Author name: Kris Guyer

openai-data-suggests-1-million-users-discuss-suicide-with-chatgpt-weekly

OpenAI data suggests 1 million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT weekly

AI, AI assistants, AI behavior, AI ethics, AI safety, AI sycophancy, Biz & IT, chatbots, chatgpt, machine learning, Mental Health, openai, sam altman / /

Earlier this month, the company unveiled a wellness council to address these concerns, though critics noted the council did not include a suicide prevention expert. OpenAI also recently rolled out controls for parents of children who use ChatGPT. The company says it’s building an age prediction system to automatically detect children using ChatGPT and impose a stricter set of age-related safeguards.

Rare but impactful conversations

The data shared on Monday appears to be part of the company’s effort to demonstrate progress on these issues, although it also shines a spotlight on just how deeply AI chatbots may be affecting the health of the public at large.

In a blog post on the recently released data, OpenAI says these types of conversations in ChatGPT that might trigger concerns about “psychosis, mania, or suicidal thinking” are “extremely rare,” and thus difficult to measure. The company estimates that around 0.07 percent of users active in a given week and 0.01 percent of messages indicate possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania. For emotional attachment, the company estimates around 0.15 percent of users active in a given week and 0.03 percent of messages indicate potentially heightened levels of emotional attachment to ChatGPT.

OpenAI also claims that on an evaluation of over 1,000 challenging mental health-related conversations, the new GPT-5 model was 92 percent compliant with its desired behaviors, compared to 27 percent for a previous GPT-5 model released on August 15. The company also says its latest version of GPT-5 holds up to OpenAI’s safeguards better in long conversations. OpenAI has previously admitted that its safeguards are less effective during extended conversations.

In addition, OpenAI says it’s adding new evaluations to attempt to measure some of the most serious mental health issues facing ChatGPT users. The company says its baseline safety testing for its AI language models will now include benchmarks for emotional reliance and non-suicidal mental health emergencies.

Despite the ongoing mental health concerns, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on October 14 that the company will allow verified adult users to have erotic conversations with ChatGPT starting in December. The company had loosened ChatGPT content restrictions in February but then dramatically tightened them after the August lawsuit. Altman explained that OpenAI had made ChatGPT “pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues” but acknowledged this approach made the chatbot “less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems.”

If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal or in distress, please call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline number, 1-800-273-TALK (8255), which will put you in touch with a local crisis center.

OpenAI data suggests 1 million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT weekly Read More »

australia’s-social-media-ban-is-“problematic,”-but-platforms-will-comply-anyway

Australia’s social media ban is “problematic,” but platforms will comply anyway

age checks, age estimation, age gate, australia, online child safety, Policy, social media ban / /

Social media platforms have agreed to comply with Australia’s social media ban for users under 16 years old, begrudgingly embracing the world’s most restrictive online child safety law.

On Tuesday, Meta, Snap, and TikTok confirmed to Australia’s parliament that they’ll start removing and deactivating more than a million underage accounts when the law’s enforcement begins on December 10, Reuters reported.

Firms risk fines of up to $32.5 million for failing to block underage users.

Age checks are expected to be spotty, however, and Australia is still “scrambling” to figure out “key issues around enforcement,” including detailing firms’ precise obligations, AFP reported.

An FAQ managed by Australia’s eSafety regulator noted that platforms will be expected to find the accounts of all users under 16.

Those users must be allowed to download their data easily before their account is removed.

Some platforms can otherwise allow users to simply deactivate and retain their data until they reach age 17. Meta and TikTok expect to go that route, but Australia’s regulator warned that “users should not rely on platforms to provide this option.”

Additionally, platforms must prepare to catch kids who skirt age gates, the regulator said, and must block anyone under 16 from opening a new account. Beyond that, they’re expected to prevent “workarounds” to “bypass restrictions,” such as kids using AI to fake IDs, deepfakes to trick face scans, or the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to alter their location to basically anywhere else in the world with less restrictive child safety policies.

Kids discovered inappropriately accessing social media should be easy to report, too, Australia’s regulator said.

