According to a delightfully titled study called The Unbearable Slowness of Being, published in a medical journal called Neuron, Markus Meister, a neuroscientist at Caltech, and his team calculated that the average American home’s internet speed is around 262 million bits per second. Representing the processing speed of the human brain using the same terms, the human brain would process information at a rate of only 10 bits per second. If your router was only pumping out 10 bits per second, you would chuck that thing at the nearest wall.

The researchers estimated the brain’s information flow by assessing how quickly people process information while typing. Using a 2018 study where a team of researchers from Finland analyzed 136 million keystrokes made by 168,000 volunteers, Meister, and his team, used a type of math known as information theory to form a rough estimate for how the number of words typed permitted can be translated into bits per second.

Your Computer Is Finally Faster Than Your Brain

Only a small fraction of the volunteers were able to type 120 words a minute or more, a number the team would use as the high watermark for the best humans could do. Meister and his team calculated that 120 words per minute would roughly equal 10 bits a second — a woeful and pathetic number.

They figure they’re probably faster behaviors out there that would allow them to better test the brain’s processing speed. They turned to video games. The team tested the processing information of competitive gamers, whose reflexes can often be so fast that their hand movements look like a blur. The number was still 10 bits per second. In all their testing the highest bits per second they found was 11.8 and it belonged to a guy named Tommy Cherry, a speedcuber, one of those people who can solve a Rubix cube within seconds while blindfolded.

Meister argues that to be fair, the human brain has to deal with an overwhelming amount of sensory input that has to parse through just to figure out what the hell is going on. The human eye can transmit 1.6 billion bits per second. But only a little bit of that information gets processed by our brains. The discrepancy between the two requires further investigation.

The post Your Brain Is Way Slower Than Your Internet Connection appeared first on VICE.

Which, if you’re too young to remember, are basically cafes with computers in them. It all began when Eva Pascoe, a Polish computing student living in London, crossed paths with Tim Berners Lee and other early internet mavericks at the dawn of the 90s. “I was very interested in cyberfeminism and wanted to figure out how women could reclaim tech,” she recalls. 

The internet was still in its infancy. Diabolically slow dial-up modems only emerged around 1992; the World Wide Web was a pipe dream until 1993 and hardly anyone had the internet at home. But there wasn’t just a lack of javascript; Eva remembers there being no good java, either. “There were no coffee shops in London,” she says, which today seems ludicrous. “Just greasy spoons and everyone drank tea. I wanted a European-style cafe.”

Linking up with like-minded pioneers David Rowe and husband and wife Keith and Gené Teare, Eva found a spot on the corner of Whitfield Street and launched Cyberia there in 1994. With Hackers-style aesthetics and futuristic furniture, it was based around a U-shaped layout that meant visitors could see each other’s screens. “I wanted women to feel safe, because a lot of the stuff on the net was dodgy,” she explains. Many of Eva’s mates chipped in to help out––architects, interior designers, graphic artists, publishers, and ravers among them.

And then there was the Amish community in Pennsylvania. Eva had to fly out there to negotiate for the “Cyberia.com” domain name they had bought. “It was a proper barn with horse carts and a wall of modems as they were running a bulletin board and an early ecommerce company. Apparently, there was always one family nominated to be the tech support,” she remembers.

Back in London, Cyberia quickly became a hotspot. “Virtually the second we opened, we had three lines deep around the block,” she says. It’s hard to imagine, but nowhere else in the world was doing what they were doing. It was the world’s first cybercafe. “If you wanted to collect your emails, we were the only place in town,” Eva says. 

The Cyberia brand spread across the world, eventually opening around 20 cafes, including branches in Bangkok, Paris, and Rotterdam. For a fleeting moment it became like a sexier version of Richard Branson’s Virgin empire: there was Cyberia Records, Cyberia Channel (a pioneering streaming service), Cyberia Payments, the Cyberia magazine, a Cyberia show on UK TV—even a Cyberia wedding.

