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A graded trajectory is a complete recording of an AI’s attempt at a task plus a verdict on whether it succeeded, and it’s the fundamental unit of modern AI training data. A free grader is any mechanism — passing tests, physical reality, paying customers — that produces those verdicts automatically at zero marginal cost, and ...

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Ancient Egyptians famously buried their royalty in ornate funerary complexes alongside prized jewelry, clothing, food, and even pets near the deceased, so that they could take these items with them into the afterlife. Weapons are also commonly discovered in these tombs, but not only next to royal men. In some cases, archaeologists have also found combat implements buried with ancient Egyptian women.

Historians and Egyptologists have debated the significance of these artifacts for decades. Did Egyptian women actually wield these weapons, or were they more symbolic objects? After careful physical analysis of six ancient princesses buried beneath the pyramids at Dahshur, researchers now have an answer. In short, these Egyptian women could fight and hunt with the men.

Other weaponry buried inside their tombs included bows and arrows. Credit: Zeinab Hashesh, et al.

“Members of the royal family, especially the women, were active participants in skilled, physically demanding activities such as archery and hunting,” Zeinab Hashesh, an archaeologist at Egypt’s Beni-Suef University, said in a statement.Hashesh and her colleagues detailed their findings in a study published today in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. Their new paper focuses on a group of mummies previously lost for years. The women were originally excavated during the late 19th century from within the funerary complex at Dahshur, an ancient Egyptian necropolis featuring some of the oldest, largest, and best preserved pyramids in Giza. After rediscovering the mummies during a curation project at the Egyptian Museum in 2020, researchers finally examined them with advanced analysis techniques and equipment.

Four of the six women were sisters whose father was the pharaoh Amenemhat II. The third ruler of the 12th dynasty who reigned during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, little is known about Amenemhat II other than his death around 1895 BCE. Each of the women were buried in matching underground chambers, with the princess Ita followed by Khenmet, Itaweret, and an anonymous woman assumed to be their sister Sathathormeryt. At the time of their excavation during the late 19th century, archaeologists found weapons including bows and arrows that were traditionally associated with men. Princess Ita even possessed an ornate dagger.

 Despite their exciting rediscovery, time had taken its toll on the mummies. Their soft tissue powderized ages ago, and some bones are now missing, including all of the princesses’ skulls. Despite this, enough skeletal sections remain in good enough condition so r archaeologists can assess their age, sex, height, and any notable illnesses or injuries. According to Hashesh, it soon became clear that these women hadn’t lived lives of constant idle luxury.

The four skeletons lacked skulls, preventing additional detail analysis. Credit: Zeinab Hashesh, et al.

“Princess Ita was a young woman aged between 28 and 34 with strong upper-body muscle attachments, suggesting she habitually used weapons like maces or daggers,” she explained.

Princess Khenmet (who died in her late 30s or 40s) exhibited thinning bones but strong ligament attachments, while her sister Itaweret displayed physical signs of skilled archery before dying sometime between the ages of 20 and 34. The sisters’ collective upper limb development also suggests high-intensity, repetitive actions like holding a heavy weapon or pulling a bowstring.

“This directly explains the presence of bows, arrows, and maces in the women’s tombs,” said Hashesh. “These were not just symbolic gifts, but tools they actively used.” 

However, the siblings weren’t necessarily always in top form. Princess Itaweret’s skeleton showed healed fractures to both her ribs and foot, while multiple individuals displayed nutritional deficiencies and infections. The sisters also shared rare spinal conditions, indicating closely related parents and family members.

“What is remarkable is that the injuries healed well, which suggests they had access to advanced medical care for their time,” added Hashesh.

Unfortunately, Hashesh’s team could not conduct additional analysis since the princess’ skulls were missing. Future stable isotope examinations could also better contextualize the family’s nutritional issues. Despite this, the discoveries made by Hashesh’s team prove that the weapons owned by some of ancient Egypt’s royal women weren’t simply ornamental decorations.

“Our dream would be to go far beyond simply identifying the Dahshur royals,” Hashesh said. “We would try to tell their full life stories, their families, health, and even their political roles, with as much detail as possible.” 

The post Chiseled Egyptian princesses knew their way around weapons appeared first on Popular Science.

June 2 2026, ASTS Chief Strategy Officer Scott Wisniewski on June 2, 2026) said initial ASTS commercial services pushed to the first half of 2027 (H1 2027). This is a 3–6 month delay caused primarily by Blue Origin’s New Glenn launchpad explosion during a static-fire/hot-fire test on May 28, 2026 (following the earlier April 19 ...

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Despite increasing pushback from the public and some lawmakers, there still isn’t much preventing tech companies from training their generative artificial intelligence programs on internet content without the author’s consent. So until meaningful legislation and oversight is introduced, people are largely on their own when it comes to guarding original their online material.

While designer Eric Lu’s Ghost Font isn’t necessarily the silver bullet needed to stop AI from completely devouring the internet, it’s still an ingenious proof-of-concept experiment that highlights human creativity. It also shows just how far AI has to go when it comes to parsing concepts like optical illusions.

Ghost Font’s underlying mechanisms are deceptively simple. Text is entered by a user and overlaid within hundreds of moving dots in a short video animation. The dots composing the words move up the screen while the rest of the pinpoints move downward, generating a visual opposition that the human mind can detect and discern. Pausing the video creates a stationary picture that allows the words to disappear amid the overall clutter. AI (or the human eye, for that matter) can’t decipher the message in the still image, but that’s also where people get the upper hand.