Australia’s social media ban is “problematic,” but platforms will comply anyway Read More »

porsche’s-2026-911-turbo-s-is-a-ballistic,-twin-turbo,-701-horsepower-monster

Porsche’s 2026 911 Turbo S is a ballistic, twin-turbo, 701-horsepower monster

car review, Cars, First drive, Porsche 911 Turbo S / /

Other upgrades

To handle the 61 hp (45.5 kW) of additional power over the outgoing car, the new Turbo S features 10 mm wider tires at the rear—sticky Pirelli P Zero Rs to be exact. Porsche also outfitted a new form of active suspension to the Turbo S, which uses one of the pumps from the Panamera’s trick new Active Ride suspension to drive actuators at each of the car’s four corners.

By raising or lowering pressure, the 911 Turbo S effectively varies the stiffness of its anti-rollbars, resulting in a cushier ride for daily driving and a more aggressive one in Sport or Sport Plus. The feeling of the Turbo S is never exactly plush—those low-profile tires aren’t ideal for that—but neither is it harsh. I felt quite comfortable cruising over the broken Malagan asphalt, making this an ideal daily driver.

I didn’t even mind the soft-top convertible in the Cabriolet, which raises and lowers quickly and, even at highway speed, doesn’t add much road noise to the equation. Still, if I were buying, I’d go coupe instead of Cabriolet, if only for the extra headroom and cleaner styling.

I won’t be buying, though, because I can’t afford one. The 2026 Porsche 911 Turbo S starts at $270,300 for the coupe or $284,300 for the soft-top Cabriolet, plus a $2,350 destination fee. That’s for a reasonably well-equipped car, including the new active suspension and carbon-ceramic brakes, but start digging into the options catalogue or ponder the expanded palette in Porsche’s Paint to Sample lines, and you’ll quickly find yourself on the painful side of $300,000. That’s a mighty amount of money for a 911, a whopping $40,000 MSRP increase over last year’s model, but given the wild level of engineering required to deliver this much power and responsiveness, it doesn’t feel completely out of line.

Porsche’s 2026 911 Turbo S is a ballistic, twin-turbo, 701-horsepower monster Read More »

f1-in-mexico-city:-we-have-a-new-championship-leader

F1 in Mexico City: We have a new championship leader

Cars, F1, Formula 1 / /

Doing so vaulted him past his teammate Oscar Piastri to regain the lead Norris held in the early part of the season, albeit by just a single point. But if that makes it sound like it was a boring race, think again.

Behind Norris, the chasing pack went into turn 1 four-wide. Both Ferraris were in the mix: Charles Leclerc qualified second, and his teammate Lewis Hamilton was third. Max Verstappen could qualify his Red Bull no higher than fifth, behind George Russell’s Mercedes. A number of drivers had to take to the grass at turn 1 to avoid crashing, giving Norris plenty of breathing room to build a lead.

Behind him, things were a little more interesting. Leclerc managed to keep second place, but with much less speed than Norris, a following pack formed behind him. By lap 7, Verstappen had managed to fight his way past Russell, then diced with Hamilton, his old foe from the 2021 title. Neither car was able to keep entirely to the track, and Hamilton was handed a 10-second penalty, putting an end to any thoughts of finally grabbing his first Ferrari podium finish. Eventually, he finished eighth.

The stadium section doesn’t have the best sequence of corners, but there are few places to get a good a view of the cars. Peter Fox/Getty Images

Norris, Leclerc, and Verstappen all stuck to a one-stop strategy, with the Red Bull driver starting on medium tires and then swapping to the softs; his rivals did the opposite. Verstappen was in a much stronger position in the final phase of the race, with newer, softer rubber than the Ferrari ahead. But although he closed the gap to fractions of a second, he was denied a chance to overtake Leclerc when a virtual safety car interrupted the race with just three laps to go.

With his third place, Verstappen is now 36 points behind championship leader Norris, with a total of 116 points left on offer for the season.

Fourth went to the Haas of Oliver Bearman, who saw a chance early on to get into the front-running pack but was unable to hold off Verstappen for the final podium spot toward the end of the race. As for Piastri, he was able to claw his way back to fifth after starting eighth. That earned him 10 points, so he only gave away five to Verstappen, although Norris now leads him by 357 points to 356.