Sadly, the building is now a fancy French restaurant. But at the end of September I headed to Cyberia’s 30th birthday party, held at a Sam Smith’s pub round the corner from the old site. In an upstairs function room, the cafe’s original innovators were shooting the shit about the good times and the not-so-good coffee. The consensus seems to be that these scrappy cybernauts—now developers, consultants, and AI coders—were lightyears ahead of everyone else.

Except for musicians, who got on board early. “We ran out of our own money quickly but luckily Maurice Saatchi and Mick Jagger backed us because he was protective about music being shared. On the other side of the spectrum was David Bowie, who wanted everything out there for sampling,” she says. Both Bowie and Jagger were visitors; Eva once taught Kylie Minogue how to send an email at the London cafe.

“We saw the net as a playspace: a place where you wanted to be smart and weird and fun and your very best self”—Douglas Rushkoff

It had arrived at a perfect time; there was ecstasy in the air in 1994 and Eva wanted to make everything open-source. “It was all very utopian. We thought the internet would solve everyone’s problems. All we’d need to do was connect everybody and we’d have democracy forever. It didn’t quite pan out like that,” Eva says. No shit.

Douglas Rushkoff, a cyberpunk pioneer whose book Cyberia in 1994 likely inspired the cafe’s name, captured this energy. “[It was] a moment when anything seemed possible,” the preface goes. “When an entire subculture — like a kid at a rave trying virtual reality for the first time — saw the wild potential of marrying the latest computer technologies with the most intimately held dreams and the most ancient spiritual truths.”

I hit him up over email to hear more. “We were artists and students and counterculture people who couldn’t afford our own computers. We saw the net as a playspace: a place where you wanted to be smart and weird and fun and your very best self,” he says. 

It was also something collective. “Going online was a social phenomenon, both out there in cyberspace and here in the real world. A place like the Cyberia cafe felt and worked like the internet itself. Coffee, friends, information-sharing, trippy conversations… they were all part of the same cultural experience.”

As were raves; free parties were hardwired into the cybernetic movement. “You’d go to a cyber cafe to design a rave flyer, work out fractals for projections, or go onto a bulletin service to find out where the next party was going to be. And it was also the place you’d leave the flyer or map point for your next party,” Douglas continues.

Following the 1994 The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which effectively outlawed the rave movement, Eva and her gang mucked in. “We went out of our way to provide support in the clubs and fields with connectivity and generators.” That included sex parties, too. “My team of girls turned up to one and everyone was wearing gimp masks, but we closed our eyes and stayed and did the job.” But the rave also continued at Cyberia. “We had something called the Cyber Breakfast on Sundays. We’d head down from the flat upstairs and people would rock up at six in the morning from the clubs around King’s Cross, smoking or taking God knows what while surfing online using some lateral thinking,” Eva remembers. Basically, an afters with desktops, with people checking their emails on E.

The London branch also had its very own audio-visual set-up. “We had a friend living in Goa who would DJ for hours and hours, five in the morning until five in the afternoon. We’d put sheets on the windows and put projections of visuals on it. People get excited about AI animations now but I’m like, mate, we were doing it in the 90s!”

Gaming also gave Cyberia a new level. “We created a space underneath Cyberia called Subcyberia. People were gaming for hours on end,” Eva says (there was also a workspace called Trancyberia on the second floor; essentially a WeWork on acid). But this was also the beginning of Cyberia’s end. By 2004, 57 percent of people in the UK had internet access at home. Cyberia shut down in the UK and Eva’s partners licensed it out to a company in Korea, where PC bangs—gaming-centric internet cafes—were, and still are, extremely popular.

Now, the internet cafes that still exist in the UK (around 669, apparently) are pretty scruffy high-street digs mainly used for printing and passport photos. There’s obviously not going to be an internet cafe reboot. And especially none like Cyberia. After all, the 90s was a different time. “Most of us were off our heads. The drugs were a lot more prevalent, mainstream and acceptable. The younger generation don’t have this crazy lifestyle we had,” Eva says.

