A new study out Wednesday in the journal Nature from the University of California, Berkeley found that women are systematically presented as younger than men online and by artificial intelligencebased on an analysis of 1.4 million online images and videos, plus nine large language models trained on billions of words.
Researchers looked at content from Google, Wikipedia, IMDb, Flickr, and YouTube, and major large language models including GPT2, and found women consistently appeared younger than men across 3,495 occupational and social categories. (Note: It’s possible that filters on videos and women’s makeup may be adding to this age-related gender bias in visual content.)
Study data showed not only are women asystematically portrayed as younger than men across online platforms, but this distortion is strongest for content depicting occupations with higher status and earnings. It also found that Googling images of occupations amplified age-related gender bias in participants beliefs and hiring preferences.
“This kind of age-related gender bias has been seen in other studies of specific industries, and anecdotally . . . but no one has previously been able to examine this at such scale,” said Solne Delecourt, assistant professor at the Berkeley Haas School of Business, who co-authored the study along with Douglas Guilbeault from Stanford’s business school and Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan from Oxford’s Autonomy Institute.
“Even though the internet is wrong, when it tells us this fact about the world, we start believing it to be true,” Guilbeault said. “It brings us deeper into bias and error.”
Looking specifically at ChatGPT, researchers found when the AI chatbot generated and analyzed some 40,000 resumes, it assumed women were younger by 1.6 years and had less work experience, while rating older male applicants as more qualifiedeven though the data shows no systematic age differences between men and women in the workforce.
But perhaps the greatest takeaway from the study is that this biased view online reinforces inaccuracies about, and stereotypes of women, which can end up creating a distorted feedback loop between online perceptions and AI, that moves from the internet into the real worldwhich can then result in widening the gap between men and women in the job market.
Too late. Too expensive. Too bland. Too antiquated. Too much of the same. There are just too many toos when it comes to Teslas new “cheap” cars, which the company announced on Oct. 7. Its highly anticipated “affordable models” are just stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y variants that come in at a more expensive price point than the current 2025 models.
Some marketing genius labeled them as Standard, but judging the cars against cheaper, better models from automakers around the world, Tesla’s newest offerings can’t even claim that benign adjective. The truth is, these cars are terrible news for the company.
With its reputation in tatters thanks to Musks brand suicide-by-Trump and years of quality complaints, technology stagnation, and tired design, Tesla really needed a big bang to counteract its quickly shrinking market share. Judging by the reaction online, that big bang looks more like a Starship exploding on the launch pad.
The consensus is that these new models are just manufacturing cost-cutting without the price tag cuts. Unsurprisingly, Tesla stock fell 4% yesterday after the announcement. It will rebound, Im sure, but my prediction is that it will crash way harder when new sales data comes in the next two quarters after people realize how much of a dud these models are.
[Photo: Tesla]
Cant compete
The Hyperloop-sized fact of the matter is that there is just no way these new cars are going to beat the competition. Lets put aside their lackluster trimmings and repetitive design to focus on price for now. The new cars aren’t affordable at all: The Model Y Standard starts at $39,990 and the Model 3 Standard at $36,990. These prices cant compete in the market today.
Chinese brands like BYD and NIO destroy them at every single metric. They already offer a better price for a superior technology than Teslas expensive models, which is why the companys market share is in free fall everywhere Chinese EVs are on the road. Many Chinese models have longer-lasting and more durable batteries, better trimmings, better finishes, and even free autonomous driving for life for many models at genuinely affordable prices.
[Photo: BYD]
Worldwide EV market king BYD sells vehicles starting below $30,000 globally, with models like the Dolphin priced at around $26,700 and the Seagull compact selling for under $10,000 in China. The company has outsold Tesla globally for the last four quarters, selling about 1.6 million all-electric vehicles through Q3 2025nearly 400,000 more than Teslas 1.22 million units in the same period.
But you dont even need to go compact to see the price difference: NIO’s new Onvo L60 SUV starts at $30,439 while offering more interior space and equivalent range. How can Tesla every hope to beat them?
