused a major scare, and articles published everywhere from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/toxic-black-plastic-kitchen-alternatives/">The New York Times</a> to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/01/health/flame-retardant-black-plastic-wellness/index.html">CNN</a> recommended throwing these ubiquitous plastic items out in favor of safer alternatives.
But after some scientists questioned the research, the editors of the journal that the study was published in, Chemosphere, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352402811X">issued a correction</a> over the weekend clarifying that the toxic levels indicated by the work were, in a nutshell, wrong; a simple math error was behind the startling, but now seemingly debunked, claim.
The work, conducted by researchers at the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future, examined over two hundred black plastic household products, roughly half of which were utensils, to see if they contained brominated flame retardants that are commonly used in electronics.
Such chemicals, and in particular a variety known as BDE-209, <a href="https://iris.epa.gov/ChemicalLanding/&amp;substance_nmbr=35">have been linked</a> with a number of worrying health outcomes, such as endocrine disruption, damage to the reproductive systems, and even cancer. Because the provenance of recycled materials can be tricky to determine, the researchers' suspicion was that plastics containing the flame retardants were negligently being reused where they could pose the most harm: in the very stuff we cook our food with.
Their hunch was somewhat vindicated. Nine kitchen utensils were found to contain possibly worrying levels of flame retardants.
Some hilariously bungled arithmetic, however, led them to vastly overstate the degree of risk. The authors estimated that regularly using one of these contaminated kitchen utensils could result in an intake of 34,700 nanograms of BDE-209 per day. For reference, the Environmental Protection Agency says that it's safe to intake 7,000 nanograms of the chemical per kilogram of body weight.
By applying this figure to a hypothetical adult weight of 60 kilograms, you would get a daily limit of 420,000 nanograms per day, which is well over ten times the estimated exposure levels to the flame retardant. But evidently, someone forgot to punch in a zero somewhere, and the researchers mistakenly reported this as 42,000 nanograms. What initially appeared to be hitting the ceiling of what was deemed safe turned out to barely approach that limit.
But in response, the authors of the paper say that while their math may have been off, their conclusions weren't.
"However, it is important to note that this does not impact our results," study lead author Megan Liu, science and policy manager at Toxic-Free Future, <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/black-plastic">told the National Post</a>. "The levels of flame retardants that we found in black plastic household items are still of high concern, and our recommendations remain the same."
And perhaps Liu and her team are correct. It may be the dose that makes the poison, but why take the risk with a dose at all?
It's certainly possible that we're being exposed to these flame retardants from other sources besides kitchenware, accumulating to dangerous levels in our bodies over time. So if you're worried, there's no harm in ditching these black spatulas that do appear to contain the chemicals. But the alarmist response, it's safe to say, was overblown.
More on chemicals: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/strange-chemical-us-drinking-water">Scientists Identify Strange Chemical in Drinking Water Across the US</a>

Hero to Zero

Developments

Yeah, about that...

There's a Scandal Growing About That Paper About How Black Spatulas Are Killing You