Instead, we’re all at the mercy of the Silicon Valley zealots.

“Society’s become so straight-laced and it’s not good for people. The early internet recognised that humans are 360-degree people with dark and wonderful things. Now we’re kicked into a corner online based on the moral values of three people in Nebraska,” Eva laments. And the internet is a cesspit of AI-generated shit. “Going online used to be a bit like an acid trip,” says Douglas. “That’s why I called the book Cyberia. It was a journey to a place where the rules of reality were different. Better. But living online, in the always-on landscape of algorithms programming our behavior…? That’s bound to be a bad trip.”

Back at the Cyberia party, Eva is triggering hazy memories with a slideshow of the cafe’s most hedonistic moments. “The internet wasn’t just coding, it was a whole culture. It was a lifestyle,” she says and tankards of Taddy lager are thrust into the air by teary-eyed cyber pirates who tried to change the world.

Sayonara, Cyberia; for a while back there, you got a lot of odd people totally wired.

Follow Kyle on Instagram @kyle.macneill

The post Remembering Cyberia, the World’s First Ever Cyber Cafe appeared first on VICE.

The survey, which looked at more than 10,000 people in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, found that the numbers were even higher amongst those under 30. In that age group, 37 percent of respondents said they get their news from social media.

Respondents from both sides of the aisle exhibited similar behaviors, explaining in the survey that influencers “helped them better understand current events and civic issues.”

Meanwhile, 70 percent of adults said that the news they get from online personalities “is at least somewhat different from the news they get from other sources.”

“News influencers have emerged as one of the key alternatives to traditional outlets as a news and information source for a lot of people, especially younger folks,” Galen Stocking, the study’s co-author, said in a news release, per NBC News. “And these influencers have really reached new levels of attention and prominence this year amid the presidential election.”

What Is a News Influencer?

As for who these news influencers are, the survey looked at 500 such personalities and more than 28,000 social media accounts. In doing so, it found that 85 percent of news influencers have a presence on X, followed by 50 percent on Instagram and 44 percent on YouTube.

In terms of political leanings, there are three times as many influencers that lean right than left on Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube. However, on TikTok, Democratic influencers slightly outnumber Republican ones.

Sixty-three percent of influencers are male, and 77 percent have no affiliation or background with a news organization.

Fifty-nine percent of influencers monetize their social media presence, whether through subscriptions, donations, merchandise sales, podcasts, or newsletters.

The post More Than 20% of Adults Get Their News From Influencers Now appeared first on VICE.

The study sought to find out if text generated by ChatGPT under the supervision of a healthcare expert was as trustworthy as text generated by an expert themselves. To do so, the study looked at 116 parents aged 18 to 65.

“When we began this research, it was right after ChatGPT first launched—we had concerns about how parents would use this new, easy method to gather health information for their children,” lead author Calissa Leslie-Miller said. “Parents often turn to the internet for advice, so we wanted to understand what using ChatGPT would look like and what we should be worried about.”

Participants were asked to complete a baseline assessment of their behavioral intentions regarding pediatric healthcare topics. Afterwards, participants rated text generated by either an expert or by ChatGPT under supervision of an expert.

The Study’s Shocking Findings

The study found that engineered ChatGPT is capable of impacting behavioral intentions for medication, sleep, and diet decision-making.

It also discovered that there was “little distinction” between ChatGPT and expert content when it came to perceived morality, trustworthiness, expertise, accuracy, and reliance. However, when those differences were present, ChatGPT text scored a higher rating in trustworthiness and accuracy than expert information.

Participants also indicated that they would be more likely to rely on ChatGPT information than on information from an expert.

