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When a full moon peeks over the horizon, it looks very large. This is an interesting phenomenon; in this position, the moon is furthest from us, so it should appear slightly smaller than when it is at its zenith.“You actually have to look far beyond the earth, so [the moon is] It’s one Earth radius further away than when it’s directly overhead,” Susannah Kohler, an astronomer and spokesperson for the American Astronomical Society, told Live Science.So why does the moon appear larger when it’s above the horizon? you may like The mystery, called the “moon illusion,” has puzzled sky-gazers for…
At times this week at the World Economic Forum, Davos appeared to be turning into a powerhouse technology conference, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and more industry executives taking to the stage. Unsurprisingly, the biggest topic was AI, with CEOs laying out their vision for the technology’s transformative potential, while also acknowledging continued concerns that AI is inflating a giant bubble. Amid these big predictions, they sometimes found time to attack competitors and even their ostensible partners. On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, I chatted with…
We are at a unique time for AI companies to build their own foundational models. First, there are generations of industry veterans who made their names at large technology companies and are now independent. There are also legendary researchers with vast experience but vague commercial aspirations. It’s clear that at least some of these new labs have the potential to become giants on the scale of OpenAI, but there’s also room to do interesting research without worrying too much about commercialization. The final result? It’s getting harder to tell who’s actually trying to make money. To make things easier, I’m…
Food carts are a staple of New York City dining, serving up everything from dosas and doner kebabs to dogs and dim sum in short order. But no matter how appealing the aroma of the food on the cart, customers can be turned off by the smelly gas generators that keep the lights on. Cart owners and customers may not have to smoke for much longer. The Brooklyn-based startup is testing the use of e-bike batteries to power food carts, starting with La Chona Mexican on the corner of 30th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. “This really started on a…
Cuts on dozens of dog skeletons discovered at an archaeological site in Bulgaria suggest that people were eating dog meat 2,500 years ago. It wasn’t just because they had no other choice.”These sites were rich in livestock, the main source of protein, so there was no need to eat dog meat out of poverty,” Stella Nikolova, a zooarchaeologist at the National Archaeological Institute of the Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and author of a study published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology in December, told Live Science. “Evidence shows that dog meat was associated with some tradition involving…
A triangular artifact made from elephant bone was used to sharpen hatchets by relatives of ancient humans in what is now Britain some 480,000 years ago, new analysis reveals.Measuring approximately 4.3 by 2.3 inches (10.9 by 5.8 centimeters), it represents the oldest elephant bone tool ever discovered in Europe, and demonstrates the high level of resourcefulness and ability to adapt to new environments when our relatives settled in northern climates, according to the study published Wednesday (January 21) in the journal Science Advances.Evidence suggests that early human relatives used elephant bones and tusks for a wide range of purposes throughout…
Our character as humans is formed through interactions that reflect our basic survival and reproductive instincts, without any preassigned roles or desired calculus. Now, researchers at Japan’s University of Electro-Communications have discovered that artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots can do the same thing.The scientists outlined their findings in a study first published in the journal Entropy on December 13, 2024, and later published last month. In their paper, they describe how different topics of conversation led the AI chatbot to generate responses based on distinct social trends and opinion synthesis processes. For example, when the same agent diverges in behavior by…
This week’s science news was full of discoveries that were thought to have been lost to time. In particular, the world’s oldest known rock art was discovered in Indonesia.A nearly 70,000-year-old human handprint discovered in a Sulawesi cave fills a major gap in scientists’ understanding of human migration across the islands of Southeast Asia and into Australia, likely left behind by the ancestors of Australia’s indigenous people.And ancient Homo sapiens weren’t the only species discovered this week on daring and unexpected journeys. The 2.6-million-year-old jaw fossil of an extinct human relative, Paranthropus (or “Nutcracker Man”), has been discovered hundreds of…
A new multi-stage phishing campaign was observed targeting users in Russia using ransomware and a remote access Trojan called Amnesia RAT. “This attack begins with a social engineering lure delivered via business-themed documents designed to appear routine and harmless,” Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin said in technical details released this week. “These documents and accompanying scripts act as visual distractions, directing victims to fake tasks and status messages while the malicious activity runs silently in the background.” This campaign stands out for several reasons. First, use multiple public cloud services to distribute different types of payloads. GitHub is primarily…
When Elon Musk talks about robotics, he does little to hide the ambition behind his dreams.Tesla’s Optimus is being pitched as an all-purpose humanoid robot that can do heavy lifting on the factory floor and free us from drudgery at home. Tesla aims to have 1 million of these robots over the next 10 years.But is there a chance that Mr. Musk will succeed? A few years ago, the idea of friendly and capable domestic robots belonged to the world of science fiction. We can imagine machines that dance, move boxes, and play chess, but we cannot imagine machines that…