Elon Musk contracted malaria while on safari in South Africa in 2000 and almost died, a new biography has claimed. Walter Isaacson detailed the billionaire’s near-death experience in a new biography published this week. Mr Musk contracted malaria during a holiday in South Africa after being ousted as CEO of PayPal by Peter Thiel in October 2000. It was Mr Musk’s first time back in his native South Africa since leaving for Canada aged 17, Mr Isaacson wrote. During his trip, Mr Musk and his then-wife Justine Musk went to a game reserve. When he returned to California in January 2001, Mr Musk reportedly began to feel dizzy and experienced recurring waves of chills and started throwing up in an emergency room, leading to him being wrongly diagnosed with viral meningitis. The billionaire’s condition worsened until his “pulse was barely perceptible,” according to the book. Mr Musk was only diagnosed with malaria after a doctor with expertise in infectious diseases passed by his bed at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City and realized he had a potentially fatal form of the disease that can affect the central nervous system or cause “acute respiratory distress,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mr Isaacson described how it took Mr Musk five months to fully recover after he was put in intensive care for 10 days and treated with doxycycline and chloroquine. An email written by the head of human resources at X.com — later Paypal — to Mr Musk’s former business partners Peter Thiel and Max Levchin described how he was “actually only hours from death,” the biography revealed. The Tesla CEO’s mother Maye Musk described the ordeal as “terrifying”. “I remember your malaria infection very clearly. You were unconscious, yellow and shivering for days. Tubes were going in and out of you. It was a terrifying time. Modern medicine saved you,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. While he was in hospital, Mr Musk’s then-colleagues found he’d taken out a life insurance policy worth $100 million on behalf of X.com. “If he had died, all of our financial problems were going to be solved,” Mr Thiel reportedly told Isaacson. Mr Musk told Isaacson: “Vacations will kill you. Also, South Africa – that place is still trying to destroy me.” The tech mogul co-founded online bank X.com in 1999. The company merged with another payment system, Confinity, which was co-founded by Thiel and Levchin, and was renamed PayPal. Isaacson was given access to the Tesla and SpaceX CEO over the past two years, which culminated in Mr Musk’s biography being published this week. The writer spoke with several figures close to Mr Musk while writing the biography, including his ex-girlfriend Grimes and his former wives Tallulah Riley and Justine Musk, as well as his estranged father. So far, the book has also claimed Musk and Grimes secretly welcomed a third child, in addition to X and their 22-month-old daughter Exa Dark Sideræl. However, it was not immediately clear when their second son, named Techno Mechanicus or “Tau”, was born. In the biography, Isaacson also writes that the tech mogul’s brother Kimbal Musk and his friends “hated” ex-girlfriend and actor Amber Heard so intensely, it “made their distaste for Justine [Musk’s first wife] pale”. One review by The New York Times said Isaacson’s biography stitches together a portrait of a Mr Musk as a “mercurial ‘man-child’”. Read More Grimes says Elon Musk was ‘clueless’ about why she was upset by C-section photo Elon Musk ‘hardly remembers’ his own ‘demon-like’ episodes, biographer claims Book Review: 'Elon Musk' offers a revealing but not surprising portrait of tech mogul Elon Musk makes prediction for imminent Starship launch Twitter rival Bluesky hits new milestone Putin praises Musk days after report Tesla boss stopped Ukrainian attack

How much do you really know about our biological and physiological responses to *waves hands around* all this? Grab a stress ball and find out.