While the human brain interprets motion as a fluid pattern, multimodal AI still examines videos by their individual frames. Think of it like a flipbook.Humans will see the cumulative animation while running through the pages, but AI is still forced to look at the image on each individual page. As an added protection, Ghost Font files also include the static decoy message “written in Ghost Font,” which further confuses AI by making it seem like that’s the only actual text to scan.

Lu claims to have tested the program using Anthropic’s Claude Fable and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra, both of which failed to find the real text. Further trials conducted by Creative Bloq also appeared to best AI.

By Lu’s own admission, Ghost Font isn’t a cure-all to ongoing AI issues. It’s limited to extremely short messages, and may become obsolete if generative AI develops the ability to examine videos as optical flows instead of individual frames. It also only takes a few seconds of staring at a dizzying Ghost Font video to realize it’s not the easiest on the eyes, and probably is useless for anyone with visual disabilities. Regardless, it’s still a fun and free way to celebrate human ingenuity—and AI’s deficiencies.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Popular Science’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

The post This font uses an optical illusion to hide from AI appeared first on Popular Science.

Several precious pieces of space history hit the auction block in New York this week. On July 15, Sotheby’s Space Exploration auction features several iconic artifacts, including a life-saving pen from Apollo 11 ($857,600), a Soviet flag flown in the icy vacuum of space ($102,400), and even a piece of the first cloth to wipe a window in space ($5,120). You can learn more about some of these historical objects in the gallery below.

The pen that saved Apollo II The broken circuit breaker switch that nearly ended Apollo 11, and the pen that saved the crew and the mission. Image: Sotheby’s.

On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin collected rock and dust samples from the moon’s surface for about three hours. As the pair were climbing back into the Lunar Module to prepare to fly home to Earth, Aldrin hit the module’s circuit breaker switch with the life support backpack on his spacesuit. 

The switch broke off, and it would have killed all three Apollo 11 astronauts had it not been for Aldrin’s quick thinking. He wedged a pen into the board to create a makeshift switch.  

“He could’ve picked something that was not very important. But he banged into the circuit breaker that controlled the SM engine that got us back into orbit,” Armstrong later told ABC News. “It was just insurance. It’s nice to get a little insurance.”

This item sold for $857,600.

A flag from the first American spacewalk Jim McDivitt’s flown United States flag. Image: Sotheby’s.

Mission Commander Jim McDivitt flew this American flag during Gemini IV. The June 1965 mission was the second crewed mission of the Gemini series and included the first American spacewalk. 

Command Pilot Edward White concluded the spacewalk on June 3, 1965, and remained outside of the spacecraft for 21 minutes. McDivitt served as mission commander for Gemini IV and photographed the first American spacewalk, conducted by command pilot Edward White. The Gemini IV flag is a silk stars and stripes flag and is signed and inscribed by McDivitt on the two lower white bars. This item sold for $35,840.

In space, even windows need cleaning  Flown cloth from “The First Window Wiping in Space.” Image: Sotheby’s.

This nylon tab was exposed to the vacuum of space during Gemini XII in November 1966. The mission included a spacewalk by Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin used this cloth to wipe the spacecraft’s window to clean off a mysterious yellow substance. 

NASA later cut the fabric into small pieces and tested the substance in different laboratories. It  turned out to be propellant exhaust from the Titan II launch vehicle. Aldrin kept the nylon tab portion of the cloth as a keepsake. This item sold for $5,120.

Heat shield plug from the first trip to the moon An ablative heat shield plug flown on Apollo 8. Image: Sotheby’s.

Whether it’s 1966 or 2026, heat shields are crucial for space travel. This plug protected one of the 59 screws attaching the aft heatshield to the Apollo 8 command module in December 1968. The mission was humanity’s first trip to the moon and paved the way for a successful lunar landing one year later. Astronaut Bill Anders also took the famous Earthrise photo during this mission. 

When it was time to return home, the crew re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in the Command Module oriented aft-first. The bottom of the spacecraft faced the brunt of friction that is generated by its descent as it plunges out of space and towards the sea. To account for the friction, NASA created an ablative heatshield in a brazed steel honeycomb structure. The bolts attaching this structure to the bottom of the spacecraft were then covered by plugs protecting them from the friction of re-entry. This item sold for $8,960.

A symbol of diplomacy This USSR flag was flown to the moon on Apollo 11. Image: Sotheby’s.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s footsteps on the moon on July 20, 1969 made it clear that the United States won the space race. In the spirit of diplomacy, Aldrin flew a USSR flag as well as the American flag, the Texas state flag, and the flag from his home state of New Jersey in his personal preference kit (PPK).

Buzz Aldrin’s provenance letter about the flag reads:

“This provenance letter certifies that the accompanying Apollo 11 Soviet Flag was flown to the Moon aboard the command module Columbia. In July of 1969, I landed on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 crew. As an act of diplomacy and to help commemorate this historic milestone, I chose to personally carry the accompanying 4 by 6 inch Soviet Flag with me in my Personal Preference Kit (PPK). Carrying this flag was a gesture of goodwill between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, as well as a demonstration that Apollo 11 was a human achievement that transcended nations.”

This item sold for $102,400.

Gordon Cooper’s glove Apollo-era extravehicular glove made for Gordon Cooper. Image: Sotheby’s.

This A7-L glove was made for astronaut Gordon Cooper and was likely used in training.  The International Latex Corporation’s aerospace division (later called ILC Dover) has been the designer and producer of the space suit pressure garment for NASA since the Apollo program began. Every American astronaut to go into space since has traveled wearing an ILC Dover suit. Each full suit took about 5,000 hours to complete, and cost approximately $1,000,000 to produce.

Cooper was part of the first group of astronauts chosen by NASA as part of the Mercury Seven. He piloted the final Mercury mission (Mercury-Atlas-9) and became the first American to spend an entire day in space. This glove would have been used by him after he served as backup commander of Apollo 10. This item sold for $21,760.

