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Japanese police arrested three people on Wednesday in connection with an unsanitary prank at a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant, according to the Japanese state broadcaster NHK. The viral videos from early February showed one of them — 21-year-old Yoshino Ryoga, dubbed a "sushi terrorist" by the Japanese public and media — putting his saliva on utensils and sushi and licking the spout of soy sauce bottles at a Kura Sushi restaurant in Nagoya City. The restaurant chain filed a complaint for damages with police on Tuesday and received an apology from Ryoga. Police also arrested two teenagers on suspicion of obstructing...

When I first encountered ChatGPT, I was very impressed and quite intimidated that my job as a Senior Software Analyst would soon be obsolete. I am no longer impressed, nor am I intimidated. Here are two interactions I have had with the product that best highlight the disappointing performance of the product. The first one is quite funny. There is a third I will post, later today, in this thread. ME: how do I get in touch with you? CHATGPT: You can get in touch with me by simply typing your question or message in this chatbox and pressing enter....

Researchers at McGill University have developed the strongest and toughest glass ever known. Inspired, in part, by the inner layer of mollusk shells, this glass does not shatter when hit, and acts more like plastic. The material, once commercially viable, could be used to improve cell phone screens, among other applications in the future. Interestingly, this may be an example of modern science rediscovering an old technology, now long lost. Apparently, a form of flexible glass existed during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar. So the story goes, as told by Petronius, a glassmaker brought a drinking bowl...

Progressive Democrats pushing the ESG (environmental, social and governance) agenda are focused on controlling the private decisions and beliefs of millions of Americans. Worse, they are increasingly willing to lie about what ESG is in order to gaslight Americans into compliance, or at least apathy toward this massive scheme. Take Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who recently penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed with this headline, "Republicans Ought to Be All for ESG." Schumer was expressing his support for a recent Labor Department rule allowing retirement fund managers to use workers’ savings to advance leftist political goals. Before rounding...

Michelle Yeoh may have violated the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' "References to Other Nominees" rule after posting Vogue article about fellow Best Actress nominee and two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett. SNIP "Detractors would say that Blanchett’s is the stronger performance — the acting veteran is, indisputably, incredible as the prolific conductor Lydia Tár — but it should be noted that she already has two Oscars,” read the article. “Meanwhile, for Yeoh, an Oscar would be life-changing: Her name would forever be preceded by the phrase ‘Academy Award winner,’ and it should result in her getting meatier parts,...

Relativity Space will launch its first 3D printer-made rocket from the space station on Wednesday. Photo courtesy Relativity Space March 8 (UPI) -- The Relativity Space launcher Terran 1 will try to become the first 3D-printed rocket to reach space when it blasts off Wednesday from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The test flight mission dubbed "Good Luck Have Fun" is scheduled to take off at about 1 p.m., EST. Some 85% of the mass of the 110-foot tall, two-stage rocket was made by a 3D printer and could play a key role in driving down the cost of...

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday will consider accepting a donation for the Los Angeles Police Department to receive a dog-like robot, though critics worry about expanding police surveillance. The robot — a quadruped unmanned ground vehicle called Spot — is valued at about $280,000, which the Los Angeles Police Foundation plans to donate... If approved by the council on Tuesday, the LAPD would use the canine Boston Dynamics robot for reconnaissance in situations like SWAT incidents.

A group of researchers has achieved a breakthrough in secure communications by developing an algorithm that conceals sensitive information so effectively that it is impossible to detect that anything has been hidden.The team, led by the University of Oxford in close collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, envisages that this method may soon be used widely in digital human communications, including social media and private messaging. In particular, the ability to send perfectly secure information may empower vulnerable groups, such as dissidents, investigative journalists, and humanitarian aid workers.The algorithm applies to a setting called steganography: the practice of hiding sensitive information...

A team of computer science researchers with members from Google, ETH Zurich, NVIDIA and Robust Intelligence, is highlighting two kinds of dataset poisoning attacks that could be used by bad actors to corrupt AI system results. The group has written a paper outlining the kinds of attacks that they have identified and have posted it on the arXiv preprint server. With the development of deep learning neural networks, artificial intelligence applications have become big news. And because of their unique learning abilities they can be applied in a wide variety of environments. But, as the researchers on this new effort...

The online job and social site listed the top skills in areas such as IT, as well as engineering, recruiting, sales, and marketing.LinkedIn today released an exhaustive list of skills employers prioritize when recruiting, posting, and hiring for jobs on the company's website.“It's true that topics like layoffs are trending on LinkedIn and conversations around 'recession' are up nearly 900% since last year," the company said in the report. "The rate of global LinkedIn member job change has flatlined for the first time since March 2021. No matter the setback, looming re-org, or change in strategy, learning in-demand skills can...