“This outcome was surprising to us, especially since the study took place early in ChatGPT’s availability,” Leslie-Miller said. “We’re starting to see that AI is being integrated in ways that may not be immediately obvious, and people may not even recognize when they’re reading AI-generated text versus expert content.”

Why the Study’s Findings Raise Concerns

On top of being surprising, the study’s findings are a cause of concern for researchers.

“During the study, some early iterations of the AI output contained incorrect information. This is concerning because, as we know, AI tools like ChatGPT are prone to ‘hallucinations’—errors that occur when the system lacks sufficient context,” Leslie-Miller said. “In child health, where the consequences can be significant, it’s crucial that we address this issue. We’re concerned that people may increasingly rely on AI for health advice without proper expert oversight.”

Leslie-Miller went on to note that, despite how participants rated the texts, “there are still differences in the trustworthiness of sources.” With that in mind, Leslie-Miller said that, if parents do turn to AI for information, they should look for a source “that’s integrated into a system with a layer of expertise that’s double-checked.”

“I believe AI has a lot of potential to be harnessed. Specifically, it is possible to generate information at a much higher volume than before,” she said. “But it’s important to recognize that AI is not an expert, and the information it provides doesn’t come from an expert source.”

The post Parents Trust ChatGPT More Than Doctors, New Study Finds appeared first on VICE.

For years, Elon Musk has claimed his Cybertrucks are bulletproof. He markets the vehicle as being able to protect you against gunfire, should you ever randomly be involved in some violent attack.

But after firing his 9MM handgun at the truck in the middle of an open field, Colle quickly learned that his $100K Tesla electric vehicle wasn’t as bulletproof as he hoped it would be. Fuck around and find out, right? 

As the bullet penetrated the back of the truck in Colle’s video, he yelled “Fuck!” and tossed his (loaded) handgun on the ground—a careless action someone pointed out on Instagram. 

“Bro rlly dropped a loaded gun,” one user commented, with another responding, “After I realized he did that I squirmed in my seat.”

In the video, Colle and his friends inspected the vehicle as the person filming the video joked, “I don’t think it’s bulletproof, Dante.”

To be fair, the bullet lodged itself in the vehicle without actually going through it. So…maybe it really can prevent you from getting shot? Unclear.

In a second attempt, Colle assumes position and—yet again—strikes the Cyertruck, this time from the side. The second round actually bounced off the truck, merely leaving a dent and scratch. 

“It worked!” Colle shouted in the video.

This isn’t the first time someone has tested Musk’s claims. YouTuber Zack Nelson shared a video of himself shooting a Cybertruck with a .22, a .17, a few 9mm, and a 223 and .50 cal round. While the truck held up pretty well against some of the shots, it didn’t stand much of a chance against the .17-caliber rifle, AR-15, and .50-caliber gun.

Adin Ross, another popular internet personality, streamed himself shooting his Cybertruck, too—which rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

Anyway, Colle’s test may have ”worked,” but still, stay out of trouble, and please don’t try this at home.

The post A Porn Star Tried to Debunk Tesla’s Bulletproof Claims By Shooting His Own Cybertruck appeared first on VICE.

Countless TikTok videos have been swarming my FYP about the prevalence of so-called cortisol face, where elevated levels of stress hormones make you look puffy and unwell. One—actually many, since they’re all copying each other—creator even started by saying: “You’re not ugly; you just have cortisol face.”

Under the videos, you’ll often see the line “Creator earns commission.” Why? Because it’s an advertisement. She’s promoting a “calming drink mix” that supposedly lowers your stress levels. That “cortisol face” ain’t gonna fix itself for free, apparently.

There are a ton of other videos spewing self-help tips like not checking your phone first thing in the morning and drinking diluted apple cider vinegar on an empty stomach. It’s basically the “balancing your hormones” trend, extended.

I get it. A lot of us face constant invalidation when explaining our distressing symptoms to a doctor. We’re often brushed off and sent home with little to no treatment options. But it’s pretty hard to argue affiliate advertising on social media is any better at addressing our vulnerabilities and insecurities.