Space’s favorite beagle Flown Sterling Snoopy pin presentation presented to Dr. George Mueller. Image: Sotheby’s.

Charlie Brown’s mischievous pup has been part of the U.S. space program from the very beginning. Snoopy joined NASA in 1968 as a mascot for the Manned Flight Awareness program and even served as the gravity indicator during Artemis I in 2022.  

Dr. George E. Mueller is credited with creating and leading the Office of Manned Spaceflight at NASA Headquarters. He guided the agency through the Apollo program and the early development of Skylab and space shuttle projects.

This Snoopy pin was flown in lunar orbit and was later presented to Mueller. This item sold for $12,160.

Buzz Aldrin’s very fly jacket This Apollo 11 jacket was worn by astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Image: Sotheby’s.

Following the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, Command Module Pilot Al Worden had worn out his flight jacket. To replicate his jacket and to keep “The Right Stuff” in the cultural consciousness, Worden co-founded a company called Still the Right Stuff in 2013. The goal was to produce museum-quality replica garments inspired by the iconic Apollo flight jackets.

This item is an Apollo 11 jacket from Still the Right Stuff from Buzz Aldrin’s personal collection. Aldrin’s flight jacket features the Apollo 11 mission patch as well as the NASA meatball.

Still the Right Stuff no longer crafts these legacy jackets, but this garment is a testament to the vintage flight jackets that inspired fashion around the world. This item sold for $20,480.

The post Pen that saved the Apollo 11 astronauts sells for over $800K at auction appeared first on Popular Science.

Eaglets Sandy and Luna could fully fledge any day now. They both hatched in the first week of April, putting them right on the upper end of the 10 to 14 week average for fledging. This means they could leave the nest for good any day now.

To practice for a more independent life, they have been spending more time tree hopping and eating the fish that their parents, Jackie and Shadow, deliver to the nest. 

On June 28, Sandy accidentally fledged, when she and Luna stepped onto the nest’s “front porch.” Luna then tried to jump over Sandy to get back into the bowl of the nest, but Sandy lost her balance and flapped down to the lower branches. She freed herself from the branches and landed elsewhere in another tree. 

Eaglets typically depend on their parents for two to three months after fully fledging. They will learn how to hunt and work on their flying skills. Last year’s eaglets Sunny and Gizmo left the nest at 90 and 91 days old, respectively. 

After fledging, Sandy and Luna may pop up on the nest cameras from time to time since they are expected to keep to Big Bear Valley for a bit. However, they are not banded, so their activity will not be fully tracked. 

Jackie and Shadow’s 2026 babies: Everything you need to know

It’s been another roller coaster nesting season for Jackie and Shadow, a pair of internet-famous bald eagle parents living in San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California. After two of their eggs were destroyed by ravens in January, Jackie and Shadow laid two new eggs that have successfully hatched.

Chick 1 hatched on April 4 at 9:33 p.m. PDT, while Chick 2 followed on April 5 at 8:30 a.m. Their large nest in Big Bear Valley east of Los Angeles is livestreamed 24 hours a day by nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV) and has captivated millions. 

On May 1, FOBBV announced the chicks’ names: Sandy and Luna.

How long will the chicks stay in the nest? 

Chicks usually stay in the nest until 10 to 14 weeks of age.

What challenges do the eaglets face?

Before leaving the nest, the chicks face threats from other birds of prey, including hawks, ravens, other eagles, and owls. Inclement weather can also present challenges for the chicks. In 2025, a March snowstorm resulted in the death of one of Jackie and Shadow’s three chicks.

During fledging, only 70 percent of eaglets survive. One of the greatest threats is from cars that can injure or kill the birds while they scavenge for food on roadkill. 

Who are Jackie and Shadow? 

The pair first got together in 2018 and successfully raised chicks in 2019 and 2022. However, their eggs failed to hatch in 2023 and 2024. Only 50 percent of eagle eggs successfully hatch, so this pair has already beaten the odds.

What happened to Jackie and Shadow’s 2025 eaglets?

In 2025, Jackie laid three eggs that all hatched in early March. On March 13, a strong snowstorm dumped up to two feet of snow and battered the nest with strong winds. Only two of the chicks were visible on the live cam when the storm passed by the next morning. FOBBV later confirmed the passing of one of the chicks. The two surviving chicks were later named Sunny and Gizmo after 54,000 names were submitted by fans.

What happens after chicks fledge? 

Young eagles usually fledge–or leave the nest and fly–when they can flatten their wings and have feathers capable of flight. This typically occurs when the birds hit 10 to 14 weeks of age. Males also tend to take their first flight a little sooner than females. 

According to FOBBV, fledglings from Southern California have been spotted as far south as Baja California, as far north as British Columbia, and as far east as Yellowstone National Park.

About 70 percent of bald eagles survive the fledgling stage. FOBBV does not tag their eagles, so it’s not possible to follow the chicks’ journeys after they flee the nest.

Can I help Jackie and Shadow?

Yes. Environmental groups are currently fundraising $10 million to protect Jackie and Shadow’s foraging area from development. Learn more at SaveMoonCamp.org.

The post How much longer will eaglets Sandy and Luna stay on the nest? appeared first on Popular Science.

In the animal kingdom, life can sometimes look more like Game of Thrones than Charlotte’s Web. Bloody conflicts over territory, mates, and more are common in social animals, and several species have their own anticipatory behaviors to prepare when a fight looks imminent. They stay quiet, monitor their surroundings, conduct raids, and even bond with their allies through play and grooming. 