The next race will be in Brazil on November 9.

F1 in Mexico City: We have a new championship leader Read More »

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Man takes herbal pain quackery, nearly dies, spends months in hospital

case report, cortisol, health, herbal supplements, hormones, supplements / /

Deadly doses

The supplements were: Artri King, Nhan Sam Tuyet Lien, and Linsen Double Caulis Plus. All are known to contain unlisted glucocorticoids, according to the Food and Drug Administration. And testing of two of the man’s supplements by the hospital confirmed the presence of the steroids.

Doctors determined that the man had essentially overdosed on the glucocorticoids—he had taken doses that exceeded the normal levels of glucocorticoids in the body. The steroids likely suppressed immune responses, leading to his infections and GI ulcers. But, more significantly, the excess steroid levels also caused his HPA axis to essentially shut down. While it’s possible to get the HPA axis back up and running after withdrawal from excessive steroid use, the amount of time that takes can vary. Further, if a person stops taking large doses of glucocorticoids abruptly, rather than gradually—as in the man’s case—and particularly after chronic use—also as in the man’s case—it can lead to an adrenal crisis. In retrospect, the man had all the signs of a crisis.

The doctors started treating him with hydrocortisone (medication cortisol) to get him out of danger. But it took six weeks before his HPA axis showed signs of recovery on tests. By that time, he had developed recurrent bacterial infections in his blood and had persistent delirium. It was only after several months in the hospital that he was able to be discharged back home.

In the end, the doctors describe the man’s case as a cautionary tale. Many Americans use supplements, but their efficacy is largely unproven, and they are not rigorously regulated for safety. And even though, in this case, the FDA had issued warnings specifically about the three supplements the man took, his case highlights that public awareness of such dangers remains low.

“Clinicians must remain vigilant in assessing supplement use and educate patients on potential risks, particularly regarding hidden glucocorticoids, to prevent serious health complications such as adrenal insufficiency,” the doctors conclude.

Man takes herbal pain quackery, nearly dies, spends months in hospital Read More »

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The Android-powered Boox Palma 2 Pro fits in your pocket, but it’s not a phone

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Softly talking about the Boox Palma 2 Pro

For years, color E Ink was seen as a desirable feature, which would make it easier to read magazines and comics on low-power devices—Boox even has an E Ink monitor. However, the quality of the displays has been lacking. These screens do show colors, but they’re not as vibrant as what you get on an LCD or OLED. In the case of the Palma 2 Pro, the screen is also less sharp in color mode. The touchscreen display is 824 × 1648 in monochrome, but turning on color cuts that in half to 412 × 824.

In addition to the new screen, the second-gen Palma adds a SIM card slot. It’s not for phone calls, though. The SIM slot allows the device to get 5G mobile data in addition to Wi-Fi.

Credit: Boox

The Palma 2 Pro runs Android 15 out of the box. That’s a solid showing for Boox, which often uses much older builds of Google’s mobile OS. Upgrades aren’t guaranteed, and there’s no official support for Google services. However, Boox has a workaround for its devices so the Play Store can be installed.

The new Boox pocket reader is available for pre-order now at $400. It’s expected to ship around November 14.

The Android-powered Boox Palma 2 Pro fits in your pocket, but it’s not a phone Read More »

bats-eat-the-birds-they-pluck-from-the-sky-while-on-the-wing

Bats eat the birds they pluck from the sky while on the wing

bats, Biology, birds, Ecology, hunting, Science / /

There are three species of bats that eat birds. We know that because we have found feathers and other avian remains in their feces. What we didn’t know was how exactly they hunt birds, which are quite a bit heavier, faster, and stronger than the insects bats usually dine on.

To find out, Elena Tena, a biologist at Doñana Biological Station in Seville, Spain, and her colleagues attached ultra-light sensors to Nyctalus Iasiopterus, the largest bats in Europe. What they found was jaw-droppingly brutal.