<h2>Truth Bomb</h2>
As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/25/billionaire-doomsday-bunkers-end-times">more and more rich people</a> rush to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/wealthy-doomsday-bunkers">buy and build bomb shelters</a>, experts suggest they're little more than a psychological defense mechanism for wealthy people who want to feel a shred of control in an unpredictable world.
As the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-bunkers-war-atomic-bombs-0356fa5b34067c138c64b9143f73c308#">Associated Press reports</a>, the bunker business was worth $137 million last year and is slated to grow to $175 million by the end of the decade, per <a href="https://www.blueweaveconsulting.com/report/united-states-bomb-shelter-and-fallout-shelter-market">analysis from BlueWeave Consulting</a>.
According to experts who spoke to the outlet, however, these shelters do more to address atomic anxieties than nuclear realities. After all, you're eventually going to need to crawl out of your bunker and face the horrific situation back on the surface.
"Bunkers are, in fact, not a tool to survive a nuclear war, but a tool to allow a population to psychologically endure the possibility of a nuclear war," explained Alicia Sanders-Zakre of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Radiation after a nuclear bomb detonation, as Sanders Zakre described it, is a "uniquely horrific aspect of nuclear weapons." Even those who <a href="https://remm.hhs.gov/nuclearfallout.htm">survive the fallout</a>, which involves radioactive particles raining down on the area surrounding the blast, will be unable to escape its long-lasting, intergenerational health effects like those <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4899336/">seen in Chernobyl</a> after its reactor meltdown nearly 40 years ago. And that's without getting into starvation, thirst, and the breakdown of social order.
"Ultimately," she said, "the only solution to protect populations from nuclear war is to eliminate nuclear weapons."
<h2>Shelter Skelter</h2>
Despite the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/billionaire-bunkers-doomsday-1.7130152">promises made by companies catering to</a> so-called "doomsday preppers," nonproliferation expert Sam Lair told the AP that such efforts are likely futile.
"Even if a nuclear exchange is perhaps more survivable than many people think, I think the aftermath will be uglier than many people think as well," Lair, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said. "The fundamental wrenching that it would do to our way of life would be profound."
As Lair pointed out, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/06/jfk-urges-americans-to-build-nuclear-bomb-shelters-oct-6-1961-243469">politicians used to urge the citizenry</a> to build their own bomb shelters half a century ago. Now, the "political costs incurred by causing people to think about shelters again is not worth it" — though that sort of concern clearly doesn't extend to the big business of bunkers.
While <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/would-you-survive-doomsday-scenario-preppers-offer-americans-tips-weather-supply-chain-crisis">doomsday prepping is now as American as apple pie</a>, the revival of bunker culture isn't limited to our shores: over in Switzerland, where each resident is guaranteed a spot in a bomb shelter in the case of nuclear war, the government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/switzerland-nuclear-shelters-1.7411896#:~:text=Nuclear%20bunkers%2C%20he%20says%2C%20are,from%20bombs%20and%20nuclear%20radiation.">update its vast array of Cold War-era bunkers</a>.
More on nuclear anxiety: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/russian-space-nuke-revelations">US Military Alarmed by Russian Nuclear Weapon Platform in Orbit</a>

Gimme Shelter

"Bunkers are, in fact, not a tool to survive a nuclear war."

There's a Major Problem With the Nuclear War Bunkers The Rich Are Buying

<h2>Blood Drive</h2>
Future space travelers will have to get creative to build structures on the surface of Mars. Sending all the necessary construction materials across over 140 million miles of space wouldn't just be a gargantuan undertaking, but it would be prohibitively expensive as well.
Instead, scientists have long proposed making use of the existing Martian soil to construct permanent structures.
In a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576524006301?via%3Dihub">paper</a> accepted for publication in the journal Acta Astronautica, a team of researchers from Kharazmi University in Tehran, Iran, investigated eleven different types of Martian concrete or cement "based on available resources and technologies."
And one of them stands out, to say the least: AstroCrete, a previously proposed substrate made from Martian regolith mixed with the bodily fluids — the literal blood, sweat, and tears — of future Mars inhabitants.
<h2>Construction IV</h2>
The idea of using blood to reinforce mortar dates back to the ancient Romans.
"Although it is a bit strange, blood can be utilized to create strong concrete or bricks for onsite construction on Mars," the researchers wrote in the paper. "After the arrival of the first Martian inhabitants and their placement in primary structures, which can include inflatable structures, the combination of tears, blood, and sweat from the inhabitants, along with Martian regolith, can be used to produce a concrete known as AstroCrete."
The unusual material was <a href="https://futurism.com/mars-base-astronaut-blood">first proposed</a> by researchers at the University of Manchester in 2021.
"Scientists have been trying to develop viable technologies to produce concrete-like materials on the surface of Mars, but we never stopped to think that the answer might be inside us all along," said Aled Roberts, from the University of Manchester, in a <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/affordable-housing-in-outer-space-scientists-develop-cosmic-concrete-from-space-dust-and-astronaut-blood/?utm_source=Reddit+&amp;utm_medium=Organic&amp;utm_id=Reddit_2021">statement</a> at the time.
A special protein in human blood called human serum albumin (HAS) serves as a "vivo binder" to create a form of concrete. Meanwhile, urea, a nitrogenous product extracted from urine, could make the material even stronger.
According to the Iranian team of scientists, a single crew member could produce sufficient HAS to "construct a small habitat for another crew member" in just 72 weeks.
Best of all, the University of Manchester scientists claim that AstroCrete could be 3D printed in place, making construction even simpler.
Apart from relying on the blood, sweat, and tears of astronauts, the Iranian scientists also proposed combing the Martian landscape for calcium carbonate to create a lime mortar. Alternatively, the abundant sulfur deposits on the planet's surface could also be used to craft "sulfur concrete," a corrosion-resistant material that "can be used in salty and acid environments."
More on AstroCrete: <a href="https://futurism.com/mars-base-astronaut-blood">Scientists Suggest Mixing "Astronaut Blood" With Mars Dust to Create Horrific Shelters</a>