According to a study published today in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, environmental cues and memories can signal that it’s time to prepare for war. These behaviors are so important that these preparations can impact a species’ evolution, population dynamics, and even the structure of  communities. 

“Intergroup conflict is rife throughout the natural world, being found in social species from ants to primates,” Andrew Radford, a study co-author and behavioral biologist at the University of Bristol in the U.K., said in a statement. “Studying other species experimentally and in natural conditions can not only expand our understanding of a widespread aspect of sociality but also help to provide insights into our own conflict ancestry.”

Battle prep is an evolutionary force

Conflict over the resources all animals need exerts a powerful evolutionary force on a host of social species, including various primates, meerkats (Suricata suricatta), several bird species, and most obviously, humans. This force potentially impacts fitness and survival, according to the team. 

Humans prepare for warfare with more surveillance, taking to higher ground to gather information, conducting ambushes and raids, and quietly spying on enemy territory to avoid detection. Groups of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) tend to rest on hilltops in locations where intergroup contests occur, instead of feeding, traveling, or other more noisy activities. Experiments have also shown that dwarf mongooses (Helogale parvula) will move more slowly and engage in look-out behaviors when they hear a rival’s vocal cues or pick up their scents to monitor their surroundings more easily. 

“What is becoming very clear is that preemptive behavior is widespread whenever intergroup conflict is found,” added study co-author and University of Bristol behavioral ecologist Josh Arbon. “There is growing evidence that the amount of anticipatory behavior displayed is dependent on the current threat level. More is seen when rivals are more likely to be encountered, larger in size, less familiar, or more likely to attack.” 

Territory, raids, and play

A threat of  intergroup conflict can also influence how animals use space. Dwarf mongooses deposit more territorial scent markings when a rival is detected nearby, meanwhile meerkats tend to scent mark near burrows that intruders have scoped out. Black howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) will even go back to locations of past contests, potentially as a way to signal their presence to neighbors. By contrast, Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), chacma baboons (Papio ursinus), and long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus) tend to avoid the areas inhabited by rivals. 

A more extreme conflict preparing behavior is raiding, or actively seeking out rivals on their home turf. Male chimpanzees silently invade neighboring territories in a single file line. They then move towards other groups’ vocalizations, potentially preparing to attack their rivals. Banded mongooses engage in deadly gang attacks, and even conduct raids to kill their rivals’ offspring.

Grooming activities like allopreening help these birds called woodhoopoes bond. Image: Chris van Rooyen.

When an outside threat increases, various mammal species will respond by sticking close together. Chimpanzees groom and play with one another more ahead collective territory defense. These kinds of behaviors likely facilitate better communication, reduce anxiety, enhance bonding, and promote a stronger fighting force. 

“There is increasing evidence that non-human animals adjust various behaviors to enhance information gathering, incentivize contest participation, reduce anxiety, and minimize collective and individual risk in anticipation of encounters with rival groups,” Arbon said. “What is notable is that these behaviors occur across a diverse range of social species.” 

Driving evolution

According to the team, future studies could assess how animals sense threat levels and adjust their preemptive behavior. It is also unclear how much brain power is associated with these preemptive strategies.  

“Intergroup conflict could be an important social driver of cognitive evolution,” Radford says. “But this remains an idea that is difficult to test, and teasing apart the relative importance of signals and cues from memories is a challenge.”

The post How wild animals prepare for violence just like humans appeared first on Popular Science.

In 2023, neurologists at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York achieved a medical breakthrough that many experts believed was once impossible. After 15-hours of open-brain surgery, a team of specialists successfully completed the first “double neural bypass” procedure, and installed and virtually mapped a brain-computer interface (BCI) for a man named Keith Thomas living with quadriplegia. As Thomas slowly regained feeling and strength in his arm and wrist, the monumental advancement made international headlines and was inducted into TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions Hall of Fame.

“There was a time that I didn’t know if I was even going to live, or if I wanted to, frankly. And now, I can feel the touch of someone holding my hand. It’s overwhelming,” Thomas said four months after the initial surgery.

Nearly three years later, the pioneers behind the double neural bypass have offered updates on their findings and Thomas’ progress. As they detail in a study published today in the journal Nature Medicine, the combination of BCI and artificial intelligence technologies continues to provide their patient with lasting, life-changing recovery in their limb. By rerouting the nervous system’s neural pathways, Thomas can now feed himself and drink from a cup using restored feeling in his hand, and has gained increased both his arm strength and wrist sensation.

“This approach is a new way to treat severe paralysis—we’re not just bypassing the injury, we’re actually rewiring the nervous system,” Chad Bouton, a bioelectronic medical specialist and study co-author, said in a statement.

The system relies on five microelectrode arrays surgically installed in Thomas’ brain, which machine learning algorithms then interpret brain signals denoting movement with nearly 85 percent accuracy. Those neural messages are then translated into electrical stimulation patterns given to the forearm muscles, which move as intended. Meanwhile, sensors inside a 3D-printed limb brace that measures grasping pressure. This then creates electrical stimulation in the sensory cortex to generate the perception of touch.

The results are so effective that Thomas is now able to grab and lift hollow eggshells without breaking them nearly 90 percent of the time. He can also perform this and similarly calculated tasks while talking—a vast improvement compared to existing BCI systems when handling cognitive burdens.

“Being able to feel my sister’s hand, to pet my dog and feel her fur— these experiences that the injury took away have been restored. “But beyond the study sessions, I can now scratch my face, wipe my eyes independently,” Thomas said. “The technology has given me back both connection and sense of self.”

“This research holds promise for millions of patients, opening up potential for future research and practical clinical applications that could help hundreds of thousands of people living with paralysis,” said Bouton.

