How do you feel when the AI starts reading your young children their bedtime stories?
As The Markup points out, this is no longer a hypothetical question, but an actual parenting challenge now: I made a note to ask his […]
Science
Science Art: NASA’s Chandra, Webb Combine for Arresting Views (Pillars of Creation), 2023
This is an image made by combining visible light (from the Hubble and ESO orbiting telescopes) and invisible infrared and X-ray imagery (from the Webb, […]
A beaked dinosaur in Utah named for the god Janus.
Smithsonian Magazine covers the discovery of a new species of dinosaur, Iani smithi, that’s part of a little-known group of dinosaurs that were around just […]
Science Art: Habitus images of Chimairacoris lakshmiae, 2015.
This is a plant bug. That’s the technical term – it’s part of that group of insects called “true bugs,” the family Miridae; plant bugs […]
The smarter the brain, the longer it takes to solve a hard problem.
The Berlin Institute of Health has a new metric for intelligence. It’s not speed at solving problems, but the opposite. Higher intelligence means simple problems […]
More Chinese astronauts for China’s space station.
Reuters reports that a couple of days ago, the Shenzhou-16, or “Divine Vessel-16,” a spaceship mounted on a Long March-2F rocket, sent a new crew […]
ChatGPT flunks Martin Gardner’s old brainteasers.
If you’re a longtime Scientific American reader, or just a geek of a certain age, you’ll remember Martin Gardner’s “Mathematical Games” puzzle column. (It got […]
Science Art: Intercepting Well, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, by R.S. Bross, 1882.
This is an illustration of a public waterwork taken from the pages of A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, […]
Out of Africa, yes, but all over Africa and not all at once.
New York Times rewrites human prehistory with a genetic study that replaces the tree of life – a diagram of human origins with one trunk […]
Science Art: Painted Bunting, by John James Audubon, 1841
These are painted buntings, “1.2.3. males in different states of plumage and 4. female” in the branches of a chickasaw wild plum, as displayed in […]
Sunken cemetery, hospital found off the Dry Tortugas.
They used to be above water, but the National Park Service reports that divers surveying a sunken island off Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas […]
U.S. Marshals use Twitter partner to scope out abortion-rights protestors.
The Intercept has found that Dataminr, an “official partner” of Twitter, has been collecting information on abortion protests for federal law enforcement by paying close […]
The internet isn’t all bots. It’s about *half* bots.
Security Magazine evaluates (using Imperva’s Bad Bot Report) just how much internet traffic comes from humans, and how much is automatically generated machines. The latest […]
Science Art: Causerie sur la Peche Fluviale en Chine, 1909.
Do two sampans make a catamaran? Looks like they did for this Chinese fisherman at the dawn of the last century, angling on the river […]
Big ol’ brontotheres.
Science News reports on new discoveries shedding light on how prehistoric mammals grew so dang big, evolutionarily, once the dinosaurs cleared out: Brontotheres were among […]