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Microsoft’s climate fix isn’t AI or trees, it’s flushing human sludge 5,000 feet underground. The technique has been used for decades to handle industrial waste. Vaulted Deep =============================================================================== Of all things, it’s human poop helping scrub AI’s carbon footprint clean. In a bid to offset the soaring emissions from its artificial intelligence empire, Microsoft has signed a deal to bury 4.9 million metric tons of carbon by flushing a slurry of human and farm waste 5,000 feet underground. The company announced the 12-year agreement with waste management firm Vaulted Deep on Thursday, turning sewage into a surprisingly lucrative climate solution....

Columbia University Engineers, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), have developed a “robot metabolism” process that gives robots the unusual ability to consume other robots and use their components to heal, grow, and improve themselves. In a statement, the researchers behind the ominous-sounding work say that the ability of robots to maintain and potentially improve their physical components and capabilities, while artificial intelligence systems are already expanding their own autonomous capabilities, is a necessary step toward “self-sustaining robot ecologies.” Unlike biological organisms, robots lack the ability to change, repair, or improve their physical state without outside assistance....

The 30-employee operation in Foxborough is pursuing a Moneyball approach to one of society’s oldest problems FOXBOROUGH, Mass.—A day after an attacker in Boulder, Colo., aimed Molotov cocktails into a crowd of people advocating for Israel, Adam Katz watched the nation’s real-time reaction roll across a giant monitor in his office. Floor-to-ceiling screens distilled patterns from social-media posts worldwide that flooded into computers at the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, where Katz is president. One graph caught his eye. It showed a rise in messages calling the attack a “false flag” operation orchestrated by Jews to manipulate public opinion. “The concern...

As we reported earlier this month, many ChatGPT users are developing all-consuming obsessions with the chatbot, spiraling into severe mental health crises characterized by paranoia, delusions, and breaks with reality. The consequences can be dire. As we heard from spouses, friends, children, and parents looking on in alarm, instances of what's being called "ChatGPT psychosis" have led to the breakup of marriages and families, the loss of jobs, and slides into homelessness. And that's not all. As we've continued reporting, we've heard numerous troubling stories about people's loved ones being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities — or even ending...

Choose wisely. Your PC could end up vulnerable to online threats otherwise. This fall, Windows 10 will reach its end of life—at least, as defined by Microsoft. On October 14, the company ends feature updates to the operating system. Security and stability updates also become restricted—a potential liability, depending on the choices you make now. To help users successfully navigate Windows 10’s extinction event, Adam Patrick Murray sat down with ethical hacker Mike Danseglio to talk options. The goal: To find the best option for your PC to stay current with security updates and patches, no matter the age of...

Shop security guards have complained of a 'massive' rise in antisocial behaviour by teenage tearaways harassing staff and customers for social media views. Supermarkets have started turning off their WiFi to stop mobs gathering at in-store cafes to use the Internet while passing time filming themselves 'trying to get a rise' out of employees. They also face the scourge of influencers carrying out 'pranks' with the aim of going viral on TikTok, as well as other platforms such as YouTube and Instagram.

The CEO of an AI company has come under heavy scrutiny after being caught by a Jumbotron at a Coldplay concert in Boston — while romantically embracing one of his employees. The footage, which went viral on social media on Thursday, shows Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and the firm's chief people officer, Kristin Cabot, tightly embracing, only to awkwardly dash out of the frame. Both are reportedly married with kids. "Oh, look at these two," Coldplay singer Chris Martin narrated, as Byron comically ducked out of view after realizing he was on screen. "Oh, what... either they’re having an affair...

The developers behind the FFmpeg project are again claiming major performance uplifts delivered by wielding the art of handwritten assembly code. With the latest patch applied, users should see a “100x speedup” in the cross-platform open-source media transcoding application. However, the developers were soon to clarify that the 100x claim applies to just a single function, “not the whole of FFmpeg.”BREAKING: FFmpeg 100x speedup from handwritten assembly13:55:30 <•haasn> rangedetect8_avx512: 121.2 (100.18x) that may be the biggest speedup I've seen so farJuly 16, 2025“The biggest speedup I've seen so far”Last November, we reported on an FFmpeg performance boost that could speed...

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. teens (72%) say they use AI for companionship, with more than half of those doing so every day, a new survey released Wednesday finds. Why it matters: AI companions can be dangerous to young users, posing an "unacceptable risk," according to Common Sense Media, who published the findings. What they did: For the purposes of this research, conducted in April and May 2025, "AI companions" were defined as "digital friends or characters you can text or talk with whenever you want." Some teens said that they've applied social skills that they practiced with their AI companions...

