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Basic security flaws left the personal info of tens of millions of McDonald’s job-seekers vulnerable on the “McHire” site built by AI softwa
If you want a job at McDonald’s today, there’s a good chance you'll have to talk to Olivia. Olivia is not, in fact, a human being, but instead an AI chatbot that screens applicants, asks for their contact information and résumé, directs them to a personality test, and occasionally makes them “go insane” by repeatedly misunderstanding their most basic questions.
Until last week, the platform that runs the Olivia chatbot, built by artificial intelligence software firm Paradox.ai, also suffered from absurdly basic security flaws. As a result, virtually any hacker could have accessed the records of every chat Olivia had ever had with McDonald's applicants—including all the personal information they shared in those conversations—with tricks as straightforward as guessing that an administrator account's username and password was “123456."
On Wednesday, security researchers Ian Carroll and Sam Curry revealed that they found simple methods to hack into the backend of the AI chatbot platform on McHire.com, McDonald's website that many of its franchisees use to handle job applications. Carroll and Curry, hackers with a long track record of independent security testing, discovered that simple web-based vulnerabilities—including guessing one laughably weak password—allowed them to access a Paradox.ai account and query the company's databases that held every McHire user's chats with Olivia. The data appears to include as many as 64 million records, including applicants' names, email addresses, and phone numbers.
Carroll says he only discovered that appalling lack of security around applicants' information because he was intrigued by McDonald's decision to subject potential new hires to an AI chatbot screener and personality test. “I just thought it was pretty uniquely dystopian compared to a normal hiring process, right? And that's what made me want to look into it more,” says Carroll. “So I started applying for a job, and then after 30 minutes, we had full access to virtually every application that's ever been made to McDonald's going back years.”
When WIRED reached out to McDonald’s and Paradox.ai for comment, a spokesperson for Paradox.ai shared a blog post the company planned to publish that confirmed Carroll and Curry’s findings. The company noted that only a fraction of the records Carroll and Curry accessed contained personal information, and said it had verified that the administrator account with the “123456” password that exposed the information “was not accessed by any third party” other than the researchers. The company also added that it’s instituting a bug bounty program to better catch security vulnerabilities in the future. “We do not take this matter lightly, even though it was resolved swiftly and effectively,” Paradox.ai’s chief legal officer, Stephanie King, told WIRED in an interview. “We own this.”
In its own statement to WIRED, McDonald’s agreed that Paradox.ai was to blame. “We’re disappointed by this unacceptable vulnerability from a third-party provider, Paradox.ai. As soon as we learned of the issue, we mandated Paradox.ai to remediate the issue immediately, and it was resolved on the same day it was reported to us,” the statement reads. “We take our commitment to cyber security seriously and will continue to hold our third-party providers accountable to meeting our standards of data protection.”
Carroll says he became interested in the security of the McHire website after spotting a Reddit post complaining about McDonald's hiring chatbot wasting applicants' time with nonsense responses and misunderstandings. He and Curry started talking to the chatbot themselves, testing it for “prompt injection” vulnerabilities that can enable someone to hijack a large language model and bypass its safeguards by sending it certain commands. When they couldn't find any such flaws, they decided to see what would happen if they signed up as a McDonald's franchisee to get access to the backend of the site, but instead spotted a curious login link on McHire.com for staff at Paradox.ai, the company that built the site.
On a whim, Carroll says he tried two of the most common sets of login credentials: The username and password “admin," and then the username and password “123456.” The second of those two tries worked. “It's more common than you'd think,” Carroll says. There appeared to be no multifactor authentication for that Paradox.ai login page.
With those credentials, Carroll and Curry could see they now had administrator access to a test McDonald's “restaurant” on McHire, and they figured out all the employees listed there appeared to be Paradox.ai developers, seemingly based in Vietnam. They found a link within the platform to apparent test job postings for that nonexistent McDonald's location, clicked on one posting, applied to it, and could see their own application on the backend system they now had access to. (In its blog post, Paradox.ai notes that the test account had “not been logged into since 2019 and frankly, should have been decommissioned.”)
That's when Carroll and Curry discovered the second critical vulnerability in McHire: When they started messing with the applicant ID number for their application—a number somewhere above 64 million—they found that they could increment it down to a smaller number and see someone else's chat logs and contact information.