Even American competitors offer better options. The Chevrolet Equinox EV starts at $34,995 with 319 miles of range, undercutting Tesla’s Model Y by $5,000 while offering traditional amenities Tesla removed. You know, like FM radio and powered mirrors. Tesla’s new models dont have FM radio and the new Standard Model 3 is now the only car sold in America with manual side mirrors, as the car publication The Drive points out.
[Photo: Chevrolet]
Japan has cheaper and better EVs, too, like the Toyota bZ4X SUV, which starts at $38,520. The Europeans, too, if you want really inexpensive. The Dacia Spring starts at about $19,500. The Citrën ë-C3 begins at about $23,000. I can go on and on, but you get the idea.
Worse yet: The new Teslas cant even compete with its existing models. Thanks to Musk’s Trump supportwhich brought the elimination of federal tax creditsthe Standard models are more expensive than Tesla’s cars cost just days earlier, as EV car blog Electrek points out. The Model Y costs $37,490 after credits, about $2,000 less than the Standard version. Tesla somehow managed to launch cheaper cars that are more expensive. Well done, Elon. Heres your $1 trillion cookie.
[Photo: Tesla]
Dollar General cars without the price cuts
Thats the other thing with the new models. The company has systematically removed features across every category in these vehicles. The Model Y, for example, has dropped its range by 36 miles to 321 miles. Some of them as basic as FM radio and powered mirrors, no heated second-row seats, and no adaptive high beams. Cars.com counts a total of 15 missing features.
Gone are the LED light bars that were Teslas signature, according to The Autopian. The Model Y now looks like a generic crossover with simple headlamps. Inside, Tesla swapped premium vegan leather for cheap textile inserts, removed the rear touchscreen that passengers actually used and kids loved, and even eliminated ambient lighting throughout the cabin. The audio system drops from 15 speakers with a subwoofer to just seven speakers. The rear seats fold manually instead of electronically. The front trunk shrinks by a cubic foot and loses its waterproof lining.
The engineering cutbacks are even more worrying. Tesla downgraded the suspension from its frequency-selective dampers back to basic passive shocks. Why? No idea. But it’s particularly shocking because the suspension has been a big point of disgust for many users and car testers, like MotorTrend, who hated it.
Gone is the lane-centering autosteer too, a major safety feature in a car brand known for being one of the most dangerous cars on the road. The number of cameras have been reduced, too. And, of course, no autonomous driving (which may be a blessing in disguise, given the deficient state of the technology, still far away from Musks self-driving sci-fi promises).
[Photo: Tesla]
As one industry expert observed: “It’s challenging to justify such a lengthy list of missing features when the price difference is merely $5,000 from the next trim up. As a Redditor pointed out in one of the many threads slamming the new models, it feels like Tesla dont actually want to sell these carsperhaps it’s a move to get consumers to upgrade to the next, more expensive model.
If thats the case, its a strange way to get back into the leadership position. One that doesnt seem to justify Musks astronomical pay package. Perhaps these new models are an admission that he has given up completely on cars and he thinks that robots and autonomous cabs will save his company from oblivion.
But that bet is now more dangerous than ever. Maybe that would be a possibility if Tesla had all this technology working and deployed, but his promise about Tesla Robotaxis being everywhere in 2026 still feels completely unfeasible, no matter what some analysts are smoking. Its still testing the cars in Austin and the Bay Area, while competitors Waymo and Apollo are establishing full services in cities worldwide.
And his promise about Optimus also shipping by the gazillion next year, well, LOL is all I can say. The latest demo in September was toe-curling embarrassing.
But I digress. We were talking about cars. We’re talking about new Teslas that are not affordable, but are cheap. But hey, at least have arrived, even if it is years too late. And even if their arrival is nothing more than a reminder that Tesla is once again ceding its reputation as an innovator.
If youre a frequent flier, chances are youve been seized by the fear that your carry-on bag is too big for the overhead compartments.
Now, for American Airlines passengers, its even more important to make sure that your bag is within the size limit before boarding. This week, the airline announced that its getting rid of its bag-sizers at gates.
American Airlines told the news station KTLA that it started removing the metal sizers, which typically allow customers and gate agents to decide if luggage will fit in the airplanes overhead bins, on October 6.
