Tech
NASA astronauts are proud bedwetters. They even practice.
Before NASA shot astronaut Scott Kelly into orbit for the first time in 1999, he had an important order from his commander: Take one of these diapers, and go practice at home.
So there he was, wearing a government-issued space diaper, lying down in his bathtub with his legs propped up. He was trying to simulate the way he'd be sitting in the Space Shuttle.
After living his whole life trying to avoid peeing his pants, Kelly found it took some unlearning to be able to relax and let the good times, er, flow. But he eventually figured out how to open the floodgates. When it was his turn as commander on his next mission, he gave the same instructions to his crew: Go practice. That order, however, didn't go over so well with one male astronaut.
"I actually had a crew member that wouldn't practice, refused to, and then almost had to be catheterized in space," Kelly told Mashable, adding empathetically that being an astronaut is a lot of pressure.
That's why when his agent called him with a promotional opportunity to work with Goodnites, a maker of children's disposable bedtime underwear, he wanted to help reduce the stigma of bedwetting. It wasn't just the shared experience of needing to wear a diaper-like undergarment he identified with, it was the incredible pressure he realized children also must feel. Nighttime incontinence affects one in four 5-year-olds, one in five 7-year-olds, and one in 20 10-year-olds, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
"Kids have a lot of stuff on their plate," said Kelly, who has two adult children, "so if this could help some kids feel less embarrassed about wetting the bed, I was all in."
Credit: NASA / Victor Zelentsov
It's common knowledge that astronauts wear diapers. Perhaps no one brought that to the fore more than former astronaut Lisa Nowak — but that's a 900-mile story for another time.
The shuttle and International Space Station have toilets, but sometimes the crew don't have access to them. During launches and landings, astronauts must stay strapped into their seats, and spacewalks — when astronauts venture outside for experiments or maintenance tasks — often require being sealed in a spacesuit for up to eight hours.
Not many people can hold it for that long while continuously hydrating, so diapers have become a necessity — especially after the astronaut corps expanded to include women. The original urine collection contraptions designed for male astronauts couldn't be easily adapted for female anatomy.
Credit: NASA / Center for the Advancement of Science in Space
Credit: NASA / National Air and Space Museum
In 1988, NASA started making MAGs — Maximum Absorbency Garments — for all its astronauts, said Kiona N. Smith, author of Peeing and Pooping in Space. The MAG uses a highly absorbent polymer compound between layers of material to remove moisture, which turns the pee into a solid gel.
Perhaps deep down we're all snickering 12-year-olds, a fact that may have inspired Smith's book, but that curiosity is as innate as nature's call.
"As silly as the questions and answers sometimes sound," Smith told Mashable, "it's that human urge to go, 'OK, but how does this work?'"
Goodnites' new "Mission Dry" ad campaign, which launched last month, includes a commercial featuring Kelly. The video opens with the astronaut and a young crewmate doing a spacewalk and basking in the once-in-a-lifetime view of the stars. But the child can't enjoy the experience because he's distracted. He accidentally peed in his spacesuit and fears mission control will make fun of him.
Child: Houston's probably laughing.
Kelly: They're not laughing.
Child: How do you know?
Kelly: Because I just peed.
Child: Just now?
Kelly: Just now.
Kelly, who is now retired after spending 520 days in space, was paid for the gig. As a public space agency, NASA doesn't usually endorse companies or their products. But he's not the only astronaut who liked the campaign's message. Cady Coleman, also retired from NASA, and a handful of other people who have flown on parabolic and short commercial flights, are also lending their voices.
"On one of my missions, I did need to pee while I was wearing my spacesuit, and it went just fine," Coleman said in a reel on Instagram. "My suit was clean and dry, ready to go, and so was I."
Credit: Goodnites
For four decades, NASA has used the same spacesuit technology for astronauts. Axiom Space is designing a new one for the Artemis III crew, who will be the first people to walk on the moon since 1972. Though engineers have made several improvements, including dust-resistant materials, a compact life support system, and an HD video camera attachment, some things won't change, like wearing a MAG, said Russell Ralston, Axiom Space's deputy program manager for extravehicular activity.