Inconspicuous interceptors

Nyctalus Iasiopterus, otherwise known as greater noctule bats, have a wingspan of about 45 centimeters. They have reddish-brown or chestnut fur with a slightly paler underside, and usually weigh around 40 to 60 grams. Despite that minimal weight, they are the largest of the three bat species known to eat birds, so the key challenge in getting a glimpse into the way they hunt was finding sensors light enough to not impede the bats’ flight.

Cameras, which are the usual go-to sensor, were out of the question. “Bats hunt at night, so you’d need night vision cameras, which together with batteries are too heavy for a bat to carry. Our sensors had to weigh below 10 percent of the weight of the bat—four to six grams,” Tena explained.

Tena and her team explored several alternative approaches throughout the last decade, including watching the bats from the ground or using military-grade radars. But even then, catching the hunting bats red-handed remained impossible.

In recent years, the technology and miniaturization finally caught up with Tena’s needs, and the team found the right sensors for the job and attached them to 14 greater noctule bats over the course of two years. The tags used in the study weighed around four grams, could run for several hours, and registered sound, altitude, and acceleration. This gave Tena and her colleagues a detailed picture of the bats’ behavior in the night sky. The recordings included both ambient environmental sounds and the ultra-frequency bursts bats use for echolocation. Combining altitude with accelerometer readouts enabled scientists to trace the bats’ movements through all their fast-paced turns, dives, and maneuvers.

Bats eat the birds they pluck from the sky while on the wing Read More »

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Dinosaurs may have flourished right up to when the asteroid hit

asteroid, Biology, dinosaurs, evolution, Impact, paleontology, Science / /

That seemingly changes as of now, with new argon dating of strata from the Naashoibito Member in the San Juan Basin of present-day New Mexico. Many dinosaur fossils have been obtained from this region, and we know the site differs from the sort of ecosystem found at Hell Creek. But it was previously thought to date back closer to a million years before the mass extinction. The new dates, plus the alignment of magnetic field reversals, tell us that the ecosystem was a contemporary of the one in Hell Creek, and dates to the last few hundred thousand years prior to the mass extinction.

Diverse ecosystems

The fossils at Naashoibito have revealed an ecosystem we now label the “Alamo Wash local fauna.” And they’re fairly distinct from the ones found in Wyoming, despite being just 1,500 kilometers further south. Analyzing the species present using ecological measures, the researchers found that dinosaurs formed two “bioprovinces” in the late Cretaceous—essentially, there were distinct ecosystems present in the northern and southern areas.

This doesn’t seem to be an artifact of the sites, as mammalian fossils seem to reflect a single community across both areas near the mass extinction, but had distinct ecologies both earlier and after. The researchers propose that temperature differences were the key drivers of the distinction, something that may have had less of an impact on mammals, which are generally better at controlling their own temperatures.

Overall, the researchers conclude that, rather than being dominated by a small number of major species, “dinosaurs were thriving in New Mexico until the end of the Cretaceous.”

While this speaks directly to the idea that limited diversity may have primed the dinosaurs for extinction, it also may have implications for the impact of the contemporaneous eruptions in the Deccan Traps. If these were having a major global impact, then it’s a bit unlikely that dinosaurs would be thriving anywhere.

Even with the new data, however, our picture is still limited to the ecosystems present on the North American continent. We do have fossils from elsewhere, but they’re not exactly dated. There are some indications of dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous in Europe and South America, but we don’t have a clear picture of the ecosystems in which they were found. So, while these findings help clarify the diversity of dinosaurs in the time leading up to their extinction, there’s still a lot left to learn.

Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adw3282 (About DOIs).

Dinosaurs may have flourished right up to when the asteroid hit Read More »

cs2-item-market-loses-nearly-$2b-in-value-overnight-due-to-“trade-up”-update

CS2 item market loses nearly $2B in value overnight due to “trade up” update

counter-strike 2, CS@, CS2, gaming, items, Marketplace, trading, valve / /

Valve benefits from any panicked trading in the short term, with every Steam Marketplace sale carrying a 5 percent “Steam Transaction Fee” on top of a 10 percent “Counter-Strike 2 fee… that is determined and collected by the game publisher” (read: Valve). In the long term, though, making some of the rarest items in the game easier to obtain will likely depress overall spending among the whales that dominate the market.