There are a lot of well-meaning people online who truly do believe they’re helping. And honestly, maybe they are. There might be some truth to their content. I mean, it surely is better for your mental health to slow down and smell the flowers (or listen to the birdies, as one creator recommends) once in a while. 

But constant underlying paranoia—and a persistent call to action—can add to the stress. In a world where everyone is telling you what’s wrong with you and what you should be doing differently—as well as pushing you to spend your hard-earned money on solutions to oftentimes nonexistent problems—it can all feel a little exhausting. 

Thankfully, a doctor took to the social app to clear up some misinformation surrounding “cortisol face.”

“While it is true that cortisol is our stress hormone, and when we are stressed, we may release more of it, this doesn’t mean that you have a pathologic disease.”

She went on to add that elevated cortisol levels resulting from stress are typically not significant enough to actually cause facial swelling or change your physical appearance. Only hormonal conditions—like Cushing syndrome—can do that, and there are countless other signs and symptoms you’d notice along with it.

So, before you buy those expensive ass supplements claiming to reduce your cortisol levels and thin out your face, you might want to visit an actual doctor first. If you really do want to lower your stress and cortisol levels, you might want to get off social media.

The post You Don’t Have ‘Cortisol Face’—But That Won’t Stop TikTok Selling You Cures appeared first on VICE.

Maxwell stands in quite the stark contrast to Moo Deng, the adorable viral baby pygmy hippo from Thailand. If only we could return to the peaceful, cuddly days of his mischief. But no. Maxwell is the viral TikTok animal of the day, and he is a terror.

There’s no sordid history to unlock here. The sordid history is what we’re here for. Maxwell’s owners strapped a camera to his neck so they could see what he gets up to when he roams around the neighborhood. It turns out Maxwell is an asshole who likes picking fights with other cats. 

Maxwell’s role as the antagonizer in his altercations is indisputable. The videos clearly show Maxwell going around, taking swipes at other cats for simply existing. He’s a real dickhead and that’s why he’s beloved. Well, mostly beloved.

When you rack up 2 million followers on a social media platform, you’re bound to have detractors. A lot of people questioned the ethics of watching videos of animals fighting each other. It’s understandable, it could feel like you’re watching a cutesy version of a snuff film, or maybe a home pet version of those disturbing Bum Fights videos from way back. That’s understandable. 

But if you feel this way, you also have to understand that cats are extremely territorial creatures. Toss him into the mix with other neighborhood cats and he’s gonna start some shit to protect his turf. There’s also the possibility that he’s just naturally very aggressive, as some pets tend to be. 

It’s all part of a crapshoot of pet ownership, especially with cats who people tend to just bring off the street. So until Maxwell utters a slur or commits a heinous crime worthy of a prison sentence, let’s just attribute his behavior to the average day-to-day life of a cat.

The post Asshole Cat Celebrated by Idiots for Terrorizing Neighborhood appeared first on VICE.

The Pokémon leaks saw the release of a series of several terabytes of stolen behind-the-scenes documents, revealing some unexpectedly horny and bizarre bits of Pokémon lore that were scrapped. There were tidbits on upcoming games like Pokémon Legends: Z-A, sprites for unreleased Pokémon, and details about upcoming Pokémon TV shows and movies. 

Surely the tawdryest bit of information released revolves around the mythological folklore surrounding one of the individual Pokémon, Typhlosion, which was scrapped before it ever made it into a game.

Typhlosion made its debut back in 1999 with the release of Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver. The scrapped bit of Typhlosion lore harkens back to a tale from deep within Japanese mythology, about a folkloric character known as noppera-bō, a creature that can shape-shift.

In the unused backstory, a young girl from “a long time ago, when the boundary between Pokémon and humans was unclear” is tricked into believing that the shape-shifting Typhlosion is a human. She marries this Typhlosion, disguising itself as a human, has sex with it, and has a child with it, all before her father finds out about it and kills it.