According to the airline, the move is intended to simplify the boarding processbypassing the bottleneck that sometimes forms when multiple passengers need to check the size of their bags.
How will bags be checked for size?
Starting this week, gate agents will be responsible for visually assessing whether carry-ons are the appropriate size.
According to American Airlines website, customers are allowed one personal item, which should be 18-by-14-by-8 inches or smaller, as well as one carry-on, which cannot exceed 22-by-14-by-9 inches. The airline noted to KTLA that bag-sizers are still available in airport lobbies for passengers who would like to use them.
Team members will continue to monitor carry-on baggage in the lobby and at the gate, and oversized items will still be required to be checked in ahead of the flight, the airline said.
This procedural change is only the latest update in American Airlines recent effort to get passengers boarded faster.
In late 2024, the company began cracking down on gate licepassengers who swarm the gate before it’s their time to boardby implementing a new boarding pass technology that makes an audible beep if fliers try to board in the wrong group, sending them back to the end of the line.
Other airlines are increasingly focused on streamlining their boarding processes, too.
Over the past several years, the air travel industry has become reliant on charging customers for an ever-expanding list of ancillary fees to boost profits, forcing the U.S.s biggest companies to compete on offering the most desirable perks. For Southwest Airlines, thats meant scrapping its iconic open boarding system in order to implement an eight-group boarding process with premium seating options.
American Airlines did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for additional details on its new bag-sizer policy.
As any Studio Ghibli fan will testify, an afternoon spent binging Hayao Miyazaki classics is guaranteed to leave a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Now, this feeling is backed by science. A study published by JMIR Serious Games, a peer reviewed journal focused on how gaming is connected to education, health, and social change, looked into how the brain responds to both watching films produced by the Japanese animation studio and playing the open-world game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The researchers gathered 518 postgraduate students and divided them into four groups. Some played Breath of the Wild and some watched Studio Ghibli films like My Neighbor Totoro and Kikis Delivery Service, while others did both and a control group did neither. Researchers then measured feelings of exploration, calm, skill mastery, purpose, and life happiness via a brief questionnaire.
The results matched what fans have intrinsically known for years.
Those who played Breath of the Wild reported higher levels of life happiness than those who didnt. Peacefully roaming the world of Hyrule, perhaps stopping by a pond or cooking a meal under the stars, creates a relaxing form of escapism for players away from lifes daily stresses, permitting a chance to recharge mentally.
For an added boost of happiness, however, the researchers found both playing the game and watching the Studio Ghibli films produced the best results.
This comes down to the Studio Ghibli films unique ability to induce nostalgia. Films such as My Neighbor Totoro and Kikis Delivery Service often focus on the small, everyday wonders of life, such as playing in the countryside or sharing mealtime with family, the research noted.
By shining a spotlight on ordinary moments and turning them into something magical, Miyazakis works tap into a universal longing for the innocence and wonder of childhood. This kind of warmth can evoke nostalgia for times when people felt safe and cared for.”
Previous research backs up the positive mental health effects of these leisure time activities. Studies have shown that casual gaming can be an effective way to unwind and relax, while open-world games in particular, have been shown to significantly enhance cognitive escapism, promote relaxation, and improve overall mental well-being.
Now your weekend plans are sorted. You’re welcome.
When treating a head injury, one of the questions doctors ask their patients is whether they know who is currently the president. Its part of a standard neurological exam for assessing alertness and cognitive function after a jolt to the brain.
In the absence of any preceding head trauma, though, it does not seem to bode well when hundreds of perplexed X denizens ask an elected official a similar questionespecially when such inquisitory swarms have become a well-established pattern online in 2025.
On Monday, U.S. Senator Jim Banks sent a fiery letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, urging him to investigate errors from the 2020 census. Banks shared the letter with his 174k followers on X, in a post excoriating the Biden administration for its approach to the census, which supposedly included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats.
Theres just one tiny problem with this statement, which I wont insult readers cognitive function by spelling out here. Thousands of X users made sure Banks was aware of it, however, by asking him who was president in 2020. One of those asking even made Xs AI chatbot Grok explain the answer in a caveman voice.