Tesla told investors it can reduce costs by 50%, by expanding on the modular, parallel manufacturing innovations it developed for the Model Y. Tesla's next-gen vehicles will be built and tested in chunks that won't come together until the final line. At the company's 2023 Investor Day presentation, Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy described how the company's organizational structure is designed to ensure full accountability and a collaborative approach that makes sure manufacturing and automation considerations are part of every engineering and design decision. "The places I used to work and the top manufacturing companies in the world,...

A couple of years ago, I ran across a thread on here regarding live tv streaming. One of the sites listed was ustvgo along with some others that I can't recall because I immediately went to the ustvgo site which it was terrific. It had it all plus it was free. Since I don't have TV, I had it on my PC everyday and had access to all cable and network stations. In January it was taken down and the message left was 'sorry, we are closed'. After doing some research, it looks like some heavy weights got involved and...

Imagine it's the near future, and you've bought a new car with a self-driving mode. But hard times hit and you fall behind on loan payments – then, one day you find your car has driven itself away to the repossession lot. That's the vision of a new Ford patent published last month that describes a variety of futuristic ways that Ford vehicle systems could be controlled by a financial institution in order to aid in the repossession of a car. The company told NPR that the company has no intention of implementing the ideas in the patent, which is...

Controversial physician has doled out tens of thousands of scripts for both drugsStella Immanuel, MD, was the nation's top prescriber of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin over the past 2 years, a MedPage Today analysis of prescription data has found. In 2021, Immanuel wrote just over 69,000 prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine -- vastly above the average of 43 prescriptions in the database MedPage Today reviewed. Rheumatologists, who prescribe hydroxychloroquine for autoimmune diseases, wrote 561 hydroxychloroquine prescriptions, on average, that year. Immanuel also wrote almost 32,000 prescriptions for ivermectin in 2021, well above the average of 15. Although her prescribing declined in 2022, Immanuel...

There is power through the scrutiny of online informationAs medical students and future pediatricians, we recognize that childhood vaccines are one of the single greatest public health achievements of the 20thopens in a new tab or window and 21stopens in a new tab or window centuries. Yet, for one of us, a pregnant cousin announced over the Thanksgiving dinner table that she wasn't going to vaccinate her unborn child. No matter the facts, research, or wealth of medical education, this cousin was firm in her beliefs that there was a better, healthier way to protect her child than vaccination. Unfortunately,...

A Republican state senator in Florida has introduced a bill that, if passed, would require bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, his Cabinet or state legislators to register with the state. Sen. Jason Brodeur's bill, titled "Information Dissemination," would also require bloggers to disclose who's paying them for their posts about certain elected officials and how much. "If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register" with the appropriate office within five days of the post, the legislation says. It defines "elected state...

March 1 (UPI) -- The amount of helium in underground geological formations could satisfy thousands of years of global demand, researchers said in an article published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Like other essential commodities, there are supply-side concerns for helium as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year. Sanctions and other restrictions mean supplies from Russia's Amur plant, expected to satisfy about 35% of global demand, are no longer available. Researchers from Oxford University, Durham University and the University of Toronto estimate helium is a $6 billion market. The element is used in everything from fiber optics...

Elon Musk is reportedly putting together a research team to combat what he has termed the “deadly” threat of woke artificial intelligence. Musk, 51, has contacted a select group of “artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks about forming a new research lab to develop an alternative to ChatGPT,” according to The Information.In December, the founder of Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX and other ventures warned about the potential risks in the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, which Musk tweeted as one example of “training AI to be woke.”The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie –...

[A] team of scientists argues that something called "organoid intelligence," or OI, powered by living human brain cells could one day outperform any artificial system, and do it far more efficiently. Organoids are three-dimensional clumps of biological tissue that scientists have been growing and experimenting with for years. Researchers...at Johns Hopkins University are working with brain organoids that could lead to the development of a "biocomputer" powered by human brain cells. "The hope is that some of the remarkable functionalities of the human brain can be realized as OI, such as its ability to take fast decisions based on incomplete...

Millions of LastPass users may be at risk after a major breach of the home computer of one of their top employees. This employee was only one of four people in the company with access to their corporate vault. The breach may have come through a home Plex media account, according to Ars Technica, and appears to have been perpetrated by the same hackers who breached LastPass security on a smaller scale last August. At about the same time, Plex’s security was also breached.