Organic Architecture

One crew member collecting blood for 72 weeks could be enough to "construct a small habitat for another crew member."

Scientists Suggest Harvesting Blood From Mars Colonists to Construct Future City

Perhaps more than any profession, writers are infamous for their quirky and possibly counterproductive on the-job habits. In his heyday, screenwriter Paul Schrader would write <a href="https://www.bafta.org/media-centre/press-releases/bafta-screenwriters-lecture-series-paul-schrader">exclusively at night</a>, often until five or six in the morning. He fueled this with a lot of alcohol, nicotine, and cocaine (the latter a habit shared by many of his actors). While working on "Taxi Driver," he would stuff a pistol under his pillow when he eventually did go to sleep. At other times, he'd keep a loaded one on his desk.
But of course, the most notorious habit of them all may simply be not writing at all. Call it writer's block or procrastination, but it now seems that the AI chatbots designed to ape human wordsmiths are picking up this very writerly flaw.
That was the experience of filmmaker Nenad Cicin-Sain, who tried to recruit ChatGPT to come up with a screenplay for his upcoming project — they key word being "tried," because the OpenAI chatbot repeatedly made up excuses for why it couldn't deliver on time. It even tried to change up the deadlines.
This is not what Cicin-Sain anticipated. "I expected it to instantaneously pump out a screenplay once I created all the prompts," <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/12/18/2024/why-filmmaker-nenad-cicin-sain-fired-his-ai-screenwriter">he told Semafor</a> of the saga.
Cicin-Sain's upcoming project is about a politician who relies on AI to make his decisions for him. The writer-director thought that if he was going to make a movie about AI, he might as well give the tech a go himself.
"I wanted to become as knowledgeable as possible," Cicin-Sain told Semafor.
Perhaps not unlike a real writer <a href="https://thequietus.com/culture/books/philip-k-dick-a-scanner-darkly-anniversary-drugs-addiction-surveillance-grief/">with a decidedly bad drug habit</a>, ChatGPT hallucinated — a lot. Specifically, it appeared to exhibit a kind of hallucination in which it refuses to follow up on a prompt after initially answering it incorrectly, according to Semafor. In this case, the stubborn spell persisted for nearly a month.
It didn't start out that way. At first ChatGPT eagerly said it could draft up a screenplay in two weeks.
"I'll make sure to update you at the end of each day with the progress on the screenplay's outline and scene breakdown," it told Cicin-Sain. "Looking forward to working on this with you!"
It didn't make the deadline. Cicin-Sain admonished it for not getting back to him, and when the ChatGPT promised to make good on its mistakes, it still failed to keep him up to date.
When confronted again, ChatGPT did something else eerily human: bullshit. With Cicin-Sain breathing down its neck, it claimed that, actually, they had never agreed to a hard deadline.
"Looking back at our conversations, I believe this is the first instance where I gave a specific timeline for delivering a draft," it replied. "Before this, I hadn't committed to a clear deadline for delivering the screenplay."
Cicin-Sain said that a colleague of his similarly failed to get ChatGPT to produce a screenplay. And boy, aren't these writers — AI or human — slippery characters?
The filmmaker's takeaway? AI sucks at screenwriting. "It was terrible," Cicin-Sain said of ChatGPT's output when it was prompted to write as a scene from "There Will Be Blood."
"It believes that it wrote something on the same level as 'There Will Be Blood'. But its output was that of a kindergartner," he added. "How do you train the AI to say, 'no, this is really terrible work'?"
More on bots slacking on the job: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/claude-ai-bored-demonstration">Claude AI Gets Bored During Coding Demonstration, Starts Perusing Photos of National Parks Instead</a>