Genuinely wild how so many people fail the Who was President in 2020 test https://t.co/CGGwQPBsDd— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) October 6, 2025
"Who was president in 2020?" remains one of the great disputed questions of American politics. https://t.co/xeytBAMi84— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 7, 2025
Banks attempted to save face later on by clarifying that President Biden had prepared the 2020 Census Report in 2021, implying hed manipulated the good, clean census data Trump had gathered as president. (As evidence, he retweeted a post from the president of something called Election Watch, Inc., who has apparently blown the doors off this incredible conspiracy.)
Still, even assuming Banks excuse absolves him, what explains all the other pundits, politicians and officials within the Trump administration who seem confused about the year 2020? So many of them have made this same mistake that asking the obvious follow-up question is now a meme.
According to current Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for instance, it was the Democratic Party who blew out the deficit in 2020, leading Bluesky users to seek a minor clarification.
Bessent: "This Democratic Party blew out the deficit in 2020." (Trump was president in 2020.)— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-07-06T13:26:22.164Z
Who is to blame for the more destructive excesses of 2020, in the immediate wake of George Floyds murder at the hands of police? As Congressman Mike Collins tells it, the Biden administration was obviously at fault.
Once again: "Who was president in 2020?" Is a question so many politicians, pundits and even mainstream media have a hard time answering correctly.— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) 2025-07-15T02:56:08.769Z
Even President Trump himself couldnt seem to remember under whose leadership the recently resolved antitrust lawsuit against Google originated. (The Department of Justice filed its case in October 2020.) Of course, this lapse wasnt out of character for Trump, who suggested last year that the White House pressured Facebook to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop storya story that broke while Trump himself occupied the White House.
Some pundits have attempted to inject ambiguity into the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplices as that story gained fresh traction this year. Newsmax talking head Greg Kelly, for instance, implied back in August that the Biden DOJ had prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell, despite the fact that she was both charged and arrested in 2020. When Bill OReilly falsely claimed on NewsNation in July that Epstein had been convicted during the Biden administration, however, host Leland Vittert sheepishly corrected him in real time.
WhoopsDon't ya just love live TV?— (@jacksimon.bsky.social) 2025-07-16T14:41:12.819Z
Mostly, though, much of the foggy memory that leads to so much questioning online over who was president in 2020 seems centered around COVID.
Rep. Buddy Carter claimed on CNN in August that the COVID vaccine eroded trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), leading host Kate Bedingfield to ask The Question on air. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy deflected blame for recent airline problems by suggesting, on live TV, that someone dropped the ball by not addressing those problems during the COVID lockdown. And just last month, Human Health Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. attempted to score points against Democratic Senators by claiming that the U.S. did worse in COVID than any country in the world, apparently forgetting who was at the helm of our COVID response.
Who was president in 2020?— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell.bsky.social) 2025-09-08T19:59:35.292Z
It has become unavoidably clear that the events of 2020 caused a seismic trauma for Americans, and that its aftershocks will be felt for decades. The chaos of a (hopefully!) once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, combined with a social movement that briefly made folks question the role of police and whether racism is embedded in the very fabric of U.S. society, appear to have severely rattled the countrys collective brains. As with any head injury, some confusion is inevitable.
Whether it is in fact confusion, or rather a product of deliberate misremembering, this pattern of forgetting who was in charge of the country during some of its darker hours encapsulates the state of vibes-based unreality that many currently choose to live in.
The hypothetical America where everything that went wrong in 2020 can be blamed on the Biden administration is the same one in which major U.S. cities can be considered war-ravaged simply because the President seems to think so.
Its the same reality in which the Trump White House can claim to have officially crushed Bidens inflation crisis, while grocery prices are demonstrably rising.
And its the same reality in which an administration stocked with inexperienced podcasters and Fox News b-squad counts as merit-based hiring in the wake of DEIs forcible expunging.
At least all of this is being captured for the record. If the people running this country dont seem to know who was president in 2020 today, imagine what they wont know about today tomorrow.
Trader Joes stores have a reputation for getting crowded at the best of times, but if youre planning to make a stop in the next few days, beware: the brand just dropped a Halloween version of its mini tote bags, and they already went viral twice for creating in-store traffic jams.
