The Trump administration’s violent deportations and crackdown on protestors against Immigration and Customs Enforcement have set an ominous tone for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, which is taking across a number of North American host cities this month.

Both human rights and football fan groups have voiced concerns over the militarization of law enforcement and presence of ICE agents during the lead-up to the tournament, which is expected to draw many millions of international visitors.

Vice president JD Vance hasn’t exactly helped the situation, warning foreign visitors in chilling comments last year that they should “go home” after the event, or else “they’ll have to talk to [former secretary of homeland security Kristi] Noem.”

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise then that sightings of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dogs at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, raised surveillance fears in the state, as Chron reports. Rumors that the robots were using facial scanning technology on passersby spread like wildfire on social media. However, a Boston Dynamics spokesperson told Chron that the robots “do not have facial recognition capabilities” and will be used to “assist security personnel with investigating things like suspicious packages or other potentially hazardous materials.”

The dogs are part of a broader “Security Spot” initiative by Boston Dynamics owner Hyundai. On its website, the company claims it’s “deploying its largest and most advanced mobility fleet to date and, through its collaboration with Boston Dynamics, becoming the first and only official partner to provide robotics for the tournament.”

“As part of this effort, Security Spot, a four-legged patrol robot, will support on-site security operations, helping contribute to a safer tournament environment,” the website reads.

Nonetheless, netizens were left unsettled by the sight, drawing comparisons to the “Black Mirror” episode titled “Metalhead,” which is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which a woman is relentlessly hunted by an advanced, autonomous robot dog.

“Well, that puts a chill down my spine,” one Reddit user responded to a video of a robot dog cocking its head back and forth while glancing at the person filming, giving the impression of scanning their face.

“I can’t get over how they made it dance while it performs techno-authoritarian surveillance,” another user wrote.

Mexico, which is hosting matches across three venues for the World Cup, will also be patrolling grounds using four robot dogs, called “K9-X,” which function as a kind of first responder, as Wired reported earlier this year. (Authorities did not disclose who makes them or other technical details.) Officials told the publication that the robots will intervene in the event of a fight or drunken debauchery to protect officers’ safety — which, given the reputation of soccer fans, probably isn’t unlikely.

More on the cup: Nike’s AI Designed World Cup Jerseys Are a Disaster

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The hype surrounding generative AI has generated astronomical amounts of value, with tech companies raising tens of billions of dollars and many — including OpenAI and Anthropic — preparing to go public this year at sky-high valuations, in moves that will produce incredible wealth for their stockholders.

Whether the average Joe will ever directly benefit from all of this is looking dubious at best. That’s despite many of these tools relying on AI models that were trained on the creative output of millions of people, copyright be damned, the vast majority of whom have yet to see a single cent. Quite the contrary — many workers are facing a disastrous job market as a result of corporations stretching themselves thin through massive investments in AI.

Meanwhile, concerns continue to grow that the billionaire class is unethically enriching itself through the scheme, while shutting out the democratic process.

To independent senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), that kind of injustice needs to end. In an essay published by the New York Times, Sanders argued for the creation of an “AI Sovereign Wealth Fund” that would be created through a “one-time 50 percent tax” on the stock of AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, to “give the public a direct ownership stake.”

In other words, Sanders is proposing to transfer half of the AI companies’ stock into a public fund — a one-time transfer as opposed to a tax on profits — which the government will manage. Generated revenues could be distributed as “direct payments to the American people.”

While many important details have yet to be ironed out, as Sanders admits, it would represent a massive shift and equity transfer — if his act were to pass, that is.

“The question, then, is not whether AI will change the world,” he wrote. “It will. The question is: Who will own and control that future? Who will benefit from it, and who will be hurt by it?”

Sanders argues such a fund would “give the public a direct role in determining the future of this technology,” while also guaranteeing that the “trillions of dollars potentially generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer.”

While chances of the senator’s idea surviving the Congressional approval process are likely slim — the AI industry holds immense influence over Congress — it’s a creative approach to an increasingly sticky problem. Even tech leaders, who have watched as the backlash to AI continues to grow, have turned their attention to possible solutions to address even greater wealth disparity caused by the emergence of AI.