The two security researchers hesitated to access too many applicants' records for fear of privacy violations or hacking charges, but when they spot-checked a handful of the 64-million-plus IDs, all of them showed very real applicant information. (Paradox.ai says that the researchers accessed seven records in total, and five contained personal information of people who had interacted with the McHire site.) Carroll and Curry also shared with WIRED a small sample of the applicants' names, contact information, and the date of their applications. WIRED got in touch with two applicants via their exposed contact information, and they confirmed they had applied for jobs at McDonald's on the specified dates.
The personal information exposed by Paradox.ai's security lapses isn't the most sensitive, Carroll and Curry note. But the risk for the applicants, they argue, was heightened by the fact that the data is associated with the knowledge of their employment at McDonald's—or their intention to get a job there. “Had someone exploited this, the phishing risk would have actually been massive,” says Curry. “It's not just people's personally identifiable information and résumé. It's that information for people who are looking for a job at McDonald's, people who are eager and waiting for emails back.”
That means the data could have been used by fraudsters impersonating McDonald's recruiters and asking for financial information to set up a direct deposit, for instance. “If you wanted to do some sort of payroll scam, this is a good approach,” Curry says.
The exposure of applicants' attempts—and in some cases failures—to get what is often a minimum-wage job could also be a source of embarrassment, the two hackers point out. But Carroll notes that he would never suggest that anyone should be ashamed of working under the Golden Arches.
“I have nothing but respect for McDonald’s workers,” he says. “I go to McDonald's all the time.”
oh the concept of gabi being full on "mr. lover boy" and at the age of 15 convincing his whole family to travel to the same place isa's family (without her knowing) just because he liked her is SO endearing to me
like isa saying: "When I was 15, we started getting closer, and at 16 we started dating. He was already watching me, but I was always careful. I never paid much attention, but he was very persistent (laughs).”
and gabi confirming it: “Brazilians don't give up, right? (laughs). When you want something in life, you have to go after it. I've always been like that with everything, and it wasn't going to be any different with her.”
via this interview ⬇️
i have a lot of free time so i translated the whole interview if anyone wants to read it 🙃
" Bortoleto and his Brazilian girlfriend split their time between F1 and Computer Science
In an exclusive interview with ge, Gabriel Bortoleto and Isabella Bernardini talk about how they support each other's careers: he as an F1 driver and she as a computer science engineer.
Arriving in F1 changes the life of a driver and everyone around them, but in recent years one category in particular has had to adapt even more to the fan spotlight: the drivers' girlfriends. With the trend of humanizing the sport, the highest category of world motorsports has expanded the coverage of life outside the tracks and, thus, they gain more prominence, including in TV or social networks of teams and drivers.
With Brazil's return to the grid with Gabriel Bortoleto, the spotlight is also on a young computer science student: Isabella Bernardini from São Paulo. The two met at school, in São Paulo, and have been dating for almost five years.
With Bortoleto's good performance in the 2025 season, Isabella became a highlight in official F1 broadcasts, gaining public sympathy for her spontaneous reactions, smiling with happiness at each successful performance of her boyfriend. But what few fans know is that, in addition to supporting the driver at each GP, The 21-year-old from São Paulo also impresses with her dedication to a career that requires as much discipline as that of a pilot: computer science.
After completing high school in Brazil, she went to study in the Netherlands, at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), and is now an intern at a startup, working on projects involving, among other technologies, artificial intelligence, as he explained in an exclusive conversation with ge in Zandvoort, where he watched the Dutch F1 GP:
'I was always a good student, getting straight A's on my tests. I always prepared for my career in computer science and engineering, so I studied hard. And that helps me a lot now. In college, we learn to think like a computer to do what we want. That's what I love most about my field: innovation. My dream is to help people with this technology, to use our skills.'
This year, Isabella is participating in a project to develop an application that helps visually impaired people use navigation systems through an audio interface.
But of course, the routine also includes more travel to follow Bortoleto's debut year in F1 – and the sudden arrival of fame through TV broadcasts:
'It was all unexpected and new to me. But I'm happy for this recognition for Gabriel, because he always fought to be in F1. When we started dating, we were just two kids who dreamed big in life. He was still in F4, and I also had no idea that I would be able to study computer science in Europe. He and I are focused and we support each other in our careers, and that's why it works. I'm very proud to be by his side on this journey in F1, and at the same time he also supports my career, my studies... that's very important to me' - added the young woman.