Wild CS2 update tonight. I’ve spent the last few hours digging through market data and built this projection chart to show how I think things play out.

Knives and gloves drop fast (40–50%) as the new trade-up path floods supply, while Covert skins surge short-term as everyone… pic.twitter.com/8NOMIBPZ1F

— SAC (@SAC_IG) October 23, 2025

Using marketplace data, Irish Guys esports team owner SAC ran some projections estimating that, over the next few months, “the market settles about 5–10% lower overall, not a crash, just a correction.” But there are also more bullish and bearish possibilities, depending on how overall item demand and market liquidity develops in the near future.

Market tracker CSFloat also crunched some numbers to determine that the overall supply of knives and gloves could roughly double if every common item were traded up under the new update. In practice, though, the supply increase will likely be “far less.”

Massive monetary shifts aside, this latest update seems set to make it easier for new CS2 players to access some once-rare in-game items without breaking the bank. “I got burned a little [by the update]… but honestly, this is the way to go for the long term health of the game,” Redditor chbotong wrote. “[It’s] given me faith that Valve is actually steering in a direction that favors the average player than a market whale.”

CS2 item market loses nearly $2B in value overnight due to “trade up” update Read More »

elon-musk-just-declared-war-on-nasa’s-acting-administrator,-apparently

Elon Musk just declared war on NASA’s acting administrator, apparently

china, isaacman, NASA, Sean Duffy, Space / /

“Sean said that NASA might benefit from being part of the Cabinet.”

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, left, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen watch as Jared Isaacman testifies before a Senate Committee in 2025. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The clock just ticked past noon here in Houston, so it’s acceptable to have a drink, right?

Because after another turbulent morning of closely following the rough-and-tumble contest to become the next NASA administrator, I sure could use one.

What has happened now? Why, it was only SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who is NASA’s most important contractor, referring to the interim head of the space agency, Sean Duffy, as “Sean Dummy” and suggesting Duffy was trying to kill NASA. Musk later added, “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

This is all pretty bonkers, so I want to try to contextualize what I believe is going on behind the scenes. This should help us make sense of what is happening in public.

It all boils down to this

The most important through line for all of this is as follows: the contest to become the next NASA administrator. This has, as the British like to say, hotted up of late. And people are starting to take sides.

In one corner stands the private astronaut and billionaire, Jared Isaacman. He was nominated by Donald Trump to become NASA administrator last year, and after a lengthy process, he was on the cusp of confirmation when the president pulled his nomination for political reasons in late May. In the other corner is Sean Duffy, a former congressman with minimal space experience, whom Trump appointed as interim administrator after yanking Isaacman. Duffy was already secretary of transportation.

Since then, a lot has happened, but it boils down to this. Duffy was, nominally, supposed to be running the space agency while searching for a permanent replacement. The biggest move he has made is naming Amit Kshatriya, a long-time employee, as NASA’s associate administrator. Kshatriya now has a lot of power within the agency and comes with the mindset of a former flight director. He is not enamored with using SpaceX’s Starship as a lunar lander.

After Isaacman’s dismissal, key figures within Trump’s orbit continued to vouch for the former astronaut. They liked his flight experience, his financial background, and his vigor to modernize NASA and lean into the country’s dynamic commercial space industry in the effort to remain ahead of China in spaceflight. Trump listened. He met with Isaacman multiple times since, all positive experiences. A re-nomination seemed possible, even likely.

Duffy likes running NASA

However, Duffy was finding that he liked running NASA. There were lots of opportunities to go on television and burnish his credentials. Spaceflight often receives more positive coverage than air traffic controller strikes. His chief of staff at the Department of Transportation, Pete Meachum, has also enjoyed exercising power at NASA. Neither appears ready to relinquish their influence.

To be clear, Duffy is not saying this publicly. Asked whether Duffy wishes to remain NASA administrator, a spokesperson for the agency gave Ars the following statement on Tuesday morning:

Sean is grateful that the President gave him the chance to lead NASA. At the President’s direction, Sean has focused the agency on one clear goal — making sure America gets back to the Moon before China. Sean said that NASA might benefit from being part of the Cabinet, maybe even within the Department of Transportation, but he’s never said he wants to keep the job himself. The President asked him to talk with potential candidates for Administrator, and he’s been happy to help by vetting people and giving his honest feedback. The bottom line is that Secretary Duffy is here to serve the President, and he will support whomever the President nominates.