Jeff Bezos recently argued that the bottom 50 percent of earners shouldn’t pay any taxes, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman came up with a new concept called “universal basic compute,” which would provide free access to those who can’t afford costly AI tools. Meanwhile, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has called for a new take on universal basic income, uninspiringly dubbed “universal high income.”

Sanders’ sovereign wealth fund takes the idea a step further, giving Americans who don’t happen to be tech billionaires an opportunity to get in on the ground floor. The concept has already been “put into practice right here at home,” Sanders wrote, pointing to an Alaskan sovereign wealth fund that’s allowed residents to receive annual dividends through oil revenues.

“To start, the billions, if not trillions, of dollars generated by this fund would provide direct payments to the American people,” he wrote. “And as the fund generates more and more wealth, the proceeds would be used to ensure that every man, woman and child in our country has a decent and dignified standard of living, including health care, education and housing.”

More on Bernie Sanders: Unions Attack AI for Menacing Human Jobs

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After successfully rendezvousing with near-Earth asteroid Ryugu in June 2018 and sending a sampled cache of rocks back to Earth, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft is now making its long journey to its next destination, a tiny and rapidly spinning asteroid dubbed 1998 KY26.

The spacecraft is expected to reach the mysterious space rock by July 2031, giving scientists plenty of time to come up with theories as to what it could find once it gets there.

1998 KY26 is an intriguing new candidate for an entirely new class of objects. In 2017, interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua — the first object from beyond the solar system to have ever been observed — inspired scientists to categorize it as a “dark comet,” a class of asteroids that share some behaviors with comets. (A brief refresher: asteroids are lumps of rock, ice or dust that orbit the Sun but are too small to be classified as planets, while comets are “dirty snowballs” that release gases to form a tail behind them as they pass by the Sun.)

Scientists suggest 1998 KY26 could also be a dark comet, making Hayabusa2’s visit five years from now an intriguing opportunity to get a closer look.

But according to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who has spent years pondering the nature of ‘Oumuamua and its unusual behavior, 1998 KY26 could be something else entirely. As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, Loeb and his colleagues suggest the object could instead be a long-lost relic of the Soviet space program.

“In particular, we identify it as potentially a relic of a historical Russian mission to Mars, the Phobos 1 probe, which suffered a failure 2 months after the launch in July 1988, due to upload of a faulty command,” Loeb explained in a blog post this week.

Phobos 1 failed to send back a signal in August 1988 due to what later turned out to be a typo — a missing hyphen — in a command that shut down crucial systems.

In their latest paper, Loeb and his colleagues suggest that the probe’s thruster firings may have put it in a “similar” orbit to 1998 KY26’s, and that the “two orbits converge and are statistically compatible.” The researchers also argue that the defunct spacecraft and dark comet share roughly the same size and a “quite elongated” shape.

Still, the hypothesis is quite a stretch, given the vastness of space. However, in his blog post, Loeb argued that scientists should nonetheless extend their “training data set to include not just rocks and icebergs but also the space objects launched by humans over the past 69 years” just in case.

If 1998 KY26 does turn out to be technological in nature, Loeb argued that the finding could support his controversial theory that ‘Oumuamua may have also been a piece of technology sent to us by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

“I wonder whether the mainstream of comet experts will acknowledge that 1I/’Oumuamua may have not been a natural ‘dark comet’ if it becomes clear that their so-called ‘dark comet’ 1998 KY26 is technological in origin, beyond any reasonable doubt,” he pondered.

Nobody knows for sure what Hayabusa2 will find. Besides, thanks to the asteroid’s extremely fast spin, it could prove extremely difficult to land on.

But Loeb and his colleagues argue we should keep an open mind, just in case it turned out to be a long-lost Soviet era spacecraft.

“In anticipation of the Hayabusa2 observations in 2031, which will be decisive in resolving the origin of this object, we encourage further observational, dynamical, and theoretical studies aimed at more tightly constraining the nature and properties of 1998 KY26,” they concluded in their paper.

