The Download: inside the Vitalism movement, and why AI's "memory" is a privacy problem Meet the Vitalists: the hardcore longevity enthusiasts who believe death is "wrong" Last April, an excited crowd gathered at a compound in Berkeley, California, for a three-day event called the Vitalist Bay Summit. It was part of a longer, two-month residency that hosted various events to explore tools--from drug regulation to cryonics--that might be deployed in the fight against death. One of the main goals, though, was to spread the word of Vitalism, a somewhat radical movement established by Nathan Cheng and his colleague Adam Gries a few years ago. Consider it longevity for the most hardcore adherents--a sweeping mission to which nothing short of total devotion will do. Although interest in longevity has certainly taken off in recent years, not everyone in the broader longevity space shares Vitalists' commitment to actually making death obsolete. And the Vitalists feel that momentum is building, not just for the science of aging and the development of lifespan-extending therapies, but for the acceptance of their philosophy that .

Social media has reshaped political discourse, offering politicians a platform for direct engagement while reinforcing polarization and ideological divides. This study introduces a novel topic evolution framework that integrates BERTopic-based topic modeling with Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to analyze the longevity and moral dimensions of political topics in Twitter activity during the 117th U.S. Congress. We propose a methodology for tracking dynamic topic shifts over time and measuring their association with moral values and quantifying topic persistence. Our findings reveal that while overarching themes remain stable, granular topics tend to dissolve rapidly, limiting their long-term influence. Moreover, moral foundations play a critical role in topic longevity, with Care and Loyalty dominating durable topics, while partisan differences manifest in distinct moral framing strategies. This work contributes to the field of social network analysis and computational political discourse by offering a scalable, interpretable approach to understanding moral-driven topic evolution on social media.

Large language model (LLM) benchmarks inform LLM use decisions (e.g., "is this LLM safe to deploy for my use case and context?"). However, benchmarks may be rendered unreliable by various failure modes that impact benchmark bias, variance, coverage, or people's capacity to understand benchmark evidence. Using the National Institute of Standards and Technology's risk management process as a foundation, this research iteratively analyzed 26 popular benchmarks, identifying 57 potential failure modes and 196 corresponding mitigation strategies. The mitigations reduce failure likelihood and/or severity, providing a frame for evaluating "benchmark risk," which is scored to provide a metaevaluation benchmark: BenchRisk. Higher scores indicate that benchmark users are less likely to reach an incorrect or unsupported conclusion about an LLM. All 26 scored benchmarks present significant risk within one or more of the five scored dimensions (comprehensiveness, intelligibility, consistency, correctness, and longevity), which points to important open research directions for the field of LLM benchmarking. The BenchRisk workflow allows for comparison between benchmarks; as an open-source tool, it also facilitates the identification and sharing of risks and their mitigations.

People who live to 100 appear to have a'superhuman' ability to avoid major illnesses, according to new research. Two large studies of older adults in Sweden have found that centenarians tend to develop fewer diseases, accumulate them more slowly, and in many cases avoid the most deadly age-related conditions altogether--despite living far longer than their peers. The work, published by an international research team, suggests that exceptional longevity is linked to a distinct pattern of ageing in which illness is delayed or even avoided entirely. The findings challenge the widely held belief that a longer life inevitably comes with more years of poor health. Researchers analysed decades of health records to compare people who reached 100 with those who died earlier but were born in the same years.

Fox News' Sean Hannity sits down to interview human biologist and biohacker Gary Brecka for a new installment of the "Sean" podcast on Fox Nation. Living 150 years could not just be possible – it could soon be inevitable, according to human biologist and biohacker Gary Brecka. "If you're alive in five years, I believe it will be your choice whether or not you want to live to 120 to 150 years old," Brecka told Sean Hannity in a new installment of Fox Nation's "Sean" podcast. Brecka – a longevity expert who helps optimize human performance – joined Hannity for a no-holds-barred, hour-long discussion on what it takes to push past human limitations. Gary Brecka shared his predictions about human longevity for the coming years.

I sat down with Johnson at an event for people interested in longevity in Berkeley, California, in late April. We spoke on the sidelines after lunch (conference plastic-lidded container meal for me; what seemed to be a plastic-free, compostable box of chicken and vegetables for him), and he sat with an impeccable posture, his expression neutral. Earlier that morning, Johnson, in worn trainers and the kind of hoodie that is almost certainly deceptively expensive, had told the audience about what he saw as the end of humanity. Specifically, he was worried about AI--that we face an "event horizon," a point at which superintelligent AI escapes human understanding and control. He had come to Berkeley to persuade people who are interested in longevity to focus their efforts on AI.

Apple is best known for its futuristic, spaceship-like headquarters in Cupertino, California. But what many people don't know is that the tech giant also has a huge campus in Ireland. Apple's Cork campus opened its doors in 1980 with a single manufacturing facility and just 60 employees. Fast-forward to today, the site is home to more than 6,000 employees, and serves as Apple's European headquarters. The tech giant is usually extremely private about what happens behind closed doors.

The first time you make anything, it probably won't come out perfect, so it wasn't a huge surprise when MSI's debut gaming handheld struggled out of the gate. And that's before you consider the unorthodox choice to go with an Intel chip instead of one from AMD like practically all of its rivals. However, MSI didn't give up, and now it's back with not one but two versions of its second-gen handheld, headlined by the Claw 8 AI . Not only is it bigger than before, it has twice as many Thunderbolt 4 ports, a way bigger battery and some of the best performance we've seen from any device in this category. But more importantly, as the follow-up to a device plagued by lackluster software and unfinished drivers, it feels like the Claw got its bite back. With its 8-inch screen, the Claw 8 AI is bigger than its predecessor and a number of its rivals like the ROG Ally X, though it's still smaller than Lenovo's chunky 8.8-inch Legion Go.

What happens when a new piece of knowledge is introduced into the training data and how long does it last while a large language model (LM) continues to train? We investigate this question by injecting facts into LMs from a new probing dataset, "Outlandish", which is designed to permit the testing of a spectrum of different fact types. When studying how robust these memories are, there appears to be a sweet spot in the spectrum of fact novelty between consistency with world knowledge and total randomness, where the injected memory is the most enduring. Specifically we show that facts that conflict with common knowledge are remembered for tens of thousands of training steps, while prompts not conflicting with common knowledge (mundane), as well as scrambled prompts (randomly jumbled) are both forgotten much more rapidly. Further, knowledge-conflicting facts can "prime'' how the language model hallucinates on logically unrelated prompts, showing their propensity for non-target generalization, while both mundane and randomly jumbled facts prime significantly less. Finally, we show that impacts of knowledge-conflicting facts in LMs, though they can be long lasting, can be largely erased by novel application of multi-step sparse updates, even while the training ability of the model is preserved. As such, this very simple procedure has direct implications for mitigating the effects of data poisoning in training.

In an era dominated by the Internet of Things, ensuring the longevity and sustainability of IoT devices has emerged as a pressing concern. This study explores the various complex difficulties which contributed to the early decommissioning of IoT devices and suggests methods to improve their lifespan management. By examining factors such as security vulnerabilities, user awareness gaps, and the influence of fashion-driven technology trends, the paper underscores the need for legislative interventions, consumer education, and industry accountability. Additionally, it explores innovative approaches to improving IoT longevity, including the integration of sustainability considerations into architectural design through requirements engineering methodologies. Furthermore, the paper discusses the potential of distributed ledger technology, or blockchain, to promote transparent and decentralized processes for device provisioning and tracking. This study promotes a sustainable IoT ecosystem by integrating technology innovation, legal change, and social awareness to reduce environmental impact and enhance resilience for the digital future