The two met as high school students in São Paulo. Bortoleto points to this support throughout their careers as one of the greatest strengths of their relationship, as explained the driver:
'We've been together for five years, and she's supported me every step of the way. And I also do everything I can to support her career. I'm pursuing my dream of being in F1 and one day fighting for the world title. And she's helping people with her computer science career. She's very studious. It's one of the things I love about her. A person who excels not only in her studies, but in everything she wants in life, she tries really hard. And she knows me, and knows when I'm upset, or too happy, or when I'm pushing myself harder than I should. She helps me manage those emotions.'
Despite studying at the same school, the two only met a few years later – and Isabela remembers that Bortoleto's already well-known persistence and determination on the track also applies to her life.
'We went to the same school, but we were never very close. I remember he missed a lot of school because of go-kart racing. But he didn't really enjoy school, whereas I was always a good student. Then, when I was 15, we started getting closer, and at 16 we started dating. He was already watching me, but I was always careful. I never paid much attention to him, but he was very persistent (laughs).'
Bortoleto confirmed Isabella's version:
'Brazilians don't give up, right? (laughs). When you want something in life, you have to go after it. I've always been like that with everything, and it wasn't going to be any different with her.'
The first meeting was arranged when the pilot discovered, through mutual friends, that Isabella and her family would be on a beach vacation – and Bortoleto convinced his family to travel along.
'On this first date, we talked from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m., just talking, it was really cool. That's when I started to admire him more and more and we've been together ever since' - remembers the student.
Of course, a long-distance relationship requires extra dedication from both parties, but the fact that Isabella and Gabriel having a dream of building a career in Europe ended up helping to strengthen the couple, as the student explains.
'From the beginning, it was a long distance. First, he was in Italy and I was in Brazil. Then I went to the Netherlands to study, and that ended up helping, as it's easier to meet him in Europe with his competitions. We knew the distance would be difficult, but we took it very lightly. We learned to give each other security. I always try to come to the races, but I have my study routine, but we have to know how to balance it.'
Bortoleto also highlights this complicity since the first years of the relationship.
'We dated long distance for the first two years, when she lived in Brazil and I lived in Europe. We were very young too. It's a complicated time because it's a time of personality adaptation and growth. But we knew what we wanted from each other and managed to maintain it in the best possible way. We grew up together. She understands me very well and helps me in many ways. I love spending my days with her and being with her. I'm sure we'll be together for a long time.'
Bortoleto's career in F1 and Isabella's in computer science are just beginning, but judging by the dedication, effort and love involved since they set their dreams as a goal, success must come quickly – at the speed of an F1 car. "
I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.
I think it behooves us to be a little skeptical of stories about AI driving people to believe wrong things and commit ugly actions. Not that I like the AI slop that is filling up our social media, but when we look at the ways that AI is harming us, slop is pretty low on the list.
The real AI harms come from the actual things that AI companies sell AI to do. There's the AI gun-detector gadgets that the credulous Mayor Eric Adams put in NYC subways, which led to 2,749 invasive searches and turned up zero guns:
Any time AI is used to predict crime – predictive policing, bail determinations, Child Protective Services red flags – they magnify the biases already present in these systems, and, even worse, they give this bias the veneer of scientific neutrality. This process is called "empiricism-washing," and you know you're experiencing it when you hear some variation on "it's just math, math can't be racist":
When AI is used to replace customer service representatives, it systematically defrauds customers, while providing an "accountability sink" that allows the company to disclaim responsibility for the thefts:
When AI is used to perform high-velocity "decision support" that is supposed to inform a "human in the loop," it quickly overwhelms its human overseer, who takes on the role of "moral crumple zone," pressing the "OK" button as fast as they can. This is bad enough when the sacrificial victim is a human overseeing, say, proctoring software that accuses remote students of cheating on their tests:
But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment. Those AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients:
My point is that "worrying about AI" is a zero-sum game. When we train our fire on the stuff that isn't important to the AI stock swindlers' business-plans (like creating AI slop), we should remember that the AI companies could halt all of that activity and not lose a dime in revenue. By contrast, when we focus on AI applications that do the most direct harm – policing, health, security, customer service – we also focus on the AI applications that make the most money and drive the most investment.
AI hasn't attracted hundreds of billions in investment capital because investors love AI slop. All the money pouring into the system – from investors, from customers, from easily gulled big-city mayors – is chasing things that AI is objectively very bad at and those things also cause much more harm than AI slop. If you want to be a good AI critic, you should devote the majority of your focus to these applications. Sure, they're not as visually arresting, but discrediting them is financially arresting, and that's what really matters.