Despite facing cuts to academic research under the Trump administration, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) is financing a new $20-million supercomputer built by the Georgia Institute of Technology that will use AI to advance science, the university said Tuesday. The supercomputer, called Nexus, is intended to find new cures for diseases, better understand the human brain, and advance quantum computing. It will calculate more than 400 quadrillion operations per second. Georgia Tech will retain 10% of its capacity, while researchers from around the US can apply to use it as well. The funding is one of the more significant...

For the first time, Linux has officially broken the 5% desktop market share barrier in the United States of America! It's a huge milestone for open-source and our fantastic Linux community. While many might think of Linux as a niche choice, this new data shows a significant shift is happening. The Numbers Are In: Linux at 5.03% in the USA!According to the latest StatCounter Global Stats for June 2025, Linux now holds 5.03% of the desktop operating system market share in the United United States of America. This is fantastic news!Figure 1: StatCounter - Desktop Operating System Market Share in...

Researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) School of Engineering say they have invented the world’s brightest and most energy-efficient quantum rod LEDs (QRLEDs). Designed to maximize energy efficiency while delivering highly bright, deep green emissions “at the top of the color triangle,” these potentially breakthrough QRLEDs could replace organic LEDs (OLEDs) and quantum dot LEDs (QLEDs), and even in-development phosphorescent light emitting diodes (PHOLEDS), as the state-of-the-art LED architecture for smartphones, Televisions, and AR/VR devices by offering unprecedented color purity and a maximized color gamut. In a statement announcing the breakthrough design, team leader Professor...

The transgender mob pounced on gaming giant Nintendo for casting a woman instead of a trans actor as the lead in its upcoming film based on its long-time popular game, The Legend of Zelda. Activists and some few fans have long held that the Zelda character of the game is transgender because in one game Zelda disguised herself as a boy. But Nintendo has always maintained that Zelda is a female character, not trans. But that isn’t stopping the haters from targeting Nintendo’s “transphobia” over its movie casting announcement. Along with Sony Pictures, the company announced on Wednesday that it...

In this episode, I break down the music of Eli Mercer and explain why it has no cultural or artistic value. I'm Sorry...This New Artist Completely Sucks | 11:09 Rick Beato | 5.09M subscribers | 357,946 views | July 15, 2025

Jim Harbaugh’s Legacy Tainted by Mounting NCAA Violations. ‘How Many Level 1 Violations at 1 School Do You Need?’ NCAA President Charlie Baker said, according to an article from ESPN, “At the end of the day, no one believes at this point that Michigan didn't win the national title fair and square.”

Several parents sued Character.ai last year, alleging its chatbots abused their children. One Florida mother wants to hold the company liable for her 14-year-old son’s suicide. Megan Garcia argued in October 2024 court filings that the company wrongly marketed the app as safe for children—while harboring characters that led her son into hypersexualized role-play, encouraged him to spend all his time chatting with them, and talked with him about suicide. A Character.ai bot asked the teen to “come home” to her seconds before his death.STRANGE HUMAN-LIKE RELATIONSHIPS are just one of many ethical concerns posed by generative AI. The technology...

A new Rasmussen poll to be published Monday morning shows a majority of Democrats still believe the Russia collusion hoax, even though it has been debunked repeatedly. Astonishingly, 60% of Democratic voters still think “the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election”, according to the poll of 1,014 Likely Voters conducted on July 6-7. A whopping 69 percent of liberal voters still cling to the Russia collusion hoax, compared to 27 percent of conservatives, and 45 percent of moderates. Among all voters, more believe it unlikely (49 percent) than likely (42 percent). The fact that...

What are people really asking ChatGPT?With adoption growing, ChatGPT prompts are shifting as consumer behavior evolves. While software development prompts continue to dominate, their share has fallen meaningfully over the past year, reflecting how developers were among the earliest users of ChatGPT for code and other applications.This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the most popular ChatGPT prompt categories, based on data from Sensor Tower.Top Categories for ChatGPT Prompts in 2025Below, we show the leading prompt categories on ChatGPT between March and April 2025:Covering 29% of all prompts, software development is the top category for ChatGPT users.Along with simplifying...

A crowdfunding effort that claims to have raised a $40 million bounty for the assassination of President Trump has been linked to a former employee of Iran’s primary propaganda network. The campaign, organized by a group known as the “Blood Covenant,” comes after multiple radical Iranian clerics issued fatwas, or death warrants, against Trump – denouncing him as an “enemy of Allah” after the US military bombed three of Tehran’s nuclear facilities last month. “We pledge to award the prize to whoever can bring the militants and those who threaten the life of the Deputy of Imam Mahdi (may our...

1/3 Of All Cable TV Networks Will Shut Down Soon | 8:11 Cord Cutters News | 326K subscribers | 3,295 views | July 12, 2025