"If it's not broken, don't fix it," Ralston told Mashable during the news conference in 2023. "They're just honestly a very effective solution. Sometimes simplicity is best."
That means a long and illustrious legacy of pants-peeing on the moon will continue, following in the boot prints of Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin, the self-proclaimed first.
"He stepped off the bottom step of the lunar lander and realized he had to go," Smith said. "So you've got this picture of him standing there on the lunar surface, and what you don't realize is he is 100 percent peeing into his urine collection device at that moment."
Windows users should think about reinforcing their antivirus software. And while Microsoft Defender should provide a line of defense against ransomware, a new report claims that hackers have found a way to get around the ransomware tool to infect PCs with ransomware.
A GuidePoint Security report (via BleepingComputer) found that hackers are using Akira ransomware to exploit a legitimate PC driver to load a second, malicious driver that shuts off Windows Defender, allowing for all sorts of monkey business.
The good driver that's being exploited here is called "rwdrv.sys,' which is used for tuning software for Intel CPUs. Hackers abuse it to install "hlpdrv.sys," another driver that they then use to get around Defender — and start doing whatever it is they want to do.
GuidePoint reported seeing this type of attack starting in the middle of July. It doesn't seem like the loophole has been patched yet, but the more people know about it, the less likely it is for the exploit to work against them, at least in theory.
In the meantime, allow our colleagues at PCMag to recommend some fine third-party antivirus software to you for your Windows PC. For more information on the latest Akira ransomware attacks — including possible defenses — head to GuidePoint Security.
GPT-5 is out, the early reviews are in, and they're not great.
Many ChatGPT fans have taken to Reddit and other social media platforms to express their frustration and disappointment with OpenAI's newest foundation model, released on Thursday.
A quick glimpse of the ChatGPT subreddit (which is not affiliated with OpenAI) shows scathing reviews of GPT-5. Since the model began rolling out, the subreddit has filled with posts calling GPT-5 a "disaster," "horrible," and the "biggest piece of garbage even as a paid user."
Awkwardly, Altman and other members of the OpenAI team had a preplanned Reddit AMA to answer questions about GPT-5. In the hours ahead of the AMA, questions piled up in anticipation, with many users demanding that OpenAI bring back GPT-4o as an alternative to GPT-5.
What Redditors are saying about GPT-5
Many of the negative first impressions say GPT-5 lacks the "personality" of GPT-4o, citing colder, shorter replies. "GPT-4o had this… warmth. It was witty, creative, and surprisingly personal, like talking to someone who got you. It didn’t just spit out answers; it felt like it listened," said one redditor. "Now? Everything’s so… sterile."
Another said, "GPT-5 lacks the essence and soul that separated Chatgpt (sic) from other AI bots. I sincerely wish they bring back 4o as a legacy model or something like that."
Several redditors also criticized the fact that OpenAI did away with the option to choose different models, prompting some users to say they're canceling their subscriptions. "I woke up this morning to find that OpenAI deleted 8 models overnight. No warning. No choice. No "legacy option," posted one redditor who said they deleted their ChatGPT Plus account. Another user posted that they canceled their account for the same reason.
As Mashable reported yesterday, GPT-5 integrates various OpenAI models into one platform, and ChatGPT will now choose the appropriate model based on the user's prompt. Clearly, some users miss the old system and models.
Ironically, OpenAI has also drawn criticism for having too many model options; GPT-5 was supposed to resolve this confusion by streamlining the previous models under GPT-5.
Sam Altman responds to the criticisms
When Altman and the team logged onto the AMA, they faced a barrage of demands to bring back GPT-4o.
"Ok, we hear you all on 4o," said Altman during the AMA. "Thanks for the time to give us the feedback (and the passion!). We are going to bring it back for Plus users, and will watch usage to determine how long to support it."