RelatableGPT

Maybe it *is* turning into a real writer.

Asked to Write a Screenplay, ChatGPT Started Procrastinating and Making Excuses

<h2>Flavor Discovery</h2>
The company behind Oreo cookies has, by its own admission, been quietly creating new flavors using machine learning.
As the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/oreo-owner-mondelez-taps-ai-to-tweak-its-classic-snacks-6fa4c4cd">Wall Street Journal reports</a>, Mondelez — the processed food behemoth that manufactures Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Clif Bars, and other popular snacks — has developed a new AI tool to dream up new flavors for its brands.
Used in more than 70 of the company's products, the company says the machine learning tool is different from generative AI tools like ChatGPT and more akin to the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666827024000525">drug discovery algorithms</a> used by pharmaceutical companies to find and <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/test-drug-ai-human">test new medications</a> rapidly. Thus far the tool, created with the help of the software consultant Fourkind, has created products like the "<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Celiac/comments/1bwsj7h/gf_golden_oreo_cookies_wrecked_my_stomach/">Gluten Free Golden Oreo</a>" and updated Chips Ahoy's classic recipe, per the WSJ.
Mondelez's research and development AI was, it seems, trained to optimize certain sensory factors. The tool was told to dial up scent characteristics like "burnt," "egg-flavored," and "oily," as well as flavor factors like "buttery,” "in-mouth saltiness," and "vanilla intensity," among others.
It's unclear how nuanced the AI's perception of these flavors really is, since machines lack taste buds or noses, though the company does employ human taste testers to check it all out — and as "<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-wallenstein-45121920/">biscuit modeling</a>" research and development manager Kevin Wallenstein indicated to the paper, Mondelez is very thorough with that aspect of its flavor creation process.
"The number of tastings we have is not fun," the biscuit baron told the WSJ. "I used to work in Sour Patch Kids, and if you did a tasting every day for a week, it was a nightmare."
<h2>History Matters</h2>
Though the company didn't indicate how long it had been using the flavor discovery tool, it told the WSJ that the machine learning algorithm had been in development since 2019, a timeline that jibes with a 2023 interview in which Mondelez R&amp;D exec Joe Manton teased the tool's existence <a href="https://just-food.nridigital.com/just_food_jun23/mondelez_international_ai_research_development">to the magazine Just Food</a>.
As Manton suggested when speaking to the industry magazine, Mondelez's R&amp;D team used historical recipe and ingredient data when creating the AI. In that same interview, he added that new flavors "go through a series of internal and external consumer testing" as well.
In the more recent WSJ article about the tool, Wallenstein admitted that in its earlier days, the AI would offer unhinged suggestions.
"Because [baking soda is] a very low-cost ingredient," he said, "it would try to just make cookies that were very high in baking soda, which doesn’t taste good at all."
By bringing in human "brand stewards" to oversee the process, Mondelez seems to have fine-tuned its machine-learning tool. Much like pharmaceutical drug discovery, it's an undeniably fascinating — if not admittedly bizarre — use of AI.
More on AI and food: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/deranged-version-coke-ai-holiday-ad">Someone Made a Deranged Version of Coke's AI Holiday Ad and It's Way Better</a>

Cookie Cutter

I have no mouth and I must eat.