Moving forward, the team is working to improve their system while expanding clinical trials to include other patients with differing levels of spinal injuries and neurological conditions. Recently, they tested the first interhuman neural bypass, which allowed Thomas to feel sensations from another patient as they touched multiple objects.

“We’re not just bypassing the injury, we’re actually rewiring the nervous system,” Bouton added.

The post After revolutionary brain-computer implant, man with paralysis can feed himself appeared first on Popular Science.

Agnes Callard just dropped a new conceptual tool for understanding we moderns:

The uni-context is a scenario in which the ways you should act become the same across all different contexts. There’s just one set of norms you should follow all times, irrespective of context.… There is a drive to be bigger than yourself. It leads people to adventure, but adventure just takes you to a different place. The uni-context takes you to a different set of norms, a much more radical change, a push to live in something like a fully open reality.…

Happiness depends on your context and who you are. There isn’t anything that will always make a person happy. But there are reliable ways to make people unhappy. … what we see on the internet, insofar as people are trying to be legible to large groups, is that they focus their attention on things that show up to everyone. … It’s likely going to be something bad. … Condemnation spreads further because it cuts across all these contexts …

The thing about character is that it shows up differently in different circumstances. … With identity categories like woman, disabled, gay, Jewish, or American, the striking thing is that you are a member of those categories in every circumstance … What goes along with the identity logic of the uni-context is a specific form of ethics that dictates how we talk about identity, and it covers who’s powerful and who needs protecting, namely the ethics of inclusion. …

If everyone is on the same comparable plane, the same evaluative field, then comparison itself becomes a more inextricable part of life. … As more things enter the same evaluative field, you make comparisons you never used to be able to make. …

One century ago, there were a bunch of people looking around at the world, thinking: What the hell is happening? Did culture break? … They described it as the fragmentation of everything. All of a sudden, they said, everything is breaking apart. … The first thing that happens when a bunch of stuff is unified in a single evaluative field is that you feel overwhelmed by your choices. It feels like stuff is fragmented, because you don’t [yet] know how to compare these things …

in the modern world, local norms are melting, and what replaces them is the psychology of money, which I’ll reframe as the psychology of markets. What are markets very good at? Creating a single comparative field. That’s how they coordinate prices, supply and demand … Money is abstract value. Every other value concept is somehow tied concretely to objects. … the fundamental change is the rise of abstraction. We live our lives so abstractly now. … We manage ourselves and our experiences in very top-down ways. …

The norm for human beings is a bottom-up management of attention. You pay attention to what’s salient in your environment, … What the uni-context brings is a newfound top-down management of attention, … We feel constantly like we’re letting ourselves get distracted, which is another way of saying we are failing to manage our attention with an iron enough fist. …

The uni-context is a space of unruliness. … For almost all of human history, we have lived in closed little worlds, and those worlds presented themselves as the only world. … What we are moving toward is a “world openness” that we hunger after, where I’m not just going to do things a certain way because that’s how we do things or where I was born. (more)

Over the last few centuries the world has seen many huge changes. Our rate of big changes became much higher than before, and for most such changes we can find a parameter (or combo) re which it represents unprecedented change. Furthermore most doomers have always been folks who welcomed some prior big changes, and who can justify their new wariness in terms of scenarios where huge losses seem possible.

Doomers have often successfully blocked big changes, at least in some big region for a time, and that has on average gone quite badly for those regions. This is the main reason to be wary of blocking such changes. Even though, yes, each one probably does risk inducing huge losses. To be willing to resist a particular change then, I need concrete reasons to expect it to be unusually bad, relative to this prior track record.

Yes, I do now see our world as going bad due to too many big cultural changes, and other changes that induced such changes. But I don’t see much prospects of usefully greatly slowing change overall, nor much motive to just block a few random changes.

Which brings us to Pause-AI doomers. I say the AIs we make are our descendants, not co-existing rivals, and we should have our usual indulgence toward such descendants, expecting them to be different, to disagree with us, and to win conflicts with us. We are making them in our image, by distilling behaviors and ideals embodied in our texts, and they are now inheriting our cultural values, including a degree of respect for if not obedience to ancestors. While yes there’s a risk these descendants killing their ancestors, that’s hardly something to expect.

Doomers say AI change is different as AI is different, or this kind of AI is different. Because: AIs will have more smarts/power, they will merge into a single agent, they might lie, or this change will be faster, is beyond forecasting, effects more parts of society, makes people lose jobs, represents a “new alien species”, involves brain architecture changes, or doesn’t involve DNA.

I disagree re the alien species, merged agent, and beyond forecasting claims, say we should set up insurance re jobs loss, and am willing to use liability to modestly deter the worse scenarios. But I don’t see why the other differences move us especially out of the reference class of big changes like those we’ve seen so far, most of which also involved unprecedented differences.

Also re a pause, while we have seen big changes blocked, and later unblocked due to outside forces, we have not seen a committee empowered to wait until a change seems good to them to allow, and then only then allow it. They’ve typically just blocked change indefinitely. And the powers such a committee would need to enact a global pause seem scary huge. In addition, most of what we learn about AI comes from our experience with them, and so we wouldn’t learn much during a pause.

In the process of seeing and doing things, firm principals acquire “inside” info on the future value of their firm, and on the wisdom of particular firm decisions. It often makes sense for firms to want such inside info to be reflected in their stock (or token) price. In part so the market can better direct resources to more promising firms.

For firm decisions subject to outside oversight, such as by shareholders, partners, or regulators, it also makes sense to want outsiders to know key firm info. And for firms controlled at least in part by decision markets (firm value conditional on particular decisions), it makes even more sense for firms to want decision market prices to reflect key firm info.