All that said: AI slop is real, there is a lot of it, and just because it doesn't warrant priority over the stuff AI companies actually sell, it still has cultural significance and is worth considering.
AI slop has turned Facebook into an anaerobic lagoon of botshit, just the laziest, grossest engagement bait, much of it the product of rise-and-grind spammers who avidly consume get rich quick "courses" and then churn out a torrent of "shrimp Jesus" and fake chainsaw sculptures:
For poor engagement farmers in the global south chasing the fractional pennies that Facebook shells out for successful clickbait, the actual content of the slop is beside the point. These spammers aren't necessarily tuned into the psyche of the wealthy-world Facebook users who represent Meta's top monetization subjects. They're just trying everything and doubling down on anything that moves the needle, A/B splitting their way into weird, hyper-optimized, grotesque crap:
In other words, Facebook's AI spammers are laying out a banquet of arbitrary possibilities, like the letters on a Ouija board, and the Facebook users' clicks and engagement are a collective ideomotor response, moving the algorithm's planchette to the options that tug hardest at our collective delights (or, more often, disgusts).
So, rather than thinking of AI spammers as creating the ideological and aesthetic trends that drive millions of confused Facebook users into condemning, praising, and arguing about surreal botshit, it's more true to say that spammers are discovering these trends within their subjects' collective yearnings and terrors, and then refining them by exploring endlessly ramified variations in search of unsuspected niches.
(If you know anything about AI, this may remind you of something: a Generative Adversarial Network, in which one bot creates variations on a theme, and another bot ranks how closely the variations approach some ideal. In this case, the spammers are the generators and the Facebook users they evince reactions from are the discriminators)
I got to thinking about this today while reading User Mag, Taylor Lorenz's superb newsletter, and her reporting on a new AI slop trend, "My neighbor’s ridiculous reason for egging my car":
The "egging my car" slop consists of endless variations on a story in which the poster (generally a figure of sympathy, canonically a single mother of newborn twins) complains that her awful neighbor threw dozens of eggs at her car to punish her for parking in a way that blocked his elaborate Hallowe'en display. The text is accompanied by an AI-generated image showing a modest family car that has been absolutely plastered with broken eggs, dozens upon dozens of them.
According to Lorenz, variations on this slop are topping very large Facebook discussion forums totalling millions of users, like "Movie Character…,USA Story, Volleyball Women, Top Trends, Love Style, and God Bless." These posts link to SEO sites laden with programmatic advertising.
The funnel goes:
i. Create outrage and hence broad reach;
ii, A small percentage of those who see the post will click through to the SEO site;
iii. A small fraction of those users will click a low-quality ad;
iv. The ad will pay homeopathic sub-pennies to the spammer.
The revenue per user on this kind of scam is next to nothing, so it only works if it can get very broad reach, which is why the spam is so designed for engagement maximization. The more discussion a post generates, the more users Facebook recommends it to.
These are very effective engagement bait. Almost all AI slop gets some free engagement in the form of arguments between users who don't know they're commenting an AI scam and people hectoring them for falling for the scam. This is like the free square in the middle of a bingo card.
Beyond that, there's multivalent outrage: some users are furious about food wastage; others about the poor, victimized "mother" (some users are furious about both). Not only do users get to voice their fury at both of these imaginary sins, they can also argue with one another about whether, say, food wastage even matters when compared to the petty-minded aggression of the "perpetrator." These discussions also offer lots of opportunity for violent fantasies about the bad guy getting a comeuppance, offers to travel to the imaginary AI-generated suburb to dole out a beating, etc. All in all, the spammers behind this tedious fiction have really figured out how to rope in all kinds of users' attention.
Of course, the spammers don't get much from this. There isn't such a thing as an "attention economy." You can't use attention as a unit of account, a medium of exchange or a store of value. Attention – like everything else that you can't build an economy upon, such as cryptocurrency – must be converted to money before it has economic significance. Hence that tooth-achingly trite high-tech neologism, "monetization."
The monetization of attention is very poor, but AI is heavily subsidized or even free (for now), so the largest venture capital and private equity funds in the world are spending billions in public pension money and rich peoples' savings into CO2 plumes, GPUs, and botshit so that a bunch of hustle-culture weirdos in the Pacific Rim can make a few dollars by tricking people into clicking through engagement bait slop – twice.
