All posts tagged: Approaching

Approaching Half of New Podcasts Appear to Be AI Slop

Approaching Half of New Podcasts Appear to Be AI Slop

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Approaching half of new podcasts appear to be AI slop. Of the 10,871 new podcast feeds created in the past nine days, 4,243 of them, or 39 percent, have signs of being AI-generated, data from the Podcast Index cited by Bloomberg last week showed. “It’s absurd,” Dave Jones, who runs the Podcast Index, said on his own show last week, per the outlet. Podcasts, before the intrusion of AI, were already a sloppy medium. They’re designed to be listened to for hours on end while you zone out during chores, replacing your own scary thoughts with the babbling of someone else’s. Crucially, they’re inexpensive to produce and the bar for entry is pretty much zero. All that makes the form perfect for being imitated by AI models. AI chatbots can effortlessly churn out lengthy scripts, and AI voice synthesizers can sound eerily humanlike, especially if you aren’t listening closely (as is wont to happen with a podcast). It’s …

Trump warns that Iran’s ships approaching U.S. blockade will be ‘eliminated’ : NPR

Trump warns that Iran’s ships approaching U.S. blockade will be ‘eliminated’ : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

A woman walks past a wall mural along a roadside in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images President Trump says the U.S. military began a blockade of Iranian ports on Monday, drawing threats of retaliation from Iran, after talks between the U.S. and Iran failed to reach an agreement over the weekend. “Right now we have a blockade,” Trump said Monday. “They’re doing no business.” In a social media post earlier, he reiterated his threat to Iranian ships that tried to interfere. “Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED,” he wrote. It was the latest tactic to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — by blockading the strait outright. Trump says Iran has charged tolls for some ships to pass and laid mines in the strait, amounting to “WORLD EXTORTION.” He said Sunday that he had instructed the Navy “to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid …

Scientists Investigating Whether Object NASA Is Approaching Is Core of Destroyed Planet

Scientists Investigating Whether Object NASA Is Approaching Is Core of Destroyed Planet

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Scientists have long been intrigued by an enormous potato-shaped asteroid, dubbed 16 Psyche, that they suspect to be teeming with metal — and therefore potentially worth a ludicrous amount of money to future asteroid mining operations. The 173-mile object, which orbits the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, features two enormous crater-like depressions, which researchers say could be closely related to its still largely unknown origin story. In a new paper published in the journal JGR Planets, an international team of researchers tried to get to the bottom of one of the key questions regarding 16 Psyche that remains unanswered. Is it a core of a planetesimal, a billions-of-years-old building block of a planet, in which case it would have a “large metallic core buried under rocks,” or is it a “homogeneous mixture of iron and rock?” Put differently, could 16 Psyche be the ancient exposed remains of a planetary core whose crust and mantle …

Lisa McGee on her Derry Girls follow-up: ‘When you’re approaching 40, people just go mad’

Lisa McGee on her Derry Girls follow-up: ‘When you’re approaching 40, people just go mad’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter After you make a hit like Derry Girls, what then? Lisa McGee’s Channel 4 comedy, which charted the lives of a gang of gobby girls and one wee English fella at a convent school during the Troubles, aired from 2018 to 2022 and became the most-watched series in Northern Ireland since records began. But it travelled, too. Martin Scorsese is among its famous fans – “Those nuns!” he marvelled. It made stars of the cast, from Nicola Coughlan to Siobhan McSweeney. And its final season won three Baftas and an Emmy – with the very last episode, about the Good Friday Agreement, praised for teaching English viewers more about that moment in history than any lesson ever did. Following that, you’d surely be feeling under a bit of pressure when writing your next show. How do you match it? But the …

US Shoots Down Iranian Drone Approaching Aircraft Carrier, Official Says

US Shoots Down Iranian Drone Approaching Aircraft Carrier, Official Says

Published by Sam Flores

By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart Feb 3 (Reuters) – The U.S. ‌military ​on Tuesday shot down an Iranian ‌drone that “aggressively” approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, the ​U.S. military said, in an incident first reported by Reuters. The incident came as diplomats sought to arrange nuclear talks ‍between Iran and the United States, ​and U.S. President Donald Trump warned that with U.S. warships heading toward Iran, “bad things” would probably happen if ​a deal ⁠could not be reached. Oil futures prices rose more than $1 per barrel after news the drone was shot down. The Iranian Shahed-139 drone was flying toward the carrier “with unclear intent” and was shot down by an F-35 U.S. fighter jet, the U.S. military said. “An F-35C fighter jet from Abraham Lincoln shot down the Iranian ‌drone in self-defense and to protect the aircraft carrier and personnel on board,” said Navy Captain Tim ​Hawkins, ‌a spokesperson at the U.S. ‍military’s Central Command. Iran’s ⁠U.N. mission declined to comment. Iran’s Tasnim news agency said connection had …

AI’s Hacking Skills Are Approaching an ‘Inflection Point’

AI’s Hacking Skills Are Approaching an ‘Inflection Point’

