If you’re pretty sure your dying houseplant is trying to tell you something — well, you might not be that far off. Israeli researchers just released a study showing that plants actually do make sound when they’re stressed. The sounds, which can only be heard with an ultrasonic microphone, resemble quiet “pops” or clicks. The researchers found that whenever they cut a plant, under-watered it, or otherwise subjected it to stress, the plant would start popping more frequently—almost like it was whimpering. The sounds “might be their version of a call for help,” The Washington Post concluded. To gather enough convincing evidence, the researchers tested a wide range of plant species over a period of six years. Their test subjects...
AI chatbots are designed to convincingly sustain a conversation. (Shutterstock)In American writer Mark Twain’s autobiography, he quotes — or perhaps misquotes — former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli as saying: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” In a marvellous leap forward, artificial intelligence combines all three in a tidy little package. ChatGPT, and other generative AI chatbots like it, are trained on vast datasets from across the internet to produce the statistically most likely response to a prompt. Its answers are not based on any understanding of what makes something funny, meaningful or accurate, but rather, the phrasing, spelling, grammar and even style of other webpages. It presents its responses through what’s called a “conversational...
The premise of Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's magnum opus, "Stalker," seems deceptively simple. The titular stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) must guide two men, The Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and The Professor (Nikolai Grinko), to and from The Zone, a mystical no man's land whose ruins remain shrouded in secrecy. Men who venture into The Zone have never returned, with the exception of the Stalker, who has made this dangerous foray into the unknown his sole source of income. The aim is to guide passengers to The Room, a space within the Zone that can make anyone's wishes come true. But do we know what we truly desire? What if our deepest urges betray our perception of who we think we are? This...
New research finds the majority of Brits are baffled by the most basic terms of their credit agreements, like how much interest they’ll be charged. To protect consumers from being hoodwinked by credit providers, the Consumer Credit Act prescribes the information a company must give consumers before they sign a credit agreement. But these rules leave consumers lost in legalese, with just 2 in 5 consumers able to answer the most basic questions about a credit card they have just applied for. The data comes from a new report by Fairer Finance, the independent consumer group, and commissioned by Klarna, the global payments and shopping service. To test the effectiveness of the current rules, Fairer Finance asked a nationally representative...
If you want a long-term relationship, you need to date someone with whom you can get along. Regardless of the amount of love you have for your partner, there is a high likelihood that your relationship will confront difficult issues if both of you don’t complete one another’s character type. Here are a few warning signs to look out for if you’ve been wondering if your lover will make a good life partner. … 1. You don’t share the same interests. You don’t spend time together doing things you both like. It’s hard for you two to find a middle ground because you always have different options and preferences. 2. You don’t feel loved. Your relationship has lost its...