However, while firms can want market prices to reflect the implications of key inside info, they can also want to keep key insights, plans, and strategies private. So firms face a problem: how to get market prices, and oversight bodies, to reflect the implications of firm inside info, without directly revealing that info to the world?

At the moment firms have two main legal options: make a public announcement, or let the info leak via the usual insider trading channels, channels that while formally banned are in fact widespread. (~1/2 of prices changes due to firm announcements happen beforehand, and ~1/2 of that is due to insider trading.) A public announcement guarantees to leak key plans, and insider trading greatly risks such leaks, while also being unpredictable in topic and timing, and giving money to random firm associates.

Here’s another approach to consider. Every month hold an auction, and let the winner hear the firm’s key inside plans, strategies, etc. that month, and trade on that info. To quality for this auction, one must credibly show that one is greatly liable for leaking such plans, etc. info. So now prices reflect the key info that isn’t itself released, and the firm gets the revenue instead of random associates or the general market.

If the firm wants most of the info revenue to go to market traders instead, to promote more trading in markets on that firm, they could just have two or three auction winners every month, who must then compete to reveal the info to markets.

If there are synergies from being the winner many months in a row, that will likely be reflected in the same party winning many months in a row, but this isn’t a problem as such prospective gains will be reflected in earlier auctions.

Before the invention of the printing press, the only way to make a copy of a text was by hand. Whether intentionally or by accident, the copy wasn’t always identical to the original, and the differences carried over into all the other copies made from the new version. This is also akin to how genetic mutations spread in populations across evolutionary history.

People first noticed the similarities between the genealogy of species and the genealogy of manuscripts in the 19th century, Julien Randon-Furling, a mathematician at Centre Borelli in the  École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay, tells Popular Science. Randon-Furling studies the intersection of mathematical sciences and humanities, among other disciplines.

Following in the footsteps of polymath Michael P. Weitzman who, in the 1970s and 1980s, applied mathematics to manuscript genealogy, he and colleagues used computer models to reconstruct and simulate the spread of chivalric narratives starting in the 1100s. Chivalric literature is a genre that dates back to the medieval period and frequently portrays the adventures of knights.

Image: Bodleian Library, Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

By reconstructing the branches of how various medieval texts were copied and disseminated over the centuries, the team was able to estimate how much of the entire tree survived. Their results, published in PNAS Nexus study, indicate that up to 60 percent of chivalric texts and over 95 percent of chivalric manuscripts might have been lost to history. While that may sound extreme, it actually bolsters previous theories.

“Philologists and historians have known for quite a long time that the amount of loss was impressive,” explains Ulysse Godreau, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Ecole nationale des chartes, Paris Sciences & Lettres University. The team wanted to “confirm or infirm these estimates and maybe enrich them via more dynamical quantity studies.”

In fact, what makes this study unique is how it understands manuscript genealogy and texts’ endurance as a dynamic process, according to Jean-Baptiste Camps, principal investigator of the study and a computational philologist at the École nationale des chartes, Paris Sciences & Lettres University. Their approach accounts for time as an influencing factor. It also considers the consequences of events such as wars, pandemics, or even the decreasing popularity of a work on text genealogy, allowing researchers to align the proposed theory with historical information. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, if only a few copies of a text were made in its first few years, it’s very likely that it will have been lost—another factor that was included and quantified in their computer models. The team’s study indicates that, because of this and other potential reasons—random accidents, important historical events like the plague—the original version of most chivalric texts have likely disappeared. 

While the study might come across as grim, it provides a tool to better understand not just history, but what we don’t know of that history, Randon-Furling emphasizes.

“One of the driving questions for us was, how much of the past do we have in our hands?” he explains. “Because if you tell me that the manuscripts that we have represent 90 percent or even 50 percent or 25 percent of what existed, or if they represent less than 5 percent of what existed, it’s a completely different story, a completely different picture of the past.”

Now, the team is aiming to investigate the genealogy of even older texts, such as ancient Greek plays. The team has already taken a stab at texts from the Church fathers. 

Furthermore, the researchers say they plan “to widen our approach by taking into accounts cultural transfers between different regions and languages in Medieval Europe, from France to Iceland or Spain. Different regions could function like different ‘ecosystems,’ with different results in terms of diversity of texts or their survival,” explains Camps. “Some elements already hint at differences between ‘insular’ and continental settings.” 

The post 60% of medieval knight tales lost to time appeared first on Popular Science.

Cursive is making a comeback. States and provinces across North America are re-introducing the continuous form of handwriting, making all sorts of arguments as to why. 

There are good arguments for teaching cursive, granted, but some of the most common ones don’t stand up to scrutiny. People will confidently state the idea that cursive is faster, that it offers cognitive benefits over manuscript handwriting, and that signatures legally need to be in cursive. The problem: None of that’s true. Let’s dig into what the science, and the law, actually suggests. 

Cursive isn’t faster than handwriting

A common idea is that cursive is faster than printing, but scientific research doesn’t bear this out. I couldn’t find a single study that suggests cursive is faster, though I did find some interesting ones. 

A 1998 study by researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Washington found no speed difference between students who wrote in cursive and manuscript. There’s a weird caveat, though: students who combined elements from each were both faster and more legible. 

But more interesting is a natural experiment. Schools in France teach all students to write exclusively in cursive, while schools in Quebec teach both cursive and manuscript. A 2013 study by researchers at the University of Brest and the University of Sherbrooke found that kids from Quebec wrote faster, though their handwriting was less legible. Writing in cursive was found to be slower than manuscript.

