Category Archives: Futurism

Looks like X-formerly-Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino's speaking tour is on pause for the foreseeable future.

Yaccarino announced that she has bowed out of her scheduled appearance at The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live conference, slated to kick off next week.

According to X, she's busy.

"With the global crisis unfolding, Linda and her team must remain fully focused on X platform safety," reads X's official statement shared by WSJ tech columnist Joanna Stern, likely referring to the situation in Israel and Gaza.

But considering Yaccarino's disastrous appearance at a conference last month and X owner Elon Musk's continuing promotion of notorious, misinformation-peddling accounts on the platform, there's clearly a lot more behind her decision.

Late last month, Yaccarino sat down with CNBC's Julia Boorstin at Code, The Verge's annual tech and business conference. The bizarre interview was nothing short of a trainwreck. Among other odd claims and confrontational behavior, as recapped by The Verge, Yaccarino made sweeping statements about X's user figures without actually providing any hard numbers to back them up.

She also said Boorstin was "not nice" in response to an arguably fair question concerning Yaccarino's reputation as "CEO in name only," and downplayed online threats directed atYoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety who was forced to leave his home after being accused of pedophilia by Musk.

On that note, throughout the conversation, Yaccarino oscillated between defending and clumsily attempting to side-step questions regarding the behavior of the platform's mercurial owner, who despite having passed on the CEO role to the #girlboss in question continues to announce surprise site changes and product rollouts in X posts and threatening to sue nonprofits like the Anti-Defamation League for calling attention to antisemitism on the platform.

To be clear, focusing on the violent crisis in Israel and Gaza would be a worthy way for Yaccarino to spend her time, considering that X has been flooded with disinformation pertaining to the bloody conflict and, as the result of Musk's mass workforce cullings, seemingly no longer has the trust and safety staff required to manage content related to these kinds of global events.

It also doesn't help that in a now-deleted post on the platform, Musk, told users over the weekend that two notorious accounts that promote lies and unverifiable news are a good way to follow "the war in real-time," per The Washington Post.

So, yeah, Yaccarino has a lot on her hands. Still, it's hard to believe that her decision to cancel her Tech Live appearance has nothingto do with her most recent onstage performance.

At the same time, when it comes to having to stand up for Musk's actions and confront his questionable behavior, we wouldn't want to publicly answer any questions, either.

More on Twitter: Elon Musk Baffled about Why People Would Want to See Headline Before Clicking Article

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Twitter CEO Says That Due to Reasons, She Has to Cancel ... - Futurism

Could microorganisms really survive those conditions? Swab Saget

On Thursday, NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara and ESA commander Andreas Mogensen are gearing up for a spacewalk to swab the exterior of the International Space Station. Their mission? Swabbing for evidence of microorganisms that might be clinging to its exterior, surviving under some of the most extreme conditions imaginable.

Scientists have long studied some of the most resilient microbes on the planet to determine if they're capable of surviving in outer space an area of study that could have some profound implications on the search for extraterrestrial life.

In 2015, astronauts mounted a box to the exterior of the ISS, exposing microbes to cryogenic temperatures and extreme levels of radiation.

As detailed in a 2020 paper, a team of Japanese researchers discovered that a bacteria placed inside the box called Deinococcus radioduransappeared to survive for three years in outer space, baffling microbiologists.

A separate experiment running from 2014 to 2016by the German Aerospace Center called Biology and Mars Experiment (BIOMEX) found that yet more simple organisms were able to survive the extreme conditions outside the ISS.

The results hint that microbial life may be able to cover vast distances, perhaps even allowing rudimentary life forms to jump from planet to planet potentially transferringlife between Earth and Mars, for instance.

"Of course, this does not mean that life actually exists on Mars," astrobiologist Jean-Pierre Paul de Vera said in astatementat the time of the BIOMEX experiment. "But the search for life is more than ever the strongest driving force for the next generation of missions to Mars."

In other words, we're only beginning to understand how life at least how we've come to know it here on Earth could survive outside our protective atmosphere.

On Thursday, will swab the outside of the ISS to see if microorganisms can survive these treacherous conditions, bringing us one small step closer to figuring out if we're alone in the universe. And we can't wait to hear about what they find.

More on microorganisms in space: Black Mold From Earth Could Survive on Mars, NASA Says

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NASA Swabbing Outside of Space Station to See If Stuff Is Growing ... - Futurism

We'll take those odds. Flipping Out

All bets are off, because it turns out that flipping a coin which is rather questionably used to tie-break elections across the world isn't actually a fair fifty-fifty chance.

As part of a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, a small army of European researchers performed hundreds of thousands of coin flips in what may be the largest effort of its kind and found "overwhelming evidence" of same-side bias, or that flipped coins are slightly-but-significantly more likely to land on the same side they started on.