The slop isn't the point of this, but the slop does have the useful function of making the collective ideomotor response visible and thus providing a peek into our hopes and fears. What does the "egging my car" slop say about the things that we're thinking about?
Lorenz cites Jamie Cohen, a media scholar at CUNY Queens, who points out that subtext of this slop is "fear and distrust in people about their neighbors." Cohen predicts that "the next trend, is going to be stranger and more violent.”
This feels right to me. The corollary of mistrusting your neighbors, of course, is trusting only yourself and your family. Or, as Margaret Thatcher liked to say, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."
We are living in the tail end of a 40 year experiment in structuring our world as though "there is no such thing as society." We've gutted our welfare net, shut down or privatized public services, all but abolished solidaristic institutions like unions.
This isn't mere aesthetics: an atomized society is far more hospitable to extreme wealth inequality than one in which we are all in it together. When your power comes from being a "wise consumer" who "votes with your wallet," then all you can do about the climate emergency is buy a different kind of car – you can't build the public transit system that will make cars obsolete.
When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about animal cruelty and habitat loss is eat less meat. When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about high drug prices is "shop around for a bargain." When you vote with your wallet, all you can do when your bank forecloses on your home is "choose your next lender more carefully."
Most importantly, when you vote with your wallet, you cast a ballot in an election that the people with the thickest wallets always win. No wonder those people have spent so long teaching us that we can't trust our neighbors, that there is no such thing as society, that we can't have nice things. That there is no alternative.
The commercial surveillance industry really wants you to believe that they're good at convincing people of things, because that's a good way to sell advertising. But claims of mind-control are pretty goddamned improbable – everyone who ever claimed to have managed the trick was lying, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA:
Rather than seeing these platforms as convincing people of things, we should understand them as discovering and reinforcing the ideology that people have been driven to by material conditions. Platforms like Facebook show us to one another, let us form groups that can imperfectly fill in for the solidarity we're desperate for after 40 years of "no such thing as society."
The most interesting thing about "egging my car" slop is that it reveals that so many of us are convinced of two contradictory things: first, that everyone else is a monster who will turn on you for the pettiest of reasons; and second, that we're all the kind of people who would stick up for the victims of those monsters.
Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
A/B Testing
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)
AGI Acceleration
AI Accelerators
AI Affordances
AI Cognitive Pattern
AI Cognitive Spirit
AI Command Palette
AI Companion
AI Copiloting
AI Feature Design
AI Governance
AI Leading States
AI Literacy
AI Models
AI Partner
AI Product Design
AI Product Management
AI Prompting
AI Safety
AI Strategy
AI Suggestions Patterns
AI Watermarking
AI Wireframing
AI as Assistant
AI as Collaborator
AI as Creative Partner
AI as Infrastructure
AI as Medium
AI as Mirror
AI as Substrate
AI as Tool
AI as Toy
AI as Utility
AI-Augmented Design
AI-Generated Content Detection
AI-Native Design
AI-Powered Search
API (Application Programming Interface)
ASI (Artificial Superintelligence)
Accepted/Reject Flow
Adaptive UI
Adversarial Examples
Agent
Agent Builders
Agents Loop
Alignment
Ambient AI
Appropriateness Reliance
Assistance
Automation
Automation Spectrum
Autonomous Agent
Autonomous Vehicle
Autopilot Mode
BMOA (Biggest Method of AI-Driven Development)
Bias & Fairness
Black Box
Browser Use
C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity)
CV (Computer Vision)
Capability Elicitation
Career Modalities
Chain of Thought
Client AI
Cloud AI
Cognitive Load
Cognitive Offloading
Collaboration
Compute Use
Computer Use
Conscience
Consent
Considerate Display
Content Models
Content Moderation
Context
Control
Copilot Mode
DL (deep learning)
DL Engines
Data Labeling
Data Poisoning
Data Privacy
Dataset Bias
Dataset Curation
Design Automation
Design Education
Design for AI
Design for AI/AGI
Digital Provenance
