theguardian.com

The high intelligence levels of orangutans have long been recognised, partly due to their practical skills such as using tools to retrieve seeds and forage for insects. But new research suggests the primate has another handy skill in its repertoire: applying medicinal herbs.

Researchers say they have observed a male Sumatran orangutan treating an open facial wound with sap and chewed leaves from a plant known to have anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties.

insideprecisionmedicine.com

Researchers at the University of Florida report they have developed an mRNA cancer vaccine that quickly reprograms the immune system to attack glioblastoma in a first-ever human clinical trial of four adult patients.

Their results published in Cell mirror those from preclinical mouse studies, and from a newly reported trial with the mRNA vaccine in 10 pet dogs that developed spontaneous brain tumors. The dogs’ owners had approved their animals’ treatment using the new vaccine as there were no other therapy options. The researchers say the aim is to progress the mRNA vaccine into an expanded Phase I clinical trial involving adult and pediatric brain cancer patients.

arstechnica.com

Some time next year, NASA believes SpaceX will be ready to link two Starships in orbit for an ambitious refueling demonstration, a technical feat that will put the Moon within reach.

SpaceX is under contract with NASA to supply two human-rated Starships for the first two astronaut landings on the Moon through the agency's Artemis program, which aims to return people to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. The first of these landings, on NASA's Artemis III mission, is currently targeted for 2026, although this is widely viewed as an ambitious schedule.

apnews.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, The Associated Press has learned, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country.

The proposal, which still must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would recognize the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation’s most dangerous drugs. However, it would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use.

honest-broker.com

In recent weeks, I’ve published a series of articles on “dopamine culture”—the fast-paced scrolling and swiping behavior promoted by Big Tech.

I’ve argued that they are doing this to instill addictive behavior. These interfaces operate like slot machines at a casino, providing a dopamine boost every few seconds. The goal is to keep users’ eyes glued to their screens—thus maximizing advertising revenues.

The leader in this movement is TikTok. But the other major platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) are imitating its fast-paced video reels.

theins.ru

GRU Unit 29155, Russia’s assassination and sabotage squad, blew up ammunition warehouses in Czechia. It had help from Elena and Nikolai Šapošnikov, a family of deep-cover spies working as arms dealers.
…
They are Russian “illegals,” or spies operating outside of diplomatic cover, who spent decades living under false pretenses as naturalized citizens of Czechia.

phys.org

Researchers at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica have found seven signals that could potentially indicate tau neutrinos—which are famously hard to detect—from astrophysical objects.
Neutrinos are some of the most elusive particles to detect due to their extremely low mass and weak interactions with matter. One of the reasons why scientists are interested in these particles is their ability to travel long distances, which means they can hold information about astrophysical processes and objects happening far away from us.

newscientist.com

A nuclear fusion reaction has overcome two key barriers to operating in a “sweet spot” needed for optimal power production: boosting the plasma density and keeping that denser plasma contained. The milestone is yet another stepping stone towards fusion power, although a commercial reactor is still probably years away.

One of the main avenues being explored in efforts to achieve fusion power is using tokamak reactors. These have a doughnut-shaped chamber where plasma hotter than the surface of our sun is contained by vast magnets.

jalopnik.com

Things are not going well at Tesla right now. The stock is down more than $100 per share year-to-date, as many as 20,000 people are set to lose their jobs, the Cybertruck keeps breaking, operating profit is expected to be down 40 percent when it’s announced later today and the $25,000 electric vehicle that Tesla has reportedly been working on is apparently canceled. As the Wall Street Journal reports, some but not all of that stress can be attributed to Tesla alienating what was previously its most valuable demographic — Democrats.

breakingdefense.com

WASHINGTON — Defense startup Anduril and drone maker General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) have been picked by the Air Force to build and test drone prototypes for the next phase of the service’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, the Air Force announced tonight.

The Air Force’s decision winnows down a pool of five competitors to two. As a result, three other vendors — Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman — have been eliminated from the running.

theverge.com

President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to divest the app within a year.

The divest-or-ban bill is now law, starting the clock for ByteDance to make its move. The company has an initial nine months to sort out a deal, though the president could extend that another three months if he sees progress.

ftc.gov

Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism, including from the more than 8,500 new startups that would be created a year once noncompetes are banned,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market.

apnews.com

NAPLES, Italy (AP) — Europe is the fastest-warming continent and its temperatures are rising at roughly twice the global average, two top climate monitoring organizations reported Monday, warning of the consequences for human health, glacier melt and economic activity.