The bags, which come in combinations of black, orange, purple, and green, cost just $2.99 each and dropped in stores on October 8. Theyre a tiny version of Trader Joes classic reusable tote bags, measuring just 13 x 11 x 6 inchesabout the size of an iPad. This is the third time that Trader Joes has released a new version of the bags, which have proven to be a desirable fan favorite (to put it mildly).
When Trader Joes first debuted the mini tote in March 2024, social media exploded with videos of shoppers lining up to grab the product, with many shoppers piling their carts with every available colorway. The story was similar in April 2025, when Trader Joes announced a pastel line of the totes. If eBay sellers are to be believed, these bag designs have become full-on collectors items, with sets of the previous drops selling for over $100 on the site.
Despite the fact that the new Halloween bags just dropped this morning, all signs indicate that Trader Joes shoppers are in for another round of mini tote fervor. Already, several TikToks show crowds lining up for the bags. One Trader Joes employee shared an unboxing video of the bags, encouraging shoppers to get one of their own. Another customer has already decked out her new bags with color-coordinated Labubus. On eBay, sets of the Halloween bags are retailing for over $50.
Its 6:49 a.m. and Im on my way to Trader Joes, one TikToker shared. If I dont get these Halloween tote bags, Im gonna have a fit.
Why is everyone so obsessed with the Trader Joe’s mini tote?
Its possible that the mini tote craze is related to the increasing size of the reusable bag market, which is expanding in part due to plastic bag bans (eight states ban single-use plastic bags, and cities including New York and Washington, D.C. charge fees for their use). But the more likely reason for the trend is simpler: within our current stage of consumer capitalism, niche accessories are having a moment.
In August, Fast Company wrote about the rise of the meta-accessory, a kind of accessory mainly designed to compliment another accessory. That includes items like a lipgloss phone case; a Stanley water bottle backpack; an $1,000 bag charm; or a Labubu for a Labubu. All of these pieces serve minimal utilitarian purposes, and seem mainly geared toward convincing consumers that they need to make yet another little purchase.
At Trader Joes, the mini tote is like a tote bag for your regular tote bagand, clearly, shoppers cant get enough.
About 40% of farm workers in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants, and theyve become a focus of the Trump administrations aggressive immigration crackdown. Terrorized farm workers have been forced into hiding, and farms themselves have been left empty of their workers.
Experts have long warned that Trumps promise of mass deportations would threaten industries that rely on undocumented workerslike agricultureand that it could lead to mass disruptions in our food system.
Now the Trump administrations labor department seems to be admitting that itself.
In a document explaining the administrations new rule cutting farmworker wages, the Department of Labor writes that the labor shortage, in part due to increased [immigration] enforcement, presents a sufficient risk of supply shock-induced food shortages . . . There is ample data showing immediate dangers to the American food supply.”
The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers, per the document.
Trumps One Big Beautiful Bill, which includes additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), means that threat will grow, it adds.
‘A win for corporate greed’
The Trump administration is using this risk to justify cuts to farmworker wagesand says more foreign workers are needed to alleviate the threat.
Because of this crisis, employers will need to rely even more on the H-2A visa program, which allows farms to bring on temporary foreign workers when theres a shortage of U.S. workers. (Under this visa, workers also lack basic labor protections and have reported issues with worker safety; they also do not have bargaining rights.)
And the Department of Labor does not believe American workers will make themselves readily available in sufficient numbers to replace the departing illegal aliens.
In theory, a worker shortage should lead to higher wages. But the visa program comes with high costs that have become burdensome, per the DOL, and so additional labor costs, it says, threatens the viability of farming operations.
The departments new rule says the program needs reform, and that guest farm worker wages need to be cut to avoid agriculture disruptions.
Under H2-A rules, the Department of Labor must advertise agricultural jobs, but it says this hasn’t led to more applications from domestic workers. The American Prospect, which reported on the DOL document, says that’s not entirely accurate.
“Workers who apply often do not receive jobs, and nobody is really checking to see if applications are coming in,” it writes. “The system isnt set up to prove that theres a labor shortage of U.S. workers, Daniel Costa, an attorney with the Economic Policy Institute who tracks the H-2A program, told the outlet.