Digital Twin
EUI/AI
Embedded AI
Embodied AI
Emergent Capabilities
Empathy with AI
Ethics
Evaluation
Explainable AI
Fairness Metrics
Fake News
Few-Shot Prompting
Fine-Tuning
Foundation Model
Free Speech
GOFAI (Good Old-Fashioned AI)
GenAI Interns
Generative AI
Generative Design
Grounding
Hallucination
Harness
Human in the Loop
Human-Centered AI
Human-on-the-Loop
Image Generation
Image-to-Image
Image-to-Text
Inference Efficiency
Inference Engine
Intent Classification
Intent Detection
Interface
JSON Mode
Justifiable Risk
LLM (Large Language Model)
LLMOps (Large Language Model Operations)
LLMs (Large Language Models)
Latency of Computation
Latency of Response
Meta-Prompt
Meta-Prompting
Model Drift
Model Hallucination
Model Misuse
Model Poisoning
Model Training
Model Use
Multi-modal
Multi-modal Interface
NLP (Natural Language Processing)
NSAI (Neural Symbolic AI)
NSFW Filter
Open Source
Open Source AI
PEFT (Parameter Efficient Fine-Tuning)
Personalization
Personalized AI
Plan Mode
Plans/Planning
Post-Training
Pre-Training
Predictive UI
Proactive AI
Proactive AI DESIGN
Progress Disclosure
Prompt
Prompt Chaining
Prompt Debugging
Prompt Design
Prompt Engineering
Prompt Evaluation
Prompt Injection
Prompt Injection Mitigation
Prompt Libraries
Prompt Literacy
Prompt Template
Prompt Versioning
Prompting
Push vs Pull
RAI (Responsible AI)
RAS (Retrieval Augmented Generation)
RLF
RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback)
Recommendation Engine
Reinforced Learning
Reinforcement Learning
Response/AI
Roles & Tone
Rules
Safety Filters
Semantic Search
Shadows Mode
Silicon Use
Speculative Design for AI
Speech
Stochastic Prompt
Streaming Text Effect
Structure
Subagents
Subtasks
Supervised Learning
Supervision & Oversight
Symbolic AI
Synthetic Data
Synthetic Users
System Prompt
Task Delegation
Taxonomy of Agents
Temperature
Text-to-3D
Text-to-Code
Text-to-Image
Text-to-Speech
Text-to-Video
Throughput
Tokens
Tool Use
Top-k Sampling
Toxicity Detection
Training
Transfer Learning
Transformer
Transparency
Trust
Trust Calibration
Unlabeled/Raw AI
Unsupervised Learning
Usability
Vector Search
Voice
Voice Interface
Voice Language Model
Voice Recognition
Weights
Workflow Automation
Workflows
Zero-Shot Prompting
because the show tells me U.A is notoriously hard to pass but i don't believe it. (why that fucking pervert passed??)
so i created a new one. ;)
The new U.A. entrance exam is a two-phase, high-risk simulation designed to test applicants not only on their abilities, but on their instincts, character, and response to real-world crisis.
At first, candidates participate in what appears to be a traditional entrance trial, often a combat course, obstacle run, or rescue mission. It is structured, scored, and monitored. This is the decoy phase, intentionally designed to make students believe it’s the full exam.
However, once the first phase ends and applicants believe they’ve completed the test, the environment is abruptly disrupted by an unexpected, large-scale emergency. This could be a villain attack, a natural disaster, a sabotage event, or a moral dilemma, all randomized, unscripted, and unique to each batch.
This is the true exam.
Applicants are assessed on:
* Initiative and leadership
* Quick thinking and emotional control
* Moral integrity
* Instinctive heroism
Not strength alone.
so my baby shinso could pass
The simulation is randomized and different for each group.
It utilizes:
* Professional actors (often Pro Heroes or upperclassmen)
* Artificial intelligence systems
* Dynamic, destructible environments
All to simulate a real-life crisis with maximum unpredictability.
Key features:
* No scoreboards, rankings, or explicit instructions.
* Students are observed on decision-making, initiative, morality, and response under pressure not power level.
* Success is not based on defeating a threat, but demonstrating authentic hero instinct and leadership without external validation.
* Failure to act, reckless behavior, or prioritizing personal gain results in immediate disqualification.
Participants are not informed that the scenario is the exam until it concludes.
Passing is definitely rare now
Criteria
Instinctive Heroism – 20%
Moral Judgment Under Pressure – 15%
Adaptability & Resourcefulness– 15%
Leadership & Teamwork – 15%
Emotional Control – 10%
Situational Awareness – 10%
Resilience– 10%
Ethical Consistency– 5%
U.A Clubs
This was mentioned once in the show. But i liked the idea so here are my proposals
(if you have more ideas tell me)
Hero-Focused Clubs
-Clubs that enhance hero skills outside of class.
1. Hero Costume Fashion Club
Designs and tailors hero suits, studies iconic hero looks, and creates costumes.