Pokémon lore is no stranger to dark themes and general creepiness. Countless articles have been written about, say, Drifloon, a Pokemon that visually looks like a balloon but, instead of being filled with helium, is filled with the souls of humans it is ferrying to the afterlife. There’s lots of stuff like that. But having a Pokémon trick a human woman into having sex with it by making her believe it’s a human is maybe a bit much—thus explaining why that bit of lore did not see the light of day until it was hacked out of Game Freak’s servers.

All mythologies, not just Japanese mythology, are filled with stories like this. Norse mythology, Greek mythology, Hindu mythology. They’re all filled with murder, incest, vile trickery, the brutality of the gods, etc. Imitating all of that for the background lore of your cutesy children’s game characters isn’t exactly shocking, nor is it new. But people online overreacted to it anyway, as if Pokémon hasn’t always been this way since it started in 1996.

The post Leaked Pokémon Lore Includes Story of a Girl Who Has a Baby with a Pokémon  appeared first on VICE.

That’s according to a new report by the cybercrime outlet Krebs On Security. After a real person’s actual death, the scammers allegedly create fake Facebook groups with all of the correct funeral information. They then target the friends and family who join the group with malicious links, which ask for credit card information to access the funeral service.

Some groups ask for donations in the name of the deceased, adding another layer to the fraud.

At this point, most of us are aware and alert for suspicious emails or messages that are followed by a brazen request for money or information. But a scam like this comes at a time when the people being targeted aren’t necessarily at their strongest. How many of us would immediately think that a Facebook group for someone we loved and cared for would have such malice behind it? 

According to Krebs, many of the links sent out as part of this scheme originate from Bangladesh. They found a single IP address hosting nearly 6,000 questionable domains, many of which are related to the scam.

Besides funerals, the scammers target other events advertised on Facebook, like graduations, concerts, weddings, and other local community events. 

To protect yourself, Krebs recommends a few basic Facebook security tips. Keep your Facebook friends list private. Restrict who can post on your Facebook wall. And, of course, be wary of any links or websites asking for credit card information related to funeral services. Because truly, fuck them.

The post Scammers Are Stealing Credit Cards With Fake Facebook Funerals appeared first on VICE.

Filmmakers Derek Milton and Grant Yansura took it upon themselves to unmask the Piss Bandit with a series TikTok videos. Their investigation began when they noticed the large bottles and jugs that looked like they were filled with piss and then had the words “human urine” written on them along with little drawings of smiley faces. At least he’s honest.

The so-called Piss Bandit is so determined to leave his hefty bottles of human urine that even after city officials put a triangular metal cap on top of the utility box to deter the Piss Bandit from leaving his piss, he destroyed it and just kept leaving his piss there.

Milton and Yansura installed hidden cameras to capture the Piss Bandit in action. Their footage showed a masked man dropping off his piss bottles under the cover of night, accessing it from a nearby freeway. The documentarians suspect the Piss Bandit might actually be more of a vigilante artist than simply a deranged weirdo. I say there’s plenty of room for both outcomes.

But the Piss Bandit does not seem to be enjoying the extra attention that the documentarians have brought. After the guys left him a note that said “I am a big fan of your installation art … I think your work is on the same level as Banksy plus Shepard Fairy,” they left a maker and some questions for the Piss Bandit to answer. He—or she, or they—ignored the note, and then stole their camera and drove it 126 miles from Pasadena to San Diego. 

Later, the Piss Bandit responded again with a one-gallon jug of piss on the electrical box—but this time the bottle did not have a smiley face. It had a demonic face on it. The Piss Bandit was not happy and ramped up his terror in response.

There’s no telling what the Piss Bandit might do next, but—and I’m going on out a limb here—I have a hunch that it might involve leaving jugs of piss in places where they don’t belong. 

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