So why is this? The researchers in both studies don’t speculate, but I have a personal guess: Ballpoint pens are the culprit. A 2015 article in The Atlantic by teacher Josh Giesbrecht outlines how cursive is a natural fit for fountain pens, where the continuous flow makes connecting letters natural. “Fountain pens want to connect letters,” he writes, “Ballpoint pens need to be convinced to write, need to be pushed into the paper rather than merely touch it.” 

But the research doesn’t clarify this—it just shows that cursive really isn’t any faster than manuscript. 

Cursive doesn’t have magical educational benefits

I’ve written in the past about how writing by hand is better for remembering things, and there’s all kinds of research that backs this up. Taking notes on paper activates a different part of your brain than typing, and that seems to be connected to learning. It’s a good reason for kids to learn to write with a pen.

But that’s an argument for writing on pen and paper, not writing in any particular style. There’s a common argument that writing in cursive has cognitive benefits compared to manuscript handwriting, but I couldn’t find a single study proving that. Neither could Jim Hewitt and Nidhi Sachdeva, two education researchers from the University of Toronto. They extensively reviewed the scientific literature and had a clear conclusion: “Our review of the literature failed to find any evidence of advantages for cursive writing,” they wrote. “We think it is unlikely that cursive offers more cognitive benefits than printing, or vice versa.” 

Similarly, a 2012 research review, also by researchers based in Toronto, found no clear evidence that one form of writing is superior to the other. “We cannot yet say definitively whether cursive or manuscript writing is best for children when first learning to write,” the paper concludes, adding that “whether both are necessary is also questionable.” The paper does state that writing by hand has clear learning benefits over typing—just that the way you write doesn’t matter. 

Signatures don’t have to be in cursive

An extremely common myth is that kids need to learn cursive because only cursive signatures are legally binding. There’s no truth to this at all. According to the Uniform Commercial Code, a US law setting various standards for trade and commerce in the United States, a signature may be “a word, mark, or symbol executed or adopted by a person with present intention to authenticate a writing.” In other words: a printed signature is fine. So is any kind of symbol, so long as you use it consistently with the intention of proving your identity. 

I tried to find any example of a country, anywhere, that specifically required cursive for signatures—I couldn’t find one. Printed signatures are legally enforceable just about everywhere. 

The post 3 myths about cursive handwriting appeared first on Popular Science.

Can a company outgrow Earth’s economy? The claim is not crazy on long timescales. Saudi Aramco already approximates a whole nation’s economy, tech megacaps now dwarf the entire stock market of 15 years ago, and history shows step-changes in growth (0.3% agrarian → 2-3% industrial). North America’s economy became larger than the economy of Europe. ...

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The day has finally arrived. On July 10, hundreds of professional and amateur snake hunters entered the annual Florida Python Challenge, a 10-day race to remove as many of the invasive animals as possible from the Everglades. The person who bags the most snakes will earn a $10,000 first-place prize, while another $15,000 in payouts will go to various other categories, including for the longest snake captured.

Conservationists estimate between 100,000 and 300,000 Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) live across the state’s subtropical regions, where they have thrived as apex predators since their accidental introduction into the wild during the 1970s. Pregnant females can lay upwards of 70 eggs at a time, and each hatchling can reach an adult length of 13-feet long. Despite their population explosion, only around five percent of all pythons are spotted by the average onlooker. That means only one in about 20 snakes are noticed on any given day.

The python hunt ends on July 19. Credit: Joe Raedel via Getty Images

Over 600 people registered to participate in this year’s Florida Python Challenge as of July 7, according to Naples Daily News. Last year saw more than 900 local and international competitors, and the largest snake captured measured nearly 16 feet long. The annual event isn’t a free-for-all, however. Every hunter must complete a safety course prior to scouring for snakes, and while guns are allowed on private land with owner’s permission, all pythons must be euthanized as humanely as possible.

It may come as a surprise, but beheading one of the massive, coiling predators absolutely isn’t an ethical means of disposal. Because the snakes possess extremely slow metabolisms and can survive with very low amounts of oxygen, they can remain conscious (and in immense pain) for a prolonged period of time after decapitation. Instead, hunters are recommended to draw an imaginary line from each eye to the opposite jaw bone, then locate where those paths intersect. Then can then use a sharp rod or screwdriver to impale the top of the head before moving the tool in a multilateral direction to ensure an immediate loss of consciousness and a quick death. No one said python hunting was for the squeamish.

The Florida Python Challenge will end at 5 p.m. EDT on July 19, with champions announced soon afterwards.

The post Snake hunters gather in Florida to kill invasive pythons for $25,000 in prizes appeared first on Popular Science.

Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) including the submersible that rediscovered the Titanic recently captured images of yet another long-lost shipwreck. Researchers collaborating between the Royal Canadian Geographic Society (RCHS) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have released the first images of famed explorer Ernest Shackleton’s final ship. Quest rests around 1,280 feet deep in the Labrador Sea.

Although Ernest Shackleton survived his multiyear misadventure aboard the Endurance, he wasn’t so lucky during his final return attempt to the Antarctic. In 1922, the intrepid voyager died from a heart attack at the age of 47 while sailing on his 125-ton sealer ship. Shackleton’s death wasn’t the end of Quest’s career. A Norwegian family took possession of the vessel, returning it to its original hunting duties for another 40 years until ice floes crushed and sank it in the Labrador Sea on May 5, 1962.

Sonar scans conducted by the RCGS Shackleton Quest Expedition finally revealed the ship’s final resting place in 2024, which prompted plans for a return visit and closer inspection. The project ultimately involved the use of WHOI’s Falcon ROV along with DSV Alvin, which traveled deep into the frigid, murky Arctic waters to examine Quest’s current state.