Altman also addressed feedback that GPT-5 seemed dumber than it should have been, explaining that the "autoswitcher" that determines which version of GPT-5 to use wasn't working. "GPT-5 will seem smarter starting today," he said. Altman also added that the chatbot will make it clearer which model is answering a user's prompt. OpenAI will double rate limits for ChatGPT Plus users once the rollout is finished.
“As we mentioned, we expected some bumpiness as we roll out so many things at once. But it was a little more bumpy than we hoped for!” Altman said in the AMA.
GPT-5 is an improvement, but not an exponential one
Expectations for GPT-5 could not have been higher — and that may be the real problem with GPT-5.
Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and author known for his research on neuroscience and artificial intelligence — and a well-known skeptic of the AI hype machine — wrote on his Substack that GPT-5 makes “Good progress on many fronts” but disappoints in others. Marcus noted that even after multi-billion-dollar investments, “GPT-5 is not the huge leap forward people long expected.”
The last time OpenAI released a frontier model was over two years ago with GPT-4. Since then, several competitors like Google Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, xAI's Grok, Meta's Llama, and DeepSeek R1 have caught up to OpenAI on benchmarks, similar agentic features, and user loyalty. For many, GPT-5 had the power to reinforce or topple OpenAI's reign as the AI leader.
With this in mind, it's inevitable that some users would be disappointed, and many ChatGPT users have shared positive reviews of GPT-5 as well. Time may blunt these criticisms as OpenAI makes improvements and tweaks to GPT-5. The company has also historically been responsive to user feedback, with Altman being very active on X.
"We currently believe the best way to successfully navigate AI deployment challenges is with a tight feedback loop of rapid learning and careful iteration," the company's mission statement avows.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
UPDATE: Aug. 8, 2025, 3:20 p.m. EDT This story has been updated with Sam Altman's responses from the Reddit AMA.
YouTube is officially rolling out its AI-assisted age verification next week to catch users who lie about their age.
YouTube announced in late July that it would start using artificial intelligence for age verification. And this week, 9to5Google reported that the new system will go into effect on Aug. 13.
The new system will "help provide the best and most age-appropriate experiences and protections," according to YouTube.
"Over the next few weeks, we’ll begin to roll out machine learning to a small set of users in the US to estimate their age, so that teens are treated as teens and adults as adults," wrote James Beser, Director of Product Management with YouTube Youth, in a blog post. "We’ll closely monitor this before we roll it out more widely. This technology will allow us to infer a user’s age and then use that signal, regardless of the birthday in the account, to deliver our age-appropriate product experiences and protections."
"We’ve used this approach in other markets for some time, where it is working well," Beser added.
The AI interprets a "variety of signals" to determine a user's age, including "the types of videos a user is searching for, the categories of videos they have watched, or the longevity of the account." If the system determines that a user is a teen, it will automatically apply age-appropriate experiences and protections. If the system incorrectly determines a user's age, the user will have to verify that they're over 18 with a government ID or credit card.
This comes at a time in which age verification efforts are ramping up across the world — and not without controversy. As Wired reported, when the UK began requiring residents to verify their ages before watching porn as part of the Online Safety Act, users immediately started using VPNs to get around the law.
Some platforms use face scanning or IDs, which can be easily faked. As generative AI gets more sophisticated, so will the ability to work around age verification tools. And, as Mashable previously reported, users are reasonably wary of giving too much of their private information to companies because of security breaches, as in the recent Tea app leak.
In theory, as Wired also reported, "age verification serves to keep kids safer." But, in reality, "the systems being put into place are flawed ones, both from a privacy and protection standpoint."
Samir Jain, vice president of policy at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology, told the Associated Press that age verification requirements "raise serious privacy and free expression concerns," including the "potential to upend access to First Amendment-protected speech on the internet for everyone, children and adults alike."
"If states are to go forward with these burdensome laws, age verification tools must be accurate and limit collection, sharing, and retention of personal information, particularly sensitive information like birthdate and biometric data," Jain told the news outlet.
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