More on Hayabusa2: Scientist Left “Speechless” After Opening Asteroid Samples

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Elon Musk spent just shy of $300 million supporting Donald Trump’s reelection in late 2024 — a full-throated financial commitment that appears to be paying off in a big way.

Musk’s space company SpaceX, in particular, has massively benefited from the duo’s on-and-off-again relationship, scoring billion-dollar deals with the government.

Most recently, Reuters reports, SpaceX was awarded a $4.16 billion contract with the US Space Force to develop detection satellites that can track and target airborne threats. Just days earlier, the military arm awarded the company a separate contract, worth $2.29 billion, to build a military communications network in low-Earth orbit to support ground-based operations.

Besides the impossible-to-overlook role of Trump and Musk’s cozy relationship, the timing of the announcement will raise plenty of eyebrows. SpaceX is expected to go public soon at a valuation of north of $1.75 trillion, a blockbuster IPO that could directly benefit from a government partner signing a flashy contract.

The latest threat detection contract is part of the Trump administration’s so-called Golden Dome missile defense system. While plenty of fundamental questions remain over its design, the network could cost well over $1 trillion to build out, according to experts, which would be far than the White House has estimated.

The threat detection satellite contract, called the Space-Based Advanced Moving Target Indicator, will see SpaceX develop what Reuters likens to an “interconnected system-of-systems” that collects and analyzes data from a host of different sources, from space-based sensors, to secure communication links.

Zooming out, cushy government contracts have long played a key role in the flourishing and very survival of Musk’s space venture. According to an analysis by the Washington Post last year, SpaceX had received $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits, as of February 2025.

Given their budding relationship and the latest multibillion-dollar contracts, that number has already grown substantially — and will very likely continue to grow, especially as SpaceX looks to go public.

The company is also set to play a key role in the Trump administration’s efforts to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon, and was awarded a $2.9 billion contract in 2021 to build the requisite lunar lander.

More on SpaceX: SpaceX Announces Plans to Put Billionaire on First Rocket to Mars

The post Trump Shovels $4 Billion Directly to Elon Musk, Who Spent a Fortune Getting Him Elected appeared first on Futurism.

In March, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announced a new Meta AI support assistant feature on both Facebook and Instagram, providing users with a way to “resolve account problems” and help in taking down any offending impersonator accounts or scams.

Besides highlighting the tech industry’s seemingly insatiable appetite for automating customer service-level jobs with AI, the new feature appears to have backfired spectacularly. As 404 Media reports, the chatbot happily obliged when hackers asked it for access to high-profile Instagram profiles.

The ruse is shockingly simple: after matching the account owner’s geographic region using a VPN, the hackers asked the support chatbot to change the email address associated with the profile, thereby allowing them to successfully complete two-factor authentication. Worse yet, the vulnerability has been around for several months already, according to Telegram group messages reviewed by 404 Media.

“t’s either the new Meta Accounts Center glitching out or my Instagram account is being targeted in a hacking attempt,” former Meta researcher and self-proclaimed hacker Jane Wong wrote in a Threads post. “It appears that my password has been changed without my knowledge / I was not able to log in using my password.”

The exploit highlights glaring cybersecurity issues that continue to plague AI-powered chatbots. We’ve seen countless instances of large language model based tools being jailbroken, tricked into telling lies, or even hallucinate made-up company policies leading to plenty of confusion and even lawsuits.

Experts have also long warned against handing AI chatbots personal information, citing the risk of data leaks. Meta, in particular, has garnered a reputation for continuously treating user data with little care. In March, for instance, The Information reported that an in-house AI agent had caused a critical security incident at Meta, exposing sensitive user data to people without proper authorization.

While it’s unclear whether they were connected to the latest exploit, the news comes after several high profile Instagram accounts, including former president Barack Obama’s and Space Force chief master John Bentivegna’s, were hacked.

Hackers have been offering access to high-profile accounts in exchange for small amounts of money by using the vulnerability, per 404 Media.