> Perfect for Support Course x Hero Course collabs!
2. Villain Psychology Watch
Students analyze villain behavior, motivations, and strategies.
> Often invited to hero analysis discussions or debate ethics.
I legitimately cannot stop thinking about the whole genetic engineering thing so here is a small talk (take everything I say with a grain of salt, i'm a literature type not a science type :)
First, we have to clear up a few things - I've seen many a misconception in this fandom that the Rats are robots, bionic in the way that the six million dollar man/bionic woman or even Leo are, or just enhanced humans (à la Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes). I can see why this is common, since genetic engineering - ESPECIALLY embryo or fetal genetic engineering is incredibly difficult to wrap one's head around. So I want to explain - with the internet's help - what genetic engineering is.
The National Human Genome Research Institute defines Genetic Engineering as "a process that uses laboratory-based technologies to alter the DNA makeup of an organism. This may involve changing a single base pair (A-T or C-G) deleting a region of DNA or adding a new segment of DNA." (if you've taken a basic biology course, the term "base pair" should be familiar). So for example, gene therapy to cure diseases, gene doping for athletic performance and basic modifications like memory, looks, or even intelligence can all be changed using genetic engineering. But these instances are all on already born humans - so what about fetal or embryonic genetic engineering?
This type of engineering would most likely happen in vitro - as in a culture dish, test tube, etc (think IVF.) now, in the real world, in utero gene editing is YEARS away. The only real editing of this type allowed is for diseases that would cause harm to the fetus now or in the future, and there are a lot of problems that come with the idea of fetal gene editing - a lot of people think about "designer babies", or babies who had their features chosen by their parents in utero. There are big risks and controvery surrounding fetal genetic engineering, especially heritable genetic engineering because of the damage it could cause down the line. Donald explicitly states in the show that this is the type of genetic engineering done with Adam, Bree, and Chase, which causes me to think it was another reason he protested Douglas's experiments with them.
We know that Douglas is the biological father of the rats. He says so himself, meaning that it is his sperm and his DNA as the base of their genetics (we can also tell because Chase and Bree look very similar to him, and Adam looks similar to Donald). But if i'm correct in saying it, this kind of genetic engineering also takes a "mother" of sorts - or, at the very least, an egg to create the embryo. So to create the rats, Douglas probably would have had to comb through many a Davenport industries employee or possible applicant to find the genetically perfect one and also find someone willing to go through with it and BOY this is sounding a little like eugenics, huh? I'm going to focus a little less on that aspect and a little more on the "I don't want my soldiers to come out as little blocks of flesh, let me make them perfect" aspect.
After the embryos are created (yes, embryos, you're going to need more than one), Douglas would have then had to comb through the DNA of every single one, pick the perfect base, and edit every gene by basically "cutting" and "implanting" (in basic words) the features he wanted the child to have, and then either put them in an artificial womb or a real womb (though judging by his slight laziness and probable easy access to a real womb, I'm going to guess he went that route.)
Now, I theorize that all of the siblings - or at least Chase - are autistic. But that couldn't possibly go along with the perfect embryo, right? Well, autism cannot be tested for until after birth. and seeing as Douglas is likely autistic, the rats definitely have a chance of inheriting it. Especially Chase, seeing as how his brain was probably tinkered with in the embryonic stage.
Keep in mind, he is doing this completely behind his brother's back, in their SHARED company. He was kicked out because of these experiments. And Chase is with the rats, so Adam would have had to be at least a year or two old before they were taken to safety, but add in Daniel, and the years they were ALIVE and OUT OF UTERO before they were discovered is a little crazy. Not to mention - Adam, being the first, is almost an experiment. No telling how he'd come out and if the bionic transfer would work (a topic for another time) or if it would kill him. this little "experiment" was unethical in every conceivable way. (Now calling them "Lab Rats" is a little creepier, isn't it?)
Again, I'm no scientist, so if any of this is wrong, PLEASE tell me. This is just my best interpretation of the information I was given.
Researchers racing to develop bird flu vaccines for humans have turned to a cutting-edge technology that enabled the rapid development of li
Stephanie Armour at KFF Health News, via AlterNet:
Researchers racing to develop bird flu vaccines for humans have turned to a cutting-edge technology that enabled the rapid development of lifesaving covid shots.
There’s a catch: The mRNA technology faces growing doubts among Republicans, including people around President Donald Trump.