The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s climate agency, Copernicus, said in a joint report that the continent has the opportunity to develop targeted strategies to speed up the transition to renewable resources like wind, solar and hydroelectric power in response to the effects of climate change.

yahoo.com

The Chinese government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace the virus from the first weeks of the outbreak, despite statements supporting open scientific inquiry, an Associated Press investigation found. That pattern continues to this day, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.

text.npr.org

TikTok is now hurtling toward what is perhaps its biggest threat yet in the U.S.

The House on Saturday passed legislation that could trigger a nationwide ban of TikTok if its Chinese owner does not sell the video app. The Senate could vote on the bill as soon as Tuesday.

While lawmakers in the House advanced a similar bill last month, this effort is different for two reasons: It is attached to a sweeping foreign aid bill providing support for Ukraine and Israel. And it addresses concerns from some members of the Senate by extending the deadline for TikTok to find a buyer.

apnews.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Saturday signed legislation reauthorizing a key U.S. surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data nearly forced the statute to lapse.

Barely missing its midnight deadline, the Senate had approved the bill by a 60-34 vote hours earlier with bipartisan support, extending for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Biden thanked congressional leaders for their work.

theregister.com

The US Air Force Test Pilot School and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) claim to have achieved a breakthrough in machine learning by demonstrating that AI software can fly a modified F-16 fighter jet in a dogfight against human pilots.

The claims rest on the USAF and DARPA implementing machine learning in an X-62A VISTA, a plane built as a testbed as it can mimic the performance of other aircraft, and recognition of their work as one of four finalists for the National Aeronautic Association's 2023 Robert J. Collier Trophy, an annual award for exceptional feats of aeronautics or astronautics in America.

"The potential for autonomous air-to-air combat has been imaginable for decades, but the reality has remained a distant dream up until now," said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. "In 2023, the X-62A broke one of the most significant barriers in combat aviation. This is a transformational moment, all made possible by breakthrough accomplishments."

This is great news for the US ruling class who won’t need to rely on trained pilots conforming to their orders.
Soon they can simply use their killer robots.

jpost.com

A senior US official also confirmed the attack, stating that "We were not surprised."

An Israeli drone strike targeted Iranian air force assets at Isfahan in central Iran early Friday morning, two Israeli defense officials and three Iranian officials confirmed to The New York Times, although there were some initial contradictory reports that the strike was carried out by long-range attack missiles, which Jerusalem also possesses.

latimes.com For more than two years, as this country of 44 million people has fought off an all-out invasion by neighboring Russia, a spirit of stubborn optimism prevailed even amid the most frightening moments. Any notion of defeat was unthinkable, an almost taboo topic.

But now the question hovers, flitting in and out of view: What if?

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

The FCC is set to vote on April 25 to restore its authority over the companies we pay to get online, and reinstate federal net neutrality protections that were jettisoned by the Trump administration in 2017.

Net neutrality protections are supposed to ensure that we, not the internet service providers (ISPs) we pay to get online, get to decide what we do online.

However, there’s a huge problem: the proposed rules make it possible for mobile ISPs to start picking applications and putting them in a fast lane - where they’ll perform better generally and much better if the network gets congested.

investors.rocketlabusa.com

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) (“Rocket Lab” or “the Company”) today announced it is returning a previously flown Electron rocket first stage tank into the Electron production line for the first time in preparation for reflying the stage. The step is a significant milestone in Rocket Lab’s development program to make Electron the world’s first reusable small orbital launch vehicle.

Rocket Lab has successfully recovered multiple Electron first stages from previous missions by returning them to Earth under a parachute after launch, splashing them down in the ocean, then collecting them onto a specially modified boat for transfer back to Rocket Lab’s production complex. All previously recovered boosters have undergone extensive analysis to inform an iterative development process to make Electron reusable, but this is the first time a tank has been moved back onto the standard production line in preparation for reflight.