Fortunately, Meta appears to have patched the issue, but considering the exploit was discovered months ago, the damage could be extensive.

More on Meta: Meta Workers Say They’re Seeing Disturbing Things Through Users’ Smart Glasses

The post Meta’s AI Support Bot Is Giving Hackers Access to Other People’s Instagram Accounts Just by Asking appeared first on Futurism.

Since 2022, astronomers have been tracking highly unusual bursts of radio emissions that repeat at precise intervals, ranging from a few minutes to several hours. Some pulse for more than 30 years, while others wink out after only a couple of days. Scientists have discovered of a dozen of these sources so far, adding to the mystery and prompting plenty of speculation over their possible origins.

In an effort to better understand these “long-period radio transients,” an international team of scientists honed in on ASKAP J1745, a highly polarized repeating radio burst first detected by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, several different telescopes observed this burst across a broad spectrum of light, including X-ray and radio waves, giving them an opportunity to figure out what’s behind the phenomenon once and for all.

“Bearing the same message in three forms of writing, the famous Rosetta stone once helped scholars decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs,” wrote coauthor and University of Sydney Astrophysics PhD Candidate Kovi Rose in a writeup for The Conversation. “Similarly, this extra information we found about ASKAP J1745 will help astronomers better understand the mystery of all long-period transients.”

They found that long-period transients likely aren’t caused by pulsars, the spinning and highly energized remains of dead stars, which had emerged as a popular theory among researchers. That’s because they repeat far slower than the average pulsar, which repeats every few seconds, as Rose argues.

The team concluded that ASKAP J1745 is likely a “cataclysmic variable” star, or a system made up of a pair of stars, with one of them being a white dwarf — the dense stellar core left over after a relatively low-mass star has exhausted its fuel. Rose and his colleagues believe the radio burst may be caused by the white dwarf accreting material from the other star, a process that generates heat and thereby releases X-ray light.

The pulsed radio light, on the other hand, is “typically caused by energetic particles interacting with strong magnetic fields,” as Rose explains. “Here, we have the perfect combination: two stars with strong magnetic fields (typically thousands of times stronger than an MRI machine), with charged particles flowing towards the white dwarf from the other star.”

“The simultaneous radio and X-ray observations provide an unprecedented view of how magnetic fields, accretion, and orbital motion interact, revealing behavior we had never before observed in a cataclysmic variable,” said coauthor and Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia researcher Nanda Rea in a statement.

In short, the findings shed light on the possible origin story of other long-period transients, with ASKAP J1745 acting as the deciphering Rosetta stone.

“We have spectroscopically confirmed [ASKAP J1745] as an accreting cataclysmic variable, identified through characteristic optical emission lines and an ongoing X-ray outburst,” the team concluded in its paper. “Our results strengthen the link between at least some LPTs and white dwarf binaries.”

Yet the researchers still have plenty of more work left to do to get a full picture of the odd phenomenon. For one, the team can’t rule out that ASKAP J1745, which remains hard to pin down, is unique when it comes to these transient signals.

Nonetheless, it’s an exciting first piece of the puzzle, and the team is hopeful to catch more signals in the act.

“Each new discovery is helping us piece together the bigger picture,” Rose explained in a statement. “We’re only just beginning to understand this new class of cosmic events.”

More on radio bursts: Astronomers Intrigued by 25 Mysterious Repeating Radio Signals From Deep Space

The post Scientists Say They’ve Cracked Mystery Behind a Dozen Strange Signals From Deep Space appeared first on Futurism.

City officials were were left scratching their heads following two separate incidents involving mysterious individuals climbing in and out of manholes in Brooklyn.

As local Fox affiliate WPIX reports, at least eleven people entered the sewers in the Gravesend neighborhood in southern Brooklyn late Thursday night, only to reemerge three hours later. A separate group of eight people also climbed into the sewers in Williamsburg — several miles away — mere hours later, leading to even more questions over whether the two incidents were in any way related.

And no, as far as we can tell, the individuals aren’t the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the beloved fictional gang of anthropomorphic crime-fighting turtle brothers who call the sewers of New York City their home, despite netizens drawing plenty of comparisons.