Hundreds of fake Facebook posts are scaring people into sharing them, fact checkers have warned. Community groups are being filled with hoax posts that are shared across many groups and include scary information, intended to encourage people to share them. They claim that serial killers are on the loose, that deadly snakes are around, or that dogs or children have gone missing. One post claimed that a man was attacking people with a knife in the local area, for instance, claiming that he was preying on “home-alone teens” and demanding money from people. The same text has been circulated in a variety of locations in the UK – and has also been seen in the US and Australia – with police forces across the world having to make clear that it is a hoax. At least some of those posts are then being edited after the fact to change them to include financial offers that target people in the UK, and make exaggerated claims about those companies, according to Full Fact, the fact checking charity that has sounded the alarm on the posts. They then link users out to legitimate companies with the aim of making money through affiliate links that offer money for clicks. Full Fact said that it had identified over 1,200 hoax posts, spread across the UK. But it said there were likely many more. “The sheer scale of these posts is hard to fathom and we are conscious that the 1,200 or so we have identified is likely just the tip of the iceberg,” said Steve Nowottny, Editor at Full Fact. “These posts are all highly emotive and get shared widely because people understandably want to help those in need or warn their neighbours about threats. “But that’s where the risk lies – the hoaxers have clearly identified the massive reach these posts can have and local Facebook groups across the world are now becoming overwhelmed with false information. “Some of these hoaxes appear designed to terrify local communities, and sow needless fear and confusion. As a result, genuine warnings about dangers and genuine posts from people desperately appealing for help, such as those looking for missing loved ones or missing pets, are now at a much higher risk of being ignored. “The impact and scale of these hoaxes and the edited posts they are often replaced by is extremely concerning, which is why we have written to Meta to raise the alarm about this issue. ” Full Fact works with Facebook parent Meta on its third-party fact checking programme. It warned the company that “the risks posed by these posts are pernicious and frequent enough to merit stronger action from Meta in terms of proactively identifying and tackling this growing trend” in April, it said. Full Fact acknowledged that it is difficult to tell when a Facebook post is a hoax, since posts in groups are also often used to send out legitimate and important alerts. But it provided a list of characteristics that tend to indicate that a post might false. Many hoax posts close the comments, for instance, though fact checkers noted that some genuine posts close comments too and that not all fake posts have them on. They also tend to have been copied and pasted, use images from elsewhere, come from pages rather than profiles, use images and language from outside the UK, and include red pins or siren emoji. Full Fact also advised people to check whether posts had been edited, if they were suspected of being hoaxes. Clicking on the three dots in the corner of a post will show its edit history. And it suggested that users search for the text within a post, to check whether it has been shared elsewhere. Many of the scammers will use the same wording, with the location changed, fact checkers noted. Some groups have been forced to share frustrations about how many hoax posts are appearing in their communities. Full Fact pointed to one group formed by dog lovers that had been set up specifically to identify fake posts about lost or injured animals. A Meta spokesperson pointed to the company’s fact checking operations, and said that it was investing in more. It pointed to recently introduced tools including features that let group admins more easily remove posts that might include misinformation. “We’ve built the largest global fact-checking network of any platform, partnering with more than 90 independent fact-checking organisations including Full Fact, to tackle misinformation online,” a Meta spokesperson said. “Fraudulent activity is not allowed on our platforms and we removed the posts Full Fact brought to our attention for violating our Community Standards. “While no enforcement is perfect, we continue to invest in new technologies to stop scams and the people behind them. We also introduced new tools last year to help Facebook Group admins prevent the spread of misinformation and manage interactions in their groups.” Read More Justin Trudeau slams Facebook for blocking news stories about wildfires Elon Musk’s Twitter slows down access to rival websites Twitter turning Tweetdeck into paid service after slowing down access to rivals Mark Zuckerberg says he’s ‘out of town’ as Elon Musk drives to his house to fight Mark Zuckerberg hits out at Elon Musk for wasting time over cage fight Nvidia sales hit record high as AI chip demand soars

You've got a brand-new passport and you're ready to finally leave your home country to

By James Pearson and Christopher Bing LONDON/WASHINGTON An elite group of North Korean hackers secretly breached computer networks

Vietnam began planned nationwide blackouts as the country struggles to meet surging power demand amid extreme hot weather.

Investors on Wall Street and beyond are betting that the great tech rally of 2023 has staying power,

INT. CABIN - NIGHT JESS settles into a cozy, secluded Airbnb. He’s hoping for a

The Biden administration's plans to bring affordable, reliable broadband to every home and business in the U.S. could transform underserved communities

Amouranth has released an adult toy called 'Amouranth's Assistant' almost two years after Ludwig pitched her the idea on 'The Yard' podcast

