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Ichthyosaurs were silent assassins of Jurassic seas

Popular Science

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. More than 180 million years ago, ichthyosaurs ruled the early Jurassic oceans. The carnivorous marine reptiles ranged from the size of a briefcase to larger than a school bus. The biggest of these whale-like creatures were apex predators, hunting ancient fish, ammonites, and even their smaller reptile relatives. As they searched for prey, some may have swum with surprising stealth.


A 600-year-old Chaucer mystery may finally be solved

Popular Science

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Scholars believe they have solved a medieval manuscript mystery that's plagued scholars for nearly 130 years. Based on a handful of grammatical reevaluations, experts believe that they can reconcile a famously odd portion in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. In doing so, they also traced the text back to a priest from the Middle Ages who employed "memes" of the day as a way to relate to his parishioners. Their findings were published in The Review of English Studies on July 15.


World's largest known turtle nesting site found in the Amazon

Popular Science

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Researchers from the University of Florida have uncovered the largest known nesting site for the threatened giant South American river turtle (Podocnemis expansa). How did they find over 41,000 nesting reptiles? The turtles were found gathered along the Amazon's Guaporé River between Brazil and Bolivia. This innovative use of drones opens up new avenues for conservationists, as detailed in a study recently published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.


There are 3 types of Tinder users: Here's how to find (or avoid) them

Mashable

Finding potential partners on dating apps who want the same things as you can be a grueling task -- especially if you're out for a relationship. It can feel deeply disappointing when someone you've spent hours talking to keeps making excuses for not meeting up. Why do they bother crafting sparkling text conversation over a series of weeks if they won't actually take you on a date? A new study published in Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace may have the answer. Researchers from Miguel Hernández University of Elche in Spain studied the motives of Tinder users and how this lined up with the'dark tetrad' set of personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism.


Here's what Nvidia has to say about Rowhammer and whether you should worry

Mashable

Cybersecurity issues are a fact of life in our digital age. Some threats are more concerning, while others aren't nearly as big of a deal as some make them out to be. On today's menu, we'll talk about Rowhammer, a known exploit that affects dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). Specifically, a variant called GPUHammer that alters graphics cards with GDDR6 memory. According to new research from the University of Toronto, GPUHammer is the first Rowhammer variant that affects GPUs (graphics processing units) specifically.


Judges Don't Know What AI's Book Piracy Means

The Atlantic - Technology

More than 40 lawsuits have been filed against AI companies since 2022. Late last month, there were rulings on two of these cases, first in a lawsuit against Anthropic and, two days later, in one against Meta. Both of the cases were brought by book authors who alleged that AI companies had trained large language models using authors' work without consent or compensation. In each case, the judges decided that the tech companies were engaged in "fair use" when they trained their models with authors' books. Both judges said that the use of these books was "transformative"--that training an LLM resulted in a fundamentally different product that does not directly compete with those books.


AI 'Nudify' Websites Are Raking in Millions of Dollars

WIRED

For years, so-called "nudify" apps and websites have mushroomed online, allowing people to create nonconsensual and abusive images of women and girls, including child sexual abuse material. Despite some lawmakers and tech companies taking steps to limit the harmful services, every month, millions of people are still accessing the websites, and the sites' creators may be making millions of dollars each year, new research suggests. An analysis of 85 nudify and "undress" websites--which allow people to upload photos and use AI to generate "nude" pictures of the subjects with just a few clicks--has found that most of the sites rely on tech services from Google, Amazon, and Cloudflare to operate and stay online. The findings, revealed by Indicator, a publication investigating digital deception, say that the websites had a combined average of 18.5 million visitors for each of the past six months and collectively may be making up to 36 million per year. Alexios Mantzarlis, a cofounder of Indicator and an online safety researcher, says the murky nudifier ecosystem has become a "lucrative business" that "Silicon Valley's laissez-faire approach to generative AI" has allowed to persist.


Scientists reveal exactly what a neanderthal human hybrid would look like

Daily Mail - Science & tech

It has been over 40,000 years since the last of the Neanderthals, our ancient human cousins, disappeared from the Earth. But from the shape of your nose to whether someone is an early riser, Neanderthal genes are still shaping many of our lives today. Starting from around 250,000 years ago, ancient homo sapiens and Neanderthals met, lived alongside each other, and often had children together. Now, MailOnline has asked leading paleoanthropologists to reveal what those hybrid children would have looked like. Scientists believe that hybrid children would inherit traits from both of their parents.


Indigenous calendars could make solar power more efficient

Popular Science

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A truly sustainable future requires solar power, but trying to consistently maximize the energy harvested by panel arrays remains one of the industry's biggest challenges. Unlike fossil fuels, solar power yields are dictated by the complex interplay of weather and atmospheric variables, as well as the sun's own activity. This means it's basically impossible to craft a universal prediction model, so localized solar forecast systems are a necessity. While machine learning technology has significantly improved today's forecast models, there is still a lot of room for improvement.


Astronomers think newly discovered comet may be way older than the sun

Mashable

A giant comet spotted days ago hurtling through the solar system may be the most ancient one ever seen -- and may be loaded with frozen water. The icy traveler, called 3I/ATLAS or Comet ATLAS, was discovered on July 1 by the NASA-funded ATLAS survey telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile. This enormous space snowball came from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius and is about 300 million miles from Earth right now. After running a new kind of computer simulation, scientists believe the comet originated from a rarely seen corner of the galaxy, far beyond the birthplace of the sun. And because it likely formed around an ancient, thick-disk star in the Milky Way, it should be rich in water ice, said Matthew Hopkins, a University of Oxford astronomer, who led the research.