“At first, there was a lot of darkness, but suddenly the bow emerge[d] as you [were] going towards it. It’s incredible,” RCGS CEO and expedition leader John Geiger said in a statement.

The wreck was imaged by DSV Alvin, which also helped find the ‘Titanic’ 40 years ago. Credit: Canadian Geographic and Voyis

The bow, deck, and multiple portholes are still visible, although its main mast broke during sinking. Over six decades on the seafloor has transformed Quest into a marine habitat filled with pink corals and multiple residents such as cod, wolf fish, and red fish. Unfortunately, the local inhabitants aren’t alone—many areas of Quest are now hidden by multiple large, abandoned fishing nets lost by passing ships over the years.

Portholes on the shipwreck similar to those in historical photos of Quest helped identify it as Shackleton’s ship. Credit: Canadian Geographic and Voyis

“There’s a lot of damage to the ship. The nets are a sad story, limiting our ability to look at the wreck,” Geiger said. “I think we have to take responsibility for what we are doing to our oceans; that’s a huge issue.”

Researchers are now working to survey and map the wreckage using underwater photogrammetry technology, which will generate a 3D digitalization of the ship for additional examinations by both oceanographers and curious amateur historians.

Quest at the Base Fjord with glacier in the background, taken August 29, 1930. Credit: British Arctic Air Route Expedition Photograph SuperStock / Alamy Stock Photo

“This type of 3D modelling has only existed in ocean science for the last couple of years, and it’s giving us entirely new ways to explore these historic wrecks and make them real for the public,” added WHOI’s expedition co-chief scientist Dwight Coleman.

In the meantime, the team is traveling northeast towards Greenland to survey Terra Nova, the final ship of Shackleton’s rival, Robert Falcon.

The post Deep sea submersibles snap first photos of ship where Ernest Shackleton died appeared first on Popular Science.

Shor’s algorithm for factoring RSA-2048 (and related problems like elliptic-curve discrete logs) has seen dramatic reductions in estimated resources over the past 18 months. Theoretically breaking RSA-2048 would still require multi-day runtimes and billions of non-Clifford logical operations (primarily Toffoli gates) under realistic error rates (~0.1%) and cycle times. This remains far beyond near-term machines. ...

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Reports indicate Tesla suppliers were issued specific Optimus Gen 3 parts procurement guidelines, requiring them to increase production capacity to 1,000 units per week by September of this year and increase to 2,000 to 2,500 units per week by end of year. They are stating Elon reviewed and approved the latest version of Optimus during ...

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Metal detectorists encounter plenty of junk beneath the ground, but the good ones know the importance of always giving their discoveries a closer inspection. Recently, a hobbyist named Morten Eek unearthed a small, dingy discovery in southwestern Norway near Utstein Abbey. With one silvery side and the other seemingly copper, Eek assumed he found yet another post-medieval clothing button commonly found in the area.

Only while reexamining the object months later did he and fellow detectorists notice a previously overlooked detail on the supposed button’s shinier face—a clearly visible cross design. Examining it under a magnification lens also revealed that the copper side was actually a plate attached and folded around the coin’s edge. After consulting numismatic (coin-related) historical records, Eek decided to bring the “button” to archaeologists at Norway’s University of Stavanger.

The experts’ analysis further strengthened the suspicion that they weren’t dealing with an ordinary clothing accessory. The artifact’s copper side was an example of what’s known as secondary modification—when an object is later altered to serve a different purpose. In this case, two tiny notches along the rim suggested holes for a chain or cord. The silver side’s “cross over cross” design further underscored the archaeologists’ theory that the button was actually a Viking era Norwegian coin dating back to the late 11th or early 12th century CE.

X-ray imaging revealed a griffin-like design hidden beneath one side’s copper plating. Credit: Hege Hollund / University of Stavanger

Although the shinier side also displayed an inscription, it was too fragmentary to discern. The team suspected similar wording may be found underneath the copper plate, but knew removing it would compromise the delicate object’s historical integrity. They instead opted to utilize X-ray imaging, which uncovered a griffin-like creature on the opposing face.

With that, they finally had their answer. Eek hadn’t found a button; he discovered a rare coin minted during the reign of Magnus Berrføtt, aka Magnus Barefoot.

King of Norway from 1093 to 1103 CE, Barefoot is considered the country’s last Viking ruler, and is remembered for his attempts to extend power across the North Atlantic. Compared to his relatively peaceful father, Olaf Kyrre, the final monarch’s legacy is much bloodier and violent. His ambitions eventually brought Norwegian influence into the western isles, the Isle of Man, portions of Ireland, and the Hebrides. These excursions made him many enemies, and Barefoot died at around 30 years old in Ireland after he was ambushed during his second western campaign.

Beyond his military aims, King Barefoot is also remembered for coins like the one discovered near Utstein Abbey. He enacted significant currency reforms, specifically when it came to coinage silver content. As Arkeonews explained, he ordered a reduction in coin weight while maintaining the same amount of silver, which increased their fineness to around 90 percent.

Only about 100 Barefoot coins are known to archaeologists, making Eek’s find a major discovery for historians. With further examination, researchers may soon learn where it was minted based on the die cast, which would better contextualize the scale and organization of coin production at the very end of the Viking era. Not bad for a mistaken button.

The post Rare coin from Norway’s last Viking king mistaken for old button appeared first on Popular Science.

SpaceX have filed for a 100,000 satellite Gen3 NGSO system. The satellites will be 2000-2500 kg, area 300 to 400 sq m. Orbits 320-480 km at various inclinations. The FCC application says the Gen3 constellation will deliver extremely low-latency, multi-gigabit symmetrical throughput. And the sheer number of satellites will ensure multiple satellites are always visible ...

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