"Despite the widespread popularity of coin flipping, few people pause to reflect on the notion that the outcome of a coin flip is anything but random," the researchers wrote in the study.

This isn't a new conjecture, although it's almost certainly never been so extensively explored before. This latest work builds on the model proposed by Stanford mathematician and professional magician Persi Diaconis, who in 2007 published a paper that suggested coin flips were blemished by same-side bias.

Back then, Diaconis' estimate was that there's a 51 percent chance of a coin landing on the initial side, or just a one percent difference.

He was pretty much on the money. In this latest experiment, the researchers had 48 people themselves included endlessly flip coins from various countries, and then record whether they landed on the initial side.

In total, they performed a mind-numbing 350,757 coin flips. But it was worth it: the coins landed on the same side 50.8 percent of the time, they found, varying slightly between each person performing the flip.

If you can't make heads or tails of the finding, here's what happens after a coin leaves your thumb, based on Diaconis' model.

A small degree of precession, or wobble, is introduced into the coin as it tumbles through the air. The wobbling causes the same side to spend more time facing up. And the more time it spends facing up, however small, the more likely it'll be in that position when it lands.

That less than one percent of a difference may not seem like a lot, but Frantiek Barto, lead author of the study, put it this way: "If you bet a dollar on the outcome of a coin toss 1,000 times, knowing the starting position of the coin toss would earn you $19 on average," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

In sum, that can add up.

"This is more than the casino advantage for [six deck] blackjack against an optimal player (5$),"he wrote, "but less than that for single-zero roulette (27$)."

More on mathematics: A Math and Physics Savant Reportedly Figured Out How to Beat Roulette

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Coin Flips Aren't Actually 50-50, Scientists Find - Futurism

As the Israel-Palestine crisis unfolds, a massive barrage of disinformation has hit X-formerly-Twitter and regulators are watching in horror.

Manipulated and fake images are widely circulating on the platform, a dire situation compounded by X owner Elon Musk's gutting of the company's workforce, including its content moderation team, following his chaotic takeover last year.

In an "urgent letter" addressed to X owner Elon Musk, Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, accused the platform of enabling the dissemination of "illegal content and disinformation in the EU" and ordered Musk to file a response "within the next 24 hours," ensuring "that your systems are effective, and report on the crisis measures taken."

Breton also wrote that the "violent and terrorist content that appears to circulate on your platform," after Musk made "changes in public interest policies" was leaving "many European users uncertain."

At 24 hours since Breton shared his letter, Musk has yet to show any indication of interest in making changes to X's policies.

It didn't take long for the outspoken billionaire to respond to Breton's request, albeit without actually addressing the issue.

"Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports," Musk wrote in a confounding tweet. "Please list the violations you allude to on , so that that the public can see them."

Breton didn't take kindly to the suggestion, telling Musk that it's "up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk."

By all indications, Musk has yet to officially write a response or make X's content policies sufficiently clear beyond telling Breton that "we take our actions in the open."

Musk's telltale gut reaction of doubling down on his laissez-faire vision is telling, especially he's been actively contributing to the issue himself. In a since-deleted tweet, Musk recommended that users follow two accounts that have historically spread dangerous lies and made antisemitic comments, as The Washington Post reports.

It's still unclear if the European Commission will end up taking action or imposing "penalties" due to non-compliance, as Breton's letter warns.

The EU's recently enacted Digital Services Act requires any platforms with more than 45 million monthly active users to scan for illegal content and take it down as well. Companies can get fined up to six percent of their global turnover if they don't comply with the new rules.

That kind of penalty could turn out to be a major hit for a platform that is already in deep financial turmoil.

In short, the Israel-Palestine conflict could be seen as the first major international crisis to stress test Musk's social media platform and given his apparent disinterest in tackling disinformation, he appears to be failing miserably.

More on the situation: Twitter CEO Says That Due to Reasons, She Has to Cancel Appearance Defending Elon Musks Deranged Behavior

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Elon Musk Is in Big Trouble Over the Israel-Palestine Violence - Futurism

Image by LWA-Dann Tardif via Getty Images

Good news, everyone! According to a recent study published in The Journal of Sex Research, regularly gettin' down to some quality hanky panky goes a long way to protect senior citizens against cognitive decline.

The study utilized data from The University of Chicago's National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSLHA) described as the "first nationally representative study of the intersection between social and intimate relationships and healthy aging" by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to determine whether older adults' sex lives could be linked in any way to cognitive decline as they age.