Artificial intelligence (AI) is developing at a faster pace than laws can be drafted in response, an academic has warned. Although the technology has been around in some form for some time, the rate at which it is changing and improving is the new, key challenge, senators and TDs were told. The Oireachtas Enterprise Committee heard that AI can offer “profound opportunities” to help people, but can also be used to reduce white-collar employees’ salaries and even prompt diplomatic incidents. Professor of AI at Trinity College Dublin Gregory O’Hare cited cases including technology beating a world chess champion in 1997, as well as fake AI-generated images of Donald Trump being arrested and the Pope wearing a designer puffer jacket, as he outlined landmark moments in the development of the “disruptive technology”. He said there have been many previous “false dawns and unrealised promises” about the technology’s potential, and that ChatGPT has gathered 100 million users in two months and is the fastest-growing technology in history. He said white-collar professions like the law, academia, marketing, architecture, engineering, journalism and the creative industries will all be “profoundly affected”, and cited a recent study which estimated that two-thirds of all US occupations will be affected by AI. “In terms of the point around wages, I think there is certainly an opportunity for employers to reduce salaries,” he said. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) argued that unions should be involved at an early stage in any initiatives looking to address concerns around AI. Dr Laura Bambrick, of the ICTU, said the EU AI Act is not suitable to regulate AI and is “more than disappointing” from workers’ point of view, stating that the amendments tabled offer some comfort but “don’t go far enough”. “It only requires software providers to self-assess their own technology between low- and high-risk before putting it on the market, and did not include any rules on the use of AI in the workplace,” she said. The velocity of AI technology is, alas, fast exceeding the rate at which the law around AI can be framed Professor Gregory O'Hare, Trinity College Dubin Prof O’Hare said he believes the current legislative framework proposed to regulate AI is not “in a position to be able to respond with the speed that we need”. He added: “The velocity of AI technology is, alas, fast exceeding the rate at which the law around AI can be framed.” Cork East TD David Stanton said that statement is “quite scary”, and “science fiction is actually becoming science fact”. He suggested the topic is so serious and developing at such a pace that it could warrant setting up a dedicated Oireachtas committee to discuss it. During the session, committee chairman Maurice Quinlivan said he used ChatGPT to double-check that the three guests had not used ChatGPT to write their opening statements, with one TD remarking he was “using AI to check for AI”. Prof O’Hare said it is difficult to assess how AI comes to a particular conclusion, even for experts. “Not only is there typically not a set of algorithmic steps that one, even with a trained eye, could scrutinise, AI, and in particular deep AI, does not have an algorithmic basis. “So, even were it to be the case that someone like myself, a professor of artificial intelligence, were I to look at a particular AI application that was using deep learning, I would have great difficulty in being able to establish, on the surface, how it actually arrived at its deduction and its recommendation or conclusion.” It knows no political boundaries, it knows no geographic boundaries, no socio-economic boundaries. This is something that demands potentially a global position Professor Gregory O'Hare, Trinity College Dublin He added that, while it is crucial to engage with all stakeholders involved, it will take “some considerable time”, and the rate at which AI is developing “does not afford us that level of time”. Responding to the suggestion that the use of AI should be slowed down or halted to allow for consultation, he said: “We’re talking about something that knows no boundaries.” “It knows no political boundaries, it knows no geographic boundaries, no socio-economic boundaries. This is something that demands potentially a global position. So Ireland needs to find a way and a voice into that global discussion.” Ronan Lupton SC, of the Bar Council of Ireland, said that although AI has been around for some time, “where we’re moving to now, at the moment, is a sphere in an environment of extreme pace”, which is the “key challenge”. He said AI could help people with speech disabilities to communicate, but also warned of the dangers of misinformation. He said that newsrooms, instead of sending a draft article to a solicitor to check for defamation or other legal issues, are now using artificial intelligence technologies instead, which he said is “an interesting development”. Prof O’Hare agreed with the potential of AI to help people with disabilities and said it is “very important that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater”. “This technology has profound opportunities, absolutely profound opportunities.” But he suggested that, because the technology has been put out “into the wild”, it could be used for “sinister” means which could have financial or political implications, such as boundary incursions – and even wars. “The question is will it always be used for good purpose, or is there a significant chance that it will be used for Machiavellian purposes?” he said. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Facebook Marketplace is most complained-about online retail platforms UKRI announces £50 million to develop trustworthy and secure AI ‘Last Beatles record’ was created using AI, says Paul McCartney

SAVE 49%: You can access Australian Netflix from anywhere in the world with a VPN.