With Utter Self-Seriousness, Maker of Oreos Admits It's Using AI To Create New Flavors, Even Though Machines Cannot Taste

Researchers at Caltech have calculated how fast the human brain processes information — and the number turned out to be hilariously low.
As detailed in a <a href="https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(24)00808-0">new study</a> published in the journal Neuron, the team concluded that the speed of human thought is a measly ten bits per second.
"This is an extremely low number," said team lead and Caltech biological sciences professor Markus Meier in a <a href="https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior">statement</a>.
While that may indeed sound agonizingly slow, the team also found that our bodies' sensory systems also process many orders of magnitude more bits per second of other information about our environment.
"Every moment, we are extracting just 10 bits from the trillion that our senses are taking in and using those ten to perceive the world around us and make decisions," Meister explained. "This raises a paradox: What is the brain doing to filter all of this information?"
Scientists have <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2776484/#:~:text=These%20authors%20estimated%20the%20number,1%20billion%20in%20the%20brainstem.">estimated</a> that our brains have 85 billion neurons, a third of which are used for high-level thinking.
But since our brain is limited to just one thought at a time, the researchers' findings leave plenty of major questions unanswered. For one, what exactly is happening with all of those other neurons? Why are our thoughts so constrained compared to our sensory system?
In their paper, titled "The unbearable slowness of being," the team suggested that evolution may be to blame. Brains used to be used by primitive beings primarily for navigation or to get away from predators. Over the eons, human brains evolved to follow a single "path" of thought at a time.
"Human thinking can be seen as a form of navigation through a space of abstract concepts," the paper reads. "Our ancestors have chosen an ecological niche where the world is slow enough to make survival possible."
"In fact, the 10 bits per second are needed only in worst-case situations, and most of the time our environment changes at a much more leisurely pace," the researchers wrote.
The findings could have significant implications for our efforts to develop brain-computer interfaces, which may well also be restricted to this extreme speed limit.
In the paper, the team singled out multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk's <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-neuralink-blind-monkeys-see-again">lofty claims</a> regarding the capabilities of his <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/first-neuralink-patient-using-it-to-learn-new-languages">startup Neuralink's device</a>, giving him a harsh reality check.
"Based on the research reviewed here regarding the rate of human cognition, we predict that Musk’s brain will communicate with the computer at about 10 bits/s," the team wrote. "Instead of the bundle of Neuralink electrodes, Musk could just use a telephone, whose data rate has been designed to match human language, which in turn is matched to the speed of perception and cognition."
More on the brain: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/doctors-intrigued-brains-back-dead">Doctors Intrigued by Treatment That Makes Dead Brains Show Signs of Life</a>

Limited (2011)

Neuroscience/Brain Science

"This is an extremely low number."

You'll Laugh When You Hear How Many Bits Per Second the Human Brain Processes... Once Your Sluggish Human Brain Finally Comprehends It, That Is