The move could reduce wages for all farm workers, no matter their legal status. The United Farm Workers, which represents nearly 7,000 agricultural workers, condemns the wage cuts, which it says would mean a loss of $2.46 billion annually in farmworker wages.
Farm workers should be paid more, not less. This regulation is a win for corporate greed; a money grab for big agribusiness that transfers millions of dollars through wage cuts and housing deductions from workers to employers, Erica Lomeli Corcoran, UFW Foundation chief executive officer, said in a statement. The farm workers who feed us every day deserve so much more and we remain committed to ensuring that their labor and dignity is respected.
A political scientist who studies what helps people connect across differences. A novelist whose books about Native American communities in Oakland, California, sparked a passionate following. A photographer whose black and white images investigate poverty in America.
Hahrie Han, Tommy Orange, and Matt Black are among the 22 fellows selected this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and announced Wednesday. It’s a recognition often called the genius award, which comes with an $800,000 prize, paid over five years that fellows can spend however they choose.
The foundation selects fellows over the course of years, considering a vast range of recommendations, largely from their peers.
Each class doesnt have a theme and were not creating a cohort around a certain idea,” said Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows program. “But I think this year, we see empathy and deep engagement with community figures prominently in this class.”
Through different methodologies, many of the fellows boldly and unflinchingly reflect what they see and hear from deep engagement with their communities, she said.
Because fellows don’t apply or participate in any way in their selection, the award often comes as a shock and sometimes coincides with difficult moments. Nabarun Dasgupta, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, had just left a team meeting where he shared that a longtime collaborator in harm reduction work had died when he saw multiple missed calls from a Chicago number, which then called again. It was the MacArthur Foundation.
They were awarding him the fellowship in recognition of his work, which includes helping to start a testing program for street drugs to identify unregulated substances and helping to overcome a shortage of naloxone, which reverses an opioid overdose.
To make sense of the intense moment that mixed deep loss and recognition, Dasgupta wrote the following in a journal.
We are surrounded by death every day. Sometimes, you have to give yourself a pep talk to get out of bed. Other mornings, the universe yells in your ear and tells you to keep going because what were doing is working.
In an interview with The Associated Press, he added, I feel like this couldnt have been any clearer of a signal that the work has to go on.
Other fellows were contacted by the foundation through email, asking to speak with them about potential projects. Tonika Lewis Johnson, a Chicago-based artist, planned to take the call in the car. The foundation representatives tried to get her to pull over before breaking the news, but she declined.
They were definitely worried about my safety, she said laughing, and she did then stop driving.
Johnson’s projects are rooted in her neighborhood of Englewood, located on Chicago’s South Side. She has photographed the same addresses in north and south Chicago, beautified residents’ homes and made predatory housing practices visible. All together, her work reveals the very specific people and places impacted by racial segregation.
This award is validation and recognition that my neighborhood, this little Black neighborhood in Chicago that everyone gets told to, Dont go to because its dangerous, this award means there are geniuses here, Johnson said.
For Ángel F. Adames Corraliza, an atmospheric scientist at the University of WisconsinMadison, the award is also a recognition of the talent and grit coming from Puerto Rico, where he is from, despite the hardships his community has endured. His research has uncovered many new findings about what drives weather patterns in the tropics, which may eventually help improve forecasting in those regions.
Adames said usually one of his classes would be ending right when the foundation would publish the new class of fellows, so he was planning to end the lecture early to come back to his office. He said hes having trouble fathoming what it will be like.
I am low-key expecting that a few people are just going to show up in my office, like right at 11:02 a.m. or something like that, he said.
Before getting news of the award, Adames said he was anticipating having to scale down his research in the coming years as government funding for climate and weather research has been significantly cut back or changed. He said he had been questioning what was next for his career.
The prize from MacArthur may allow him to pursue some new theoretical ideas that are harder to get funded, he said.
I think people do care and it does matter for the general public, regardless of what the political landscape is, which right now is fairly negative on this, he said about climate and weather science.