Surveillance footage obtained by local publication the Flatbush Scoop, shows what appears to be a group of men climbing out of the sewer one by one, removing dirty gear, loading equipment into vehicles, and driving away.

SHOCKING FOOTAGE – BREAKING STORY IN FLATBUSH: A bizarre and developing situation is unfolding on McDonald Avenue between Kings Highway and Avenue S, near Kosher Corner Supermarket.

Video shows approximately six individuals emerging from a manhole at around 2:00 a.m. after… pic.twitter.com/afm3L7Vfe8

— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) May 29, 2026

Why anybody would want to spend time inside the city’s sewers, especially at such a late hour, remains a mystery. Were they perhaps trespassing to explore the area and record “urban exploration” videos for social media — or were they possibly hiding contraband?

Police officials have ruled out any apparent links to terrorism, according to CBS News, and no arrests have been made.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection was not pleased, emphasizing that entering the sewers isn’t just illegal, it’s dangerous as well.

“Sewers can contain numerous hazards, including noxious and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks, and confined spaces,” an agency spokesperson told WPIX. “For these reasons, members of the public should never enter a pipe, drain, catch basin, manhole, or outfall.”

There’s precedent to the baffling incidents. Three people who climbed into the sewers in Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood in April 2025 were eventually charged with burglary and criminal mischief.

“Last time I heard about this was ‘Ninja Turtles,” local resident Lou Venturelli told CBS at the time.

More on sewers: Explosive Russian Sewage Leak Spurts as High as High-Rise Buildings

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TV personality and businessman Kevin O’Leary is looking to construct a mammoth data center facility more than twice the size of Manhattan in Utah’s broader Salt Lake City region.

As Slate reports, the megalomaniac plans for the “Stratos Hyperscale Data Center” would see dozens of data center buildings, research facilities, and even worker housing be constructed across 40,000 acres of unincorporated land in Box Elder County, which is home to over 60,000 residents.

Given the widespread backlash to data centers across the entire country, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of these residents are now rushing to council meetings to forcefully refute the plans. After all, they’ve watched as other areas that welcome the facilities struggle with rising electricity prices, stressed water systems, and noise pollution.

Worse yet, the Great Salt Lake is already in crisis: it’s rapidly disappearing amid devastating droughts across the state. An extremely resource-intensive data center could place a massive new strain on it, regardless of the many reassurances from developers.

Despite initially setting aside a vote on the Stratos construction project, county commissioners eventually pushed forward, arguing that they had the “obligation” to start building, as Slate reports.

The debate drew thousands of negative comments, with hundreds of angry residents piling into a May 4 commission meeting, an all-too-familiar sight as countless Americans are desperately trying to publicly denounce plans for similar data centers in their counties.

Behind closed doors, Box Elder County commissioners eventually approved the data center, triggering an even louder outcry. Meanwhile, county attorneys argue that voters don’t have a legal say in the matter, rejecting a push for a referendum. As the Salt Lake Tribune reported last week, opponents said they were looking to take legal action after being shut out of the approval process.

“To me, and to other people I’ve talked to, it felt like it was done in the dark: backroom deals and assurances made with no transparency or government accountability,” Salt Lake City resident Larry Curtis told Slate.

Stratos remains adamant that the data center will be a boon for the region, creating 2,000 permanent jobs. Critics, though, say that figure is far too small for the sheer scale of the operation.

It’d be a fraught debate anywhere, but the backdrop here is grim: residents have been watching as the Great Salt Lake continues to shrink, with snow and rain becoming extremely sparse.

“In the past, one thing I could’ve agreed with [Utah governor Spencer Cox] on was that we need to save the lake,” resident Stephen Otterstrom told Slate. “Now this puts into question whether there is any sincerity in that.”

Yet the tides could soon start to change as the public blowback grows. The outcry has been loud enough for local politicians to backpedal after initially supporting the data center, as they realize it’s a major liability that could endanger their chances of being reelected.

More on data centers: You’ll Never Guess Trade Unions’ Position on AI Data Centers

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