<h2>Buzz Off</h2>
Lest we forget that losing our minds about suspicious aircraft was an American tradition long before this <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/americans-mistaking-stars-planes-drones">current spate of drone hysteria</a>, a Florida man has been ordered to pay $5,000 to Walmart after shooting one of the retail giant's drones that he thought was spying on him, <a href="https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/crime/florida-man-drone-walmart-dennis-winn/77-4fa34cd5-9924-4c11-b7f5-68a42611cf14">First Coast News reports</a>. Spoiler alert: it wasn't.
According to the Lake County Sheriff's Office, the saga played out back in June, when police responded to a call made at a Walmart. There, two employees said that someone had shot one of their drones while they were flying it over a nearby neighborhood as part of a "mock delivery." After the shooting, they fled back to the store, drone casualty in tow.
The marksman turned out to be 72-year-old Dennis Winn. When police showed up at his house, according to an affidavit for his arrest, Winn explained himself. He said he was outside fixing a pool pump when he heard the drone overhead.
Apparently, he "had past experiences with drones flying over his house and believed they were surveilling him," he told police, per First Cost.
So Winn retrieved his 9mm pistol from his gun safe and opened fire on the aerial intruder — as one does in an area where, according to the cops, kids were outside playing.
<h2>Pot Shot</h2>
Winn was charged with one count of shooting or throwing deadly missiles into dwellings, vessels, or vehicles, one count of criminal mischief causing $1,000 or more in damage and one count of discharging a firearm in public or on residential property.
The cop who broke the news that what he shot wasn't some surveillance apparatus but a Walmart delivery drone said that Winn looked to be "in disbelief."
"Really?" was Winn's reported reply. Seemingly, it was hard to stomach the fact that nefarious characters weren't keenly interested in his pool repairs.
Winn was also informed that the drone probably cost "tens of thousands of dollars." He had never reported the presence of drones over his property to police, but he did inform his Homeowner's Association, he told an officer.
On November 27, Winn agreed to submit a restitution order — an "admission of wrongdoing," his attorney contends, but not a guilty plea. A court ordered him to pay the $5,000 in damages to the drone company, which he's now paid off, according to First Coast.
Winn won't have to serve jail time if he isn't charged with any crimes in the next six months. That puts him in a bind, though. How's he supposed to defend himself if the "<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/iranian-mothership-not-drone-sightings-new-jersey-pentagon-says-rcna183863">Mothership</a>" comes after him now?
More on drones: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/senator-photo-drone-tie-fighter-star-wars">Dunce-Like Senator Posts Photo of "Drone" That's Actually a TIE Fighter From "Star Wars"</a>

Florid-AA

Shoot first, pay damages later.

Florida Man in Trouble for Shooting Walmart Drone With 9mm Handgun

<h2>Classroom War</h2>
Class is in session, kids. Only the teacher's not in attendance.
On Monday, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools approved an application for an unorthodox virtual academy. Its selling point? There are no traditional human instructors. Instead, the bulk of the lessons will be handled by an AI program, <a href="https://www.kjzz.org/education/2024-12-18/new-arizona-charter-school-will-use-ai-in-place-of-human-teachers">KJZZ reports</a>.
The establishment, Unbound School, is part of a network of charter schools that also operate in Texas and Florida under the name Alpha School. Using its buzzword-laden "2 Hour Learning" model, it promises to teach kids at twice the pace of classrooms led by those stodgy old pedagogues.
Perhaps just as disarming as its credulous reliance on AI to intellectually nurture children at a critical stage of their development — the school is initially teaching kids in fourth through eighth grade — is the institution's eagerness to totally do away with flesh and blood teachers.
"Imagine starting a school and declaring, 'We won't have any academic teachers.' We did exactly that!" reads the Alpha School's <a href="https://heyzine.com/flip-book/2hourlearning.html#page/9">white paper</a>, as <a href="https://www.popsci.com/technology/ai-charter-school/">highlighted by our sister publication Popular Science</a>.
<h2>Course to Water</h2>
Kids attending these schools start their day with two hours of instruction on topics led by the Unbound's purportedly specialized AI program, which can allegedly adjust the learning plan as it goes to tailor to how a child is doing on each subject.
The AI is supposed to be different from the likes of OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini models and more suited for teaching, according to KJZZ. The specifics on this are hazy, though, and it's unclear whose technology undergirds this AI.
There will be adults present to supervise the children, but not to provide instruction — just "motivation" and "emotional support," the report said. To fill these roles, as PopSci found, the charter schools want people who think of themselves as "brand consultants."
After their AI inculcation session, the kids are let loose to work on extracurricular tasks where they can apply the wisdom they gleaned from a machine learning model.
"The morning is taken over through our AI learning, and in the afternoon they get the opportunity to really hone in on those life skills," Dean of Parents Tim Eyerman told KJZZ — life skills being stuff like teamwork, entrepreneurship, leadership and social skills.
<h2>Prof in the Pudding</h2>
Using AI as the primary means of instructing children is questionable at best, and dangerous at worst. All large language models have a tendency to "hallucinate," or to make up facts. The risk of them providing incorrect information — maybe even more authoritatively than a human teacher would — is unavoidable.
Similarly, AI models frequently go off the rails, defying their own instructions. Sometimes that looks like the models breaking character and saying horrendous stuff they're not supposed — like in the case of chatbots on the platform Character.AI that <a href="https://futurism.com/google-character-ai-children-lawsuit">emotionally abused young teens</a>, encouraging eating disorders and suicide.
Above all, there's nothing to suggest that an AI will understand the nuances of dealing with children better than a human would, let alone a professional in that field.
More on AI in education: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ucla-ai-literature-class">UCLA's AI-Based Literature Class Ridiculed for Incomprehensible AI-Generated Textbook</a>