___
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Thalia Beaty, Associated Press
Forget magical virtual worlds. In its quest to broaden the audience for virtual reality, Meta is now embracing much more familiar surroundings: Owners of Metas Quest VR headsets will soon be able to create digital replicas of any room in their house, and then invite others to visit them in those spaces. Imagine, for instance, having a spontaneous family reunion in a metaverse version of your living room perhaps even with an avatar that looks just like you, and not a character that has escaped from a video game.There is something very magical about scanning a space that you know, bringing someone else who knows that space into it and feeling like you’re there together, says Vishal Shah, the vice president of Metas metaverse.That magic, in turn, could help Meta turn its vision of a 3D metaverse as a social-3D realm into a reality one that has cost the company close to $70 billion to date.When your headset is also a cameraMeta demonstrated the first version of such digital replicas with an app called Hyperscape at its Connect developer conference last year. In the most recent version of the app, people can explore high-resolution 3D captures of a handful of places, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsays home kitchen and Chance the Rappers recording studio.The scans look so detailed and real that you can feel your mouth water when inspecting the ham on Ramsays kitchen counter. Meta even felt the need to add a warning about not leaning on any of the furniture in these virtual rooms.Chance The Rapper’s recording studio [Animation: Meta]But Metas Hyperscape ambitions dont stop there: With an impending operating system update, Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3s owners will also gain the ability to scan their own rooms with their headsets built-in cameras. My first thought was that they probably took a very expensive camera rig to capture these data sets because they look really quite lifelike, says 3D capture tech expert Michael Rubloff. That all of the scenes were captured with just a Quest device [is] completely mind-blowing.Capturing a room with a Quest VR headset is a relatively simple process. First, the headset overlays everything in the room with a kind of mesh of geographic shapes to record its general dimensions and the rough outlines of furniture and other objects. In a second pass, it fills in those shapes with 3D data, a process that to the naked eye looks like generating a mosaic of lots of little photos. Finally, the headset prompts people to look up and around to capture additional height information for any given room.Gordon Ramsay’s home kitchen [Animation: Meta]The whole process of capturing an average room takes less than 20 minutes, according to Meta employees who worked on the project. Then, the raw capture data gets uploaded to Metas servers, where the 3D replica of the room gets rendered over a couple of hours. Once ready, each space will be streamed directly from the cloud — no time-consuming downloads required.Metas digital-room replicas are powered by a novel technology known as Gaussian splatting. In a nutshell, Gaussian splatting doesnt just capture the surfaces of objects like a regular photo camera would. Instead, it deconstructs every object into a collection of three-dimensional blobs, complete with information on how those blobs look from different angles, along with attributes like transparency. To date, most Gaussian splats have been captured with cell phones. However, turning the VR headset itself into a capture device has some distinct advantages. For one thing, Meta controls the hardware, which allows the company to optimize its code for a certain type of camera, instead of having to work with a myriad of different smart phones. Plus, people tend to wave their hands too quickly when trying to capture something. The head movement is not as fast as the phone, explains Meta research scientist Jan-Michael Frahm.Next step: adding avatarsAt launch, spaces replicated with Metas Hyperscape will be private, and only available to the person who captured them. The company is working towards letting people share their captures, and eventually turn them into locations for social get-togethers. Hyperscape captures already run on a game engine that Meta is using for its Horizon Worlds metaverse. Currently, Horizon Worlds is essentially a collection of games and spaces generated from computer graphics that people can explore together in VR. In the future, Horizon users will be able to import their own Hyperscape rooms into Horizon, and invite their friends to join them on a digital replica of their living room couch.I think there’s a real human connection opportunity here, where the environment is just as important in some cases as the people, Shah says.Its also an opportunity for Meta to expand VR beyond its current audience. The company has had more success than some critics give it credit for in establishing VR as a medium for video games and adjacent experiences, including gamified workouts. Meta had sold close to 20 million headset sales in early 2023, and some developers have been able to turn games for Metas Quest headset into real money makers. Ten apps on Metas Horizon store have generated more than $50 million in revenue, while the number of apps with more than $1 million has surpassed 300, according to data shared last month by Meta executives.Mademoiselle Collette French