But based on discussions with numerous sources, it seems clear that Duffy wants to keep the job. He has not taken significant steps toward identifying a replacement.

His appearances on Fox News and CNBC on Monday morning buttress this fact. It is not typical for a NASA administrator to go on television and criticize one of the space agency’s most important contractors. In this case, Duffy said he was reworking the agency’s lunar lander contracts because SpaceX had fallen behind.

It is true that SpaceX is behind in developing a lunar lander version of Starship. Nevertheless, this was a pretty remarkable thing for Duffy to do, at least in the context of the US space community. NASA projects run late all the time, every time. There was no mention of spacesuits needed for the lunar landing, which also almost certainly will not be ready by 2027.

There seem to be two clear reasons why Duffy did this. One, he wanted to show President Trump he was committed to reaching the Moon again before China gets there. And secondly, with his public remarks, Duffy sought to demonstrate to the rest of the space community that he was willing to stand up to SpaceX.

How do we know this? Because Duffy and Meachum had just spent the weekend calling around to SpaceX’s competitors in the industry, asking for their support in his quest to remain at NASA. For example, he called Blue Origin’s leadership and expressed support for their plans to accelerate a lunar landing program. Then he went on TV to demonstrate in public what he was saying in private.

Musk unloads

By Tuesday morning, Musk appears to have had enough.

The acting administrator had gone on TV and publicly shamed Musk’s company, which has self-invested billions of dollars into Starship. (By contrast, Lockheed has invested little or nothing in the Orion spacecraft, and Boeing also has little skin in the game with the Space Launch System rocket. Similarly, a ‘government option’ lunar lander would likely need to be cost-plus in order to attract Lockheed as a bidder.) Then Duffy praised Blue Origin, which, for all of its promise, has yet to make meaningful achievements in orbit. All the while, it is only thanks to SpaceX and its Dragon spacecraft that NASA does not have to go hat-in-hand to Russia for astronaut transportation.

So Musk channeled his inner Trump and called out “Sean Dummy.” It’s crass language, but will it be effective?

We really don’t know the extent to which Musk and Trump are on speaking terms at this point, but certainly Musk is a huge Republican donor, and there will be plenty of people in Congress who do not want to see another food fight between the world’s most powerful person and its richest person.

The widespread assumption is that Musk is advocating for Isaacman to become his administrator, since he originally put the astronaut forward for the position. However, the reality is that they don’t speak regularly, and although Isaacman is deeply appreciative of what SpaceX has achieved, he seems to genuinely want Blue Origin and other private space companies to succeed as well. Most likely, then, Musk was lashing out in frustration on Tuesday morning, feeling spurned by a space agency he has done a lot for.

Isaacman, for his part, has been keeping a relatively low profile. Trump, who will ultimately make a decision on NASA’s leadership, has also largely been silent about all of this.

Not a super augury

The war of words may be entertaining and a spectacle, but this is pretty dreadful for NASA. The space agency is already down 20 percent of its workforce due to cuts and voluntary retirements. Morale remains low, and the uncertainty over long-term leadership is unhelpful. The first year of the Trump presidency, to many in space, feels like a lost year.

There is also the possibility of a significant restructuring. NASA is an independent federal agency, but my sources (The Wall Street Journal also reported this last night) have indicated that Duffy has sought to move NASA within the Department of Transportation. In his new statement today, Duffy confirmed this. Folding NASA into the Department of Transportation would allow him to maintain oversight of the agency, and Duffy could recommend a leader who is loyal to him.

So this is where we are. A fierce, behind-the-scenes battle rages on among camps supporting Duffy and Isaacman to decide the leadership of NASA. The longer this process drags on, the messier it seems to get. In the meantime, NASA is twisting in the wind, trying to run in molasses while wearing lead shoes as China marches onward and upward.