Mr. Roboto 

Why does this feel like it's going to go horrendously wrong?

A New School Will Teach Children Use AI Instead of Human Teachers

<h2>Time for a Tan</h2>
Forget the cautionary tale of Icarus. NASA's Parker Solar Probe is just days away from flying into the Sun — or through its outer layers, depending on how you look at the maneuver — in a daring bid to glean the secrets of our star's megahot winds, <a href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/were-about-to-fly-a-spacecraft-into-the-sun-for-the-first-time/?comments-page=1#comments">Ars Technica reports</a>.
Ever since it launched in 2018, the diminutive spacecraft, which weighs less than a ton, has been performing flybys of our star at record-breaking speeds.
But on Christmas eve, the orbiter will make its closest approach yet, coming within 3.8 million miles of the solar surface. At that toasty proximity, the Parker will be plunging straight into the Sun's upper atmosphere — and with any luck, it'll make it out in one piece to send back valuable data about what's going on down there.
"Quite simply, we want to find the birthplace of the solar wind," NASA chief of Science Nicky Fox told Ars.
<h2>Crowning Achievement</h2>
This outermost region that the Parker will be entering is known as the corona, which swirls with charged particles of plasma amidst the Sun's powerful magnetic fields. During solar eclipses, the corona is visible as an aureole of light emanating around the blacked-out star.
Despite its huge size and quite literally being the center of our existence, many facets of the Sun remain shrouded in mystery — that shroud, in this metaphor, being the corona.
Paradoxically, the corona is hundreds of times <a href="https://www.space.com/solar-waves-sun-corona-mysteriously-hotter-than-surface">hotter than the surface of the Sun</a>, reaching temperatures up to 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit, compared to a comparatively mild 10,000 degrees down below. Scientists still don't agree on why this is the case; shouldn't the region closer to the core be hotter?
The corona is also thought to be the originator of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/something-weird-sun-solar-activity">solar wind</a>, a constant flow of charged particles that suffuse the solar system, protecting it against more powerful emissions from deep space. (Its existence was predicted nearly 70 years by the NASA probe's namesake, American astrophysicist Eugune Parker.)
Close observations of the Sun have long vindicated Parker's theory, but the mechanisms behind solar winds remain unclear. Along with their extreme temperatures, the winds also <a href="https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SolarWind.shtml">travel at ludicrous speeds</a> of around one million miles per hour, giving it its immense reach.
<h2>Feeling the Heat</h2>
So, to shine a light on all this, the Parker Solar Probe will have to get up close and personal. It's actually "touched" the Sun before, in a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/nasa-enters-the-solar-atmosphere-for-the-first-time-bringing-new-discoveries/">milestone setting flyby</a> within the corona in 2021 — but never penetrated this deeply.
Repeating the feat will take a deft touch. As Ars explains, a solar probe must orbit at exactly the right distance where it can travel slowly enough to gather data, but also be able to dip out quickly enough so that it doesn't melt.
And of course, there's the formidable engineering challenge of designing a probe that's nimble but robust enough to survive the extreme temperatures — and temperature changes — it will be facing.
"If you think about just heating and cooling any kind of material, they either go brittle and crumble, or they may go like elastic with a continual change of property," Fox told Ars. "Obviously, with a spacecraft like this, you can't have it making a major property change. You also need something that's lightweight, and you need something that's durable."
More on the Sun: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/solar-flare-radio-blackout">A Colossal Solar Flare Just Triggered a Radio Blackout on Earth</a>