Legislation aimed to ban or limit mRNA vaccines was introduced this year by GOP lawmakers in at least seven states. In some cases, the measures would hit doctors who give the injections with criminal penalties, fines, and possible revocation of their licenses.
Some congressional Republicans are also pressing regulators to revoke federal approval for mRNA-based covid shots, which President Donald Trump touted as one of the signature achievements of his first term.
The opposition comes at a critical juncture because vaccines using mRNA have applications well beyond avian flu and covid. They hold the promise of lifesaving breakthroughs to treat many diseases, from melanoma to HIV to Zika, according to clinical trials. The proposed bans could block access to these advances.
MRNA is found naturally in human cells. It is a molecule that carries genetic material and, in a vaccine, trains the body’s immune system to fight viruses, cancer cells, and other conditions. An advantage of mRNA technology is that it can be developed more quickly to target specific variants and is safer than developing a vaccine made from inactivated virus.
“Right now, if we had a bird flu pandemic, we would have a shortage of the vaccine we need,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “The one thing that could save us is mRNA vaccine. The challenge would be if mRNA is banned. This is truly dangerous policy.”
The pushback conflicts with innovations championed by Trump. He assembled tech tycoons at the White House just after his inauguration to announce Stargate, a $500 billion artificial intelligence initiative that could help transform cancer treatment by creating tumor-targeting mRNA vaccines. The fledging partnership between Oracle, SoftBank Corp., and OpenAI, co-founded by Elon Musk, envisions leveraging AI in part to improve health outcomes. Patients would undergo blood tests and AI would be used to find cancer.
[...]
But some politically conservative doctors, lawmakers, and researchers question the safety of mRNA vaccines, especially covid shots made with the technology. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unsuccessfully petitioned the FDA in 2021 to rescind approval for covid shots and called them “the deadliest vaccine ever made” — a controversial statement that has been refuted.
Now that he’s newly confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy is poised to oversee federal approvals of vaccines, with the power to shape policy such as immunization schedules and appoint vaccine opponents to committees that advise on the approval of shots.
[...]
Support for an mRNA ban is coming from other sources too. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on March 5 urged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending the covid-19 vaccine for children and called for a state ban on mRNA vaccine mandates. In February, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said on X that the “FDA should immediately revoke approval of these shots,” and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is leading an investigation into the safety of the vaccines. Trump in February signed an order to strip federal funds from schools that require covid shots for attendance.
Vaccine skepticism has become pronounced among Republicans since the pandemic. Four in 10 Republicans who responded to a KFF poll published in January said it was “probably” or “definitely true” that “more people have died from covid-19 vaccines than from the virus itself.” Just a quarter of Republicans reported holding that view in 2023.
[...]
Networks of Opposition
Groups opposed to the mRNA technology have built a vast and well-funded legal, marketing, and social media network. Members hold conferences to discuss strategies, fund lawsuits against vaccine mandates, and produce reports on the covid vaccines.
As for state legislative efforts, measures introduced this year have varied and their progress has been mixed. Montana’s measure, for instance, was blocked. Idaho lawmakers in February held a hearing on its bill, which calls for a 10-year moratorium on mRNA vaccines. Idaho’s proposal, likely to be amended, as well as Iowa’s and Montana’s have featured criminal penalties for providers who administer all or certain mRNA vaccines. In addition, some state bills, such as legislation in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, focused on the use of the vaccine in livestock and food production.
Various bills are pending in the Texas Legislature to restrict mRNA vaccines in both livestock and humans. South Carolina’s pending bill would require anyone administering certain covid mRNA vaccines to inform patients that the shot is contaminated with fragments of “bacterial plasmid DNA.”
Covid mRNA shots may have minute amounts of residual DNA from production processes but they are heavily degraded and pose no risk, according to the Global Vaccine Data Network, which evaluates vaccine safety concerns.
Speakers at some legislative proceedings have included representatives from Children’s Health Defense, an activist, anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy.
The Florida surgeon general in January 2024 called for a halt in the use of covid mRNA vaccines. And in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton in January moved to appeal a lawsuit he filed claiming Pfizer misrepresented the safety of its mRNA shot.
Efforts to restrict the shots have raised the profile of groups such as the Independent Medical Alliance, which advocates for mRNA-based covid vaccines to be withdrawn from the market.
The normalization of anti-vaxxer sentiment in a sizable chunk of the GOP in recent years is leading to disastrous consequences, such as the recent attacks on mRNA technology used for vaccinations.