Photo of Eric Berger

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

Elon Musk just declared war on NASA’s acting administrator, apparently Read More »

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OpenAI looks for its “Google Chrome” moment with new Atlas web browser

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That means you can use ChatGPT to search through your bookmarks or browsing history using human-parsable language prompts. It also means you can bring up a “side chat” next to your current page and ask questions that rely on the context of that specific page. And if you want to edit a Gmail draft using ChatGPT, you can now do that directly in the draft window, without the need to copy and paste between a ChatGPT window and an editor.

When typing in a short search prompt, Atlas will, by default, reply as an LLM, with written answers with embedded links to sourcing where appropriate (à la OpenAI’s existing search function). But the browser will also provide tabs with more traditional lists of links, images, videos, or news like those you would get from a search engine without LLM features.

Let us do the browsing

To wrap up the livestreamed demonstration, the OpenAI team showed off Atlas’ Agent Mode. While the “preview mode” feature is only available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers, research lead Will Ellsworth said he hoped it would eventually help users toward “an amazing tool for vibe life-ing” in the same way that LLM coding tools have become tools for “vibe coding.”

To that end, the team showed the browser taking planning tasks written in a Google Docs table and moving them over to the task management software Linear over the course of a few minutes. Agent Mode was also shown taking the ingredients list from a recipe webpage and adding them directly to the user’s Instacart in a different tab (though the demo Agent stopped before checkout to get approval from the user).

OpenAI looks for its “Google Chrome” moment with new Atlas web browser Read More »

cards-against-humanity-lawsuit-forced-spacex-to-vacate-land-on-us/mexico-border

Cards Against Humanity lawsuit forced SpaceX to vacate land on US/Mexico border

cards against humanity, Policy, spacex / /

A year after suing SpaceX for “invading” a plot of land on the US/Mexico border, Cards Against Humanity says it has obtained a settlement and will provide supporters with a new pack of cards about Elon Musk.

The party-game company bought the land in 2017 in an attempt to stymie President Trump’s wall-building project, but alleged that SpaceX illegally took over the land and filled it with construction equipment and materials. A September 2024 lawsuit filed against SpaceX in Cameron County District Court in Texas sought up to $15 million to cover the cost of restoring the property and other damages.

Cards Against Humanity, which bought the property with donations from supporters, told Ars today that “we’ve been in negotiations with SpaceX for much of the last year. We held out for the best settlement we could get—almost until the trial was supposed to start—and unfortunately part of that negotiation was that we’re not allowed to discuss specific settlement terms. They did admit to trespassing during the discovery phase, which was very validating.”

A court document shows that SpaceX admitted it did not ask for or receive permission to use the property. SpaceX admitted that its “contractors cleared the lot and put down gravel,” parked vehicles on the property, and stored construction materials. An Associated Press article yesterday said that “Texas court records show a settlement was reached in the case last month, just weeks before a jury trial was scheduled to begin on Nov. 3.”

The game company said a victory at trial wouldn’t have resulted in a better outcome. “A trial would have cost more than what we were likely to win from SpaceX,” the company’s statement to Ars said. “Under Texas law, even if we had won at trial (and we would have, given their admission to trespassing), we likely wouldn’t have been able to recoup our legal fees. And SpaceX certainly seemed ready to dramatically outspend us on lawyers.”

“They packed up the space garbage”

The company also provided this update to donors:

Dear Horrible Friends,

Remember last year, when we sued Elon Musk for dumping space garbage all over your land, and then you signed up to collect your share of the proceeds? Also, remember how we warned you that we’d “probably only be able to get you like two dollars or most likely nothing”?

Well, Elon Musk’s team admitted on the record that they illegally trespassed on your land, and then they packed up the space garbage and fucked off. But when it comes to paying you all, he did the legal equivalent of throwing dust in our eyes and kicking us in the balls.

Instead of money, Cards Against Humanity said it will provide its “best, sexiest customers” with a comedic “mini-pack of exclusive cards all about Elon Musk” that can be obtained via this sign-up link. “P.S. Soon, the land will be returned to its natural state: no space garbage, and still completely free of pointless fucking border walls,” the company said.

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