"Broadly, I am interested in how social relationships are related to the risk of health problems in later life," study author Shannon Shen, an assistant professor of sociology at Hope College in Michigan, told PsyPost of her research, adding that sexuality is an "often overlooked" part of older American adult's lives. "Despite there being a great deal of research on cognitive decline," she continued, there's "little work that considers how intimate social relationships may be beneficial for cognitive functioning."

Using the NSLHA data, Shen limited the study's sample to 1,683 individuals aged 62 and older, all of whom had provided complete data on their cognitive health and were sexually partnered in some way as PsyPost put it, all of the 1,683 chosen for study were "either married, cohabiting, or had a romantic, intimate, or sexual partner."

The results were striking. Shen found that elders between the ages of 75 and 90 who had sex at least once a week were shown to exhibit better cognitive function than counterparts who were less sexually active specifically, older folks who hadn't had sex within the past year at the time of the survey if sexually active at all.

What's more, according to the study, is that not all sex is created equal. For folks between the ages of 62 and 74, sexualqualitywas key in determining whether sexual activity actually offered cognitive benefits. Per the research, those who were partnered yet reported a lack of satisfaction in their sex life didn't appear to experience the same brain-protecting boost as those who reported their sex lives to be satisfying and pleasurable meaning the takeaway of the research isn't that seniors should commit to less-than-gratifying sex just for health reasons.

"For partnered older Americans, sex matters for later cognitive function, but this depends on age and aspect of the sexual relationship," Shen told PsyPost. "For adults 75 to 90 years old, having sex once a week or more is related to better cognitive function five years later compared to those who had no sex."

There's also a long-term element. Good sex now, she found, seems to have a protective effect on cognitive function years down the road.

"For adults 62 to 74 years old," the researcher added, "having better sexual quality both more physical pleasure and emotional satisfaction was related to better cognitive function five years later."

As with most similar research, the study isn't without caveats. Though factors like race, ethnicity, and income were taken into account, the research, as Shen told PsyPost, "only examined community-dwelling older adults, so the results do not speak to older adults living in nursing homes."

"Second," Shen added, "there were no questions in the dataset that addressed sexual consent, which someone with more severe forms of cognitive decline may have a limited capacity to give."

Still, the findings are intriguing. It's also reason, perhaps, for those in other age groups to reflect on their intimate relationships and the norms and judgment we might project onto seniors in particular.

More on sex: Flirting with a VR Hottie Might Help People Avoid Cheating, Experiment Finds

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"They were getting crushed." Road Trip

To say that the 2021 action blockbuster "F9: The Fast Saga," the ninth installment of the uber-popular "Fast & Furious" franchise, isn't the most scientifically sound movie to have been set in space would be a vast understatement.

In the movie spoilers ensue two characters played by Tyrese Gibson and Christopher "Ludacris" Bridges launch a cobbled-together spacecraft made out of a 1984 Pontiac Fiero into space after being released from the back of a massive airplane mid-flight.

Now, in a new Vanity Fair video, Canadian veteran astronaut Chris Hadfield reviewed the scene, pointing out some glaring discrepancies between the two characters' experiences of rocketing into space and his own.

But that doesn't mean he wasn't entertained.

"Like a billion other people on Earth, I really like the 'Fast & Furious' series," Hadfield said in the video. "Its almost just purely a cartoon, but unavoidably fun to follow and watch it."

Still, according to Hadfield, it wasn't the most accurate portrayal of space travel.

"Their engines fire and now theyre rocketing into space, and like 30 seconds later theyre in orbit," he said. "It took me eight and a half minutes, so they really went fast. They were getting crushed."

The former astronaut also pointed out how ridiculous it was to use a stick shift in a spacecraft.

"I haven't driven a Fiero in a while, but I've flown some rocket ships and they don't have a transmission that you shift," Hadfield mused.

The idea of having the "Fast & Furious" franchise rocket into space started as a joke, with "F9" executive producer Josh Henson recalling in a 2021 Vulture article that an original pitch for the movie included having Vin Diesel's character racing the "original Moon rover" on the lunar surface.

While the movie didn't end up going quite as far as that, director Justin Lin took the idea seriously and even "got on the phone with NASA scientists," as he told Vulture, "and Im picking their brains about how to do it."

Of course, with or without the involvement of real-life rocket scientists, the blockbuster movie primarily exists to entertain, and continuously demands its audience to suspend their disbelief even down on the Earth's surface.

But according to Hadfield, the movie did get one thing right: the two space travelers' emotional reactions to seeing the Earth glide by far beneath them.

"Suddenly, all the blue is below you, youre out in the eternal blackness and all of life is laid out there in this beautiful curving arc of the world under them," Hadfield said in the video. "And Im really pleased that they put that into the movie, and then portrayed it so well."

More on Hadfield: Former Astronaut Details Quest to Grow Cannabinoids in Space

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