Published by skeptic

Vlad Ionescu and Ariel Herbert-Voss, cofounders of the cybersecurity startup RunSybil, were momentarily confused when their AI tool, Sybil, alerted them to a weakness in a customer’s systems last November. Sybil uses a mix of different AI models—as well as a few proprietary technical tricks—to scan computer systems for issues that hackers might exploit, like an unpatched server or a misconfigured database. In this case, Sybil flagged a problem with the customer’s deployment of federated GraphQL, a language used to specify how data is accessed over the web through application programming interfaces (APIs). The issue meant that the customer was inadvertently exposing confidential information. What puzzled Ionescu and Herbert-Voss was that spotting the issue required a remarkably deep knowledge of several different systems and how those systems interact. RunSybil says it has since found the same problem with other deployments of GraphQL—before anybody else made it public “We scoured the internet, and it didn’t exist,” Herbert-Voss says. “Discovering it was a reasoning step in terms of models’ capabilities—a step change.” The situation points to a …

Taiwan deploys ships to face down approaching Chinese vessels as invas | World | News

Taiwan deploys ships to face down approaching Chinese vessels as invas | World | News

Published by Sam Flores

Taiwan has deployed coastguard vessels after four Chinese boats entered waters near Kinmen Island, sparking further fears over an invasion. The Coast Guard Administration condemned China’s attempt to use routine gray-zone conflict tactics to create false information about its jurisdiction, seriously undermining regional peace and stability. According to Taiwan’s Coast Guard, the Kinmen‑Matsu‑Penghu Branch, unusual activity was seen near Kinmen in the afternoon. In a press statement, it explained that around 2 pm, personnel in the 12th Patrol District detected Chinese Coast Guard ships gathering in two separate areas just off Kinmen’s southern coastline. In response, Taiwan’s Coast Guard quickly sent out its own patrol vessels, moving them into nearby restricted waters so they would be in position ahead of any potential developments. The agency said it strongly rejects what it sees as China using gray‑zone tactics to spread misleading claims about its authority, arguing that these actions don’t match reality and harm regional stability. It added that Taiwan’s Coast Guard now operates with intensive monitoring and rapid‑response readiness, staying on the front line to …

Home Alone’s Macaulay Culkin says fans must abide by three ‘rules’ before approaching him

Home Alone’s Macaulay Culkin says fans must abide by three ‘rules’ before approaching him

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Macaulay Culkin has spoken about the three “rules” he has for fans who wish to approach him in public. The Home Alone actor was one of the most successful and recognisable child stars in Hollywood history, with his two Home Alone movies together grossing nearly a billion dollars at the box office in 1990 and 1992. After a run of additional films, among them 1991’s My Girl and 1994’s Richie Rich, Culkin stepped away from the limelight. Now aged 45, Culkin has been steadily working as an actor once again, most recently lending his voice to the animated sequel Zootropolis 2, and told the SmartLess podcast that he’s come to terms with his early fame and now sets clear boundaries with fans when in public. “I definitely have to gird myself for, you know, outings and so forth,” he explained. “Just …

Doomsday Glacier Approaching Catastrophic Collapse

Doomsday Glacier Approaching Catastrophic Collapse

Published by José Betancourt

The Thwaites Glacier, an enormous shelf of ice in the Antarctic, has been given the ominous nickname of the “Doomsday Glacier” — because if it were to change collapse, it could have profound implications for the future of sea level rise and the fate of coastal communities. Scientists have watched in horror as its retreat has accelerated significantly. Now, as detailed in a study published by the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) and spotted by Wired, large cracks forming in the ice shelf are continuing to weaken its structural integrity. Doomsday has never been closer. If it were to collapse under its own weight, scientists suggest it could ultimately trigger up to 11 feet of global sea level rise, meaning certain devastation for tens of millions of people. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Manitoba have analyzed satellite data from 2002 to 2022, and observed how cracks in the Thwaites Glacier continued to grow around a shear zone. “Over the past two decades, the shelf has experienced progressive fracturing around a prominent …

Is OpenAI Approaching the Valley of Death?

Is OpenAI Approaching the Valley of Death?

Published by Jenni Sidey

OpenAI launched ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, and its seemingly magical conversational powers fueled the Silicon Valley narrative that scaling up large language models (LLMs) would soon achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI)—the ability to do any intellectual task as well as humans. ChatGPT is still benefiting from its first-mover advantage, with a current 61.3% market share, compared to 14.1% for Microsoft’s Copilot and 13.4% for Google’s Gemini. However, OpenAI has the daunting problem that, unlike Microsoft and Google, it has no other substantial sources of revenue. To survive, it needs to generate profits from ChatGPT. Unwarranted optimism It hasn’t and it now seems to be on life support. OpenAI had losses of $5.3 billion in 2024 and $7.8 billion in the first half of 2025. Company insiders are projecting a 4-year “valley of death” with a cumulative cash burn of $115 billion over the next four years until profitability is reached in 2029. Given CEO Sam Altman’s penchant for unwarranted optimism, OpenAI’s valley of death is likely to be even more challenging than projected, which …