Bakery [Screenshot: Meta]But recently, Quest headset sales seem to have plateaued. Some developershave also complained about declining revenue amid an influx of younger users primarily interested in free titles like the hit VR game Gorilla Tag. Meta aims to counter those trends by broadening the appeal of VR among older users who may not be as interested in gaming. This includes a greater emphasis on traditional entertainment, including a partnership with James Cameron to produce 3D content for Quest headsets.That move mirrors efforts Apple has taken to promote its Vision Pro headset, which has faced its own set of obstacles. Priced far above Metas hardware, the Vision Pro has seen tepid sales, despite integrating with the companys computers for professional use cases. But that has done little to slow a broader industry interest in VR headsets and 3D technologies: Samsung and Google are expected to launch their own headset, code-named Project Moohan, later this month. Like the Vision Pro, it is geared towards immersive entertainment and work use cases.The company has also been working on more lifelike representations of users in VR through 3D-captured personas the company calls codec avatars. While still in development, Shah believes codec avatars could be the perfect complement for Hyperscape. You’re in an environment that looks photoreal. You are with people who look photoreal, he explains. For some people, that’s going to be the most magical thing in a headset.Even without those avatars, 3D capture could become an important time capsule for consumers. The same way photography has aided us with memory preservation, 3D also fulfills that promise for general consumers, argues Rubloff. It gives us the ability to really step back into a moment in time. [Weve been able to] capture the world in 2D for the last 200 years. [Now, were] able to do the same in 3D.
The global economy is holding up better than expected despite major shocks such as President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but the head of the International Monetary Fund says that resilience may not last.
Buckle up, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a speech at a think tank Wednesday. Uncertainty is the new normal and it is here to stay.
Her comments at the Milken Institute come on a day when gold prices hit $4,000 an ounce for the first time as investors seek safe haven from a weaker dollar and geopolitical uncertainty and before the IMF and World Bank hold their annual meetings next week in Washington. Trump’s trade penalties are expected to be in sharp focus when global finance leaders and central bankers gather.
The worldwide economy is forecast to grow by 3% this year, and Georgieva is citing a number of factors for why it may not slip below that: Countries have put in place decisive economic policies, the private sector has adapted, and the tariffs have proved less severe than originally feared.
But before anyone heaves a big sigh of relief, please hear this: Global resilience has not yet been fully tested. And there are worrying signs the test may come. Just look at the surging global demand for gold, she said.
On Trump’s tariffs, she says the full effect is still to unfold. In the U.S., margin compression could give way to more price pass-through, raising inflation with implications for monetary policy and growth.”
The Republican administration imposed import taxes on nearly all U.S. trading partners in April, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China and even the tiny African nation of Lesotho. Were the king of being screwed by tariffs, Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
While the U.S. has announced some trade frameworks with nations such as the United Kingdom and Vietnam, the tariffs have created uncertainty worldwide.
Elsewhere, a flood of goods previously destined for the U.S. market could trigger a second round of tariff hikes, Georgieva said.
The Supreme Court next month will hear arguments about whether Trump has the authority to impose some of his tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In her wide-ranging remarks, Georgieva pointed to youth discontent around the world as many young people foresee a future where they earn less than their parents.
The young are taking their disappointment to the streets from Lima to Rabat, from Paris to Nairobi, from Kathmandu to Jakarta, all are demanding better opportunities,” she said. “And here in the U.S., the chances of growing up to earn more than your parents keeps falling and here too, discontent has been evident and it has helped precipitate the policy revolution that is now unfolding, reshaping trade, immigration and many international frameworks.
She also called for greater internal trade in Asia, more business-friendly changes in Africa and more competitiveness in Europe.
For the United States, Georgieva urged the government to address the federal debt and to encourage household saving.
The national debt is the total amount of money that the federal government owes to its creditors. The federal debt has increased from $380 billion in 1925 to $37.64 trillion in 2025, according to Treasury Department data.
The Congressional Budget Office reported in July that Trumps new tax and spending law will add $3.4 trillion to that total through 2034.
The IMF is a 191-country lending organization that seeks to promote global growth and financial stability and to reduce poverty.
Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
