The volunteers running the experiment were not completely hands-off. Submitted ideas were screened according to a moderation policy, and redundant ideas were not posted. Ford says that 51% of ideas were published, and 31% were deemed redundant. About 6% of ideas were not posted because they were either completely off-topic or contained a personal attack.
But some researchers who study the technologies that can make democracy more effective question whether soliciting input in this manner is a reliable way to understand what a community wants.
One problem is self-selection—for example, certain kinds of people tend to show up to in-person forums like town halls. Research shows that seniors, homeowners, and people with high levels of education are the most likely to attend, Fung says. It’s possible that similar dynamics are at play among the residents of Bowling Green who decided to participate in the project.
“Self-selection is not an adequate way to represent the opinions of a public,” says James Fishkin, a political scientist at Stanford who’s known for developing a process he calls deliberative polling, in which a representative sample of a population’s residents are brought together for a weekend, paid about $300 each for their participation, and asked to deliberate in small groups. Other methods, used in some European governments, use jury-style groups of residents to make public policy decisions.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C., for a second day on Tuesday, testifying about his intentions for acquiring Instagram in 2012.
In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission sued Facebook, which is now under the umbrella of parent company Meta, alleging it was in violation of antitrust laws by buying both Instagram and WhatsApp.
FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson pressed Zuckerberg on Tuesday over his internal message exchanges from 2012 with then-Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman regarding the $1 billion bid for Instagram.
Daniel Matheson, a lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission, departs following the first day of a historic antitrust trial about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s intentions in acquiring Instagram, at Barrett Prettyman U.S. Court House in Washington, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
“[What] I’ve been thinking about recently is how much we should be willing to pay to acquire mobile app companies like Instagram and Path that are building networks that are competitive with our own,” Zuckerberg wrote to Ebersman, then agreeing with the chief financial officer when he said the purchase of Instagram would be a way to “neutralize a potential competitor.”
Extreme cosmic events such as colliding black holes or the explosions of stars can cause ripples in spacetime, so-called gravitational waves. Their discovery opened a new window into the universe. To observe them, ultra-precise detectors are required. Designing them remains a major scientific challenge for humans.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) have been working on how an artificial intelligence system could explore an unimaginably vast space of possible designs to find entirely new solutions. The results were recently published in the journal Physical Review X.
More than a century ago, Einstein theoretically predicted gravitational waves. They could only be directly detected in 2016 because the development of the necessary detectors was extremely complex. Dr. Mario Krenn, head of the research group ›Artificial Scientist Lab‹ at MPL, in collaboration with the team of LIGO (“Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory”), who built those detectors successfully, has designed an AI-based algorithm called ›Urania‹ to design novel interferometric gravitational wave detectors. Interferometry describes a measurement method which uses the interference of waves, i.e. their superposition when they meet. Detector design requires optimizing both layout and parameters. The scientists have converted this challenge into a continuous optimization problem and solved it using methods inspired by modern machine learning. They have found many new experimental designs which outperform the best known next-generation detectors. These results have the potential to improve the range of detectable signals by more than an order of magnitude.
GULFPORT, MS — A family Easter egg hunt organized by Empowerment Ministries Christian Center turned tragic on Saturday when a domestic dispute escalated into a deadly shooting at the Goldin Sports Complex. One church leader was killed while intervening to protect others, and an armed bystander ultimately stopped the threat by shooting the suspect, whose identity was later confirmed by police.
As reported by WLOX, the shooting began around 2:05 p.m. when 24-year-old Tyran Deion Gable of Saucier got into an argument with the mother of his child during the church’s community event. Witnesses say the situation quickly turned violent when Gable pulled out a firearm and opened fire on those attempting to deescalate the situation.
Deacon Eddie Shed, 39, head of security for the church, was fatally shot while trying to intervene. According toThe Sun Herald, Shed died at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds. A second church member who tried to assist was critically injured and airlifted to a hospital in Mobile, Alabama.
Researchers have unraveled the complex network that cells use to repair their genetic material.
By examining thousands upon thousands of genetic interactions, the team has discovered new vulnerabilities in cancer cells that could be exploited therapeutically in the future.
The DNA of human cells consists of a sequence of about 3.1 billion building blocks. Cells go to great lengths to maintain the integrity of this vast store of information. They constantly untangle knots in the DNA strand and create new chemical bonds when a strand of DNA breaks somewhere in the nucleus.
“When people read about repairing genetic material, they often think of it being in response to exposure to toxins or radiation,” says Jacob Corn, professor of genome biology at ETH Zurich.
However, repair mechanisms not only defend against external threats; they also play a crucial role in helping cells survive the challenges they face in their daily fight for survival.
Twitter and Block co-founder Jack Dorsey has called for a radical change in the approach to intellectual property, proposing to completely abolish the relevant laws. His opinion was supported by Elon Musk, the current head of the social network X. This was reported by Mashable, writes UNN.
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On Friday, the co-founder of X (then Twitter) and Block (then Square) posted on X: “Delete all intellectual property laws.” Elon Musk, the current leader of X, commented: “I agree.”
Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand on Monday at a high-stakes trial in Washington over U.S. antitrust enforcers’ claims that the company spent billions of dollars to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp to fend off Facebook competitors.
The FTC is seeking to force Meta to restructure or sell Instagram and WhatsApp, testing President Donald Trump’s promises to take on Big Tech while posing an existential threat to a company that by some estimates earns about half of its U.S. advertising revenue from Instagram.
The FTC and social media giant Meta make their opening statements as the first big antitrust trial of Trump’s second term gets underway in Judge James E. Boasberg’s courtroom.