When it comes to conspiracy theories, there are some pretty extreme ones out there. While some people insist the Earth is flat, others are certain the world is secretly ruled by reptilian humanoids. Now, a study has revealed that people who believe in these concepts are likely to be hugely overconfident. And it could go some way to explaining why it's impossible to try and change their minds. Analysis of eight studies has found a consistent pattern among people who believe in conspiracy theories – they tend to be overconfident in their cognitive abilities and significantly overestimate how much others agree with them.

A sewer robot that monitors pipework and raises blockage alerts before flooding occurs is set for its first mission. Pipebot Patrol is a 1.8m project led by Northumbrian Water and funded by the Ofwat Water Breakthrough Challenge. The robot can inspect miles of pipes over a 30-day period and automatically report back issues from underground. A spokesman for the water company said the robot would be a "game-changer" and would help cut down the number of emergency repairs. Northumbria Water said 10 organisations had played a part in the robot's development, including councils in Sunderland, Gateshead and Newcastle.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Oceanographers on an excursion in the Southern Ocean captured a chance, unprecedented encounter with a sizable deep-sea squid. While piloting a remotely operated submersible 7,000 feet below the ocean surface from aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor (too), experts glimpsed a three-foot-long Gonatus antarcticus specimen. But according to National Geographic's announcement, the team wasn't even supposed to be in that location when they stumbled across the elusive cephalopod. "The ice blocks were moving so fast, it would put all the ships in danger, so we had to rearrange everything," said Manuel Novillo, a researcher at the Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal.

Biggest drone strike yet on Ukraine's second city 24 minutes agoShareSaveJaroslav LukivBBC NewsShareSaveKharkiv Regional AdministrationUkraine's emergencies workers search for survivors at one of Kharkiv's damaged residential buildings At least two people have been killed and another 17 injured in the biggest Russian drone attack on Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, the mayor says. Ihor Terekhov says that overnight Russia launched 48 drones, as well as two missiles and four gliding bombs. "We have a lot of damage," he says, adding that three high-rising residential buildings were hit. Footage has emerged showing several storeys of one such building on fire. Six people were killed and 80 injured across Ukraine the previous night, when Russia attacked the country with more than 400 drones and nearly 40 missiles.

We propose a principled method for autoencoding with random forests. Our strategy builds on foundational results from nonparametric statistics and spectral graph theory to learn a low-dimensional embedding of the model that optimally represents relationships in the data. We provide exact and approximate solutions to the decoding problem via constrained optimization, split relabeling, and nearest neighbors regression. These methods effectively invert the compression pipeline, establishing a map from the embedding space back to the input space using splits learned by the ensemble's constituent trees. The resulting decoders are universally consistent under common regularity assumptions. The procedure works with supervised or unsupervised models, providing a window into conditional or joint distributions. We demonstrate various applications of this autoencoder, including powerful new tools for visualization, compression, clustering, and denoising. Experiments illustrate the ease and utility of our method in a wide range of settings, including tabular, image, and genomic data.

Cutaway view of a fictional space colony concept painted by artist Rick Guidice as part of a NASA art program in the 1970s. This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Elon Musk once joked: "I would like to die on Mars. Musk is, in fact, deadly serious about colonizing the Red Planet. Part of his motivation is the idea of having a "back-up" planet in case some future catastrophe renders the Earth uninhabitable. Musk has suggested that a million people may be calling Mars home by 2050 -- and he's hardly alone in his enthusiasm. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen believes the world can easily support 50 billion people, and more than that once we settle other planets. And Jeff Bezos has spoken of exploiting the resources of the moon and the asteroids to build giant space stations. "I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system," he has said. Not so fast, cautions science journalist Adam Becker.

Three far-right extremists who amassed hundreds of weapons and planned to carry out attacks on targets including a mosque have been convicted of terrorism offences. Brogan Stewart, 25, from West Yorkshire, Christopher Ringrose, 34, from Staffordshire, and Marco Pitzettu, 25, from Derbyshire, were part of an online group who "idolised the Nazi regime". Sheffield Crown Court was told how Stewart had detailed torturing a Muslim leader using an "information extraction kit". All three were found guilty of terrorism offences at the same court on Wednesday and are due to be sentenced on 17 July.Counter Terrorism Policing North EastThe trio had amassed a cache of weapons as part of their planning During the nine-week trial, the court heard more than 200 weapons including machetes, hunting knives, swords and crossbows were found at their homes. Ringrose had also begun to build a 3D-printed semi-automatic firearm, which counter-terror police said would have been a "lethal weapon".

'Bella the robot waitress won't replace our staff' 4 days agoShareSaveSophie CridlandReporting fromPortlandShareSaveBBCMike Deadman, from The View Cafe and Bar, said Bella was not being used to replace staff Bella carries multiple trays packed with food and drinks, deftly swerving any obstacles and delivering orders day in and day out to her customers. This is the latest recruit at The View Cafe and Bar at Portland's Heights hotel in Dorset. But Bella is no normal member of the waiting staff - she is a state-of-the art robot programmed to serve and even interact with the eatery's patrons. And costing a little under 9,000, it is hoped it can be an economical idea, as well as a novel one. But assistant manager Mike Deadman insists Bella - built by Chinese technology company Pudu - will not result in any job losses.

James Cameron wasn't near the penguins this time around, but he is extremely familiar with their environment. "When I went to Antarctica myself, I had a Nikon still camera adapted to the cold with special lubricants," he tells Popular Science. "I went to the South Pole and the film shattered in my hand when I tried to change it. I took a video camera, I wrapped it in a heating pack and it [died] in two minutes. I have a good sense of what it takes to take conventional equipment into that environment and survive."

Microbes living beneath Antarctica's ice sheet may survive on methane generated by geothermal heat rising from deep below Earth's surface. The discovery could have implications for assessing the potential for life to survive on icy worlds beyond Earth. "These could be hotspots for microbes that are adapted to live in these areas," says Gavin Piccione at Brown University in Rhode Island. We already know that there is methane beneath Antarctica's ice sheet.