I'm a big fan of Rocket Lab and I wish them good luck on the first re flight of the Electron rocket. This will help them gain crucial knowledge how their carbon fiber rockets fare during reentry, fundamental to their next generation rocket, Neutron.

telegraph.co.uk

British RAF jets were reported to have shot down Iranian drones bound for Israel on Saturday night.

It was reported that British jets took off from Cyprus in order to intercept drones and missiles launched from Iran.

pppl.gov

For the first time, scientists have built a fusion experiment known as a stellarator using permanent magnets, a technique that could show a simple way to build future devices for less cost and allow researchers to test new concepts for future fusion power plants.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy ’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) combined decades of expertise in engineering, computation and theoretical physics to design a new type of stellarator, a twisty machine that confines plasma, the electrically charged fourth state of matter, to harness the fusion

process that powers the sun and stars and potentially generate clean electricity.

“Using permanent magnets is a completely new way to design stellarators,” said Tony Qian , a graduate student in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics, which is based at PPPL. Qian was the lead author of papers published in the Journal of Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion that detail the theory and engineering behind the device, known as MUSE. “This technique allows us to test new plasma confinement ideas quickly and build new devices easily.”

untappedcities.com

At Pier 17 in the South Street Seaport, New Yorkers can find the world’s largest cargo sailboat, Grain de Sail ll. The wind-powered ship arrived in New York on Wednesday with 350 tons of goods. Everything from Grain de Sail brand fine chocolates and organic coffee to cosmetic products, wine, and French fashion house luxury goods were on board.

cnc.com

The wealthy are building “passport portfolios” — collections of second, and even third or fourth, citizenships — in case they need to flee their home country.

Recent high-profile examples of second citizenships include billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, who added a citizenship in New Zealand, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who applied for citizenship in Cyprus.

theguardian.com

Crown prince’s pet project was sold as a 105-mile-long city of the future, but finances may have led to a rethink

It was billed as a glass-walled city of the future, an ambitious centrepiece of the economic plan backed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to transition Saudi Arabia away from oil dependency.

Now, however, plans for the mirror-clad desert metropolis called the Line have been scaled down and the project, which was envisaged to stretch 105 miles (170km) is expected to reach just a mile and a half by 2030.

afterbabel.com

For centuries, adults have worried about whatever “kids these days” are doing. From novels in the 18th century to the bicycle in the 19th and through comic books, rock and roll, marijuana, and violent video games in the 20th century, there are always those who ring alarms, and there are always those who are skeptics of those alarms. So far, the skeptics have been right more often than not, and when they are right, they earn the right to call the alarm ringers “alarmists” who have fomented a groundless moral panic, usually through sensational but rare (or non-existent) horror stories trumpeted by irresponsible media.

But the skeptics are not always right.

electrek.co

BYD’s Blade batteries power Tesla, Ford, Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, and other popular electric vehicles from major automakers. The batteries are a major reason behind BYD’s success.

The batteries are installed in most BYD models, such as the low-cost Seagull, Dolphin electric hatch, and Atto 3 SUV.

By using lithium-iron-phosphate as the cathode material, BYD can make the batteries much cheaper. Not only that, but they also offer competitive power density compared to NCM batteries.

independent.co.uk

According to a new report from Deadline, work on a script for Dune: Part Three has begun, with the director also revealing that an adaptation of the nonfiction book Nuclear War: A Scenario will be his next project after the third instalment in the Dune franchise.

Despite entering development, the film hasn’t been officially greenlit by Warner Bros. Villeneuve has been cautious when discussing the possibility of a sequel, calling the script “barely an embryo” during Dune: Part Two’s opening weekend.

He later admitted that he would only make the movie if “it’s going to be better than Part Two”, which will be a high bar to clear after some reviews praised the film as one of the best science fiction thrillers of all time.

972mag.com

The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.

This is the most disturbing thing I've read in a long, long time. I've made my opinion clear on what I think about killer drones.

politico.eu

Top European prosecutors are investigating allegations of criminal wrongdoing in connection with vaccine negotiations between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer, according to a spokesperson from the Liège prosecutor's office.
Investigators from the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) have in recent months taken over from Belgian prosecutors investigating von der Leyen over "interference in public functions, destruction of SMS, corruption and conflict of interest," according to legal documents seen by POLITICO and a spokesperson from the Liège prosecutor's office. While EPPO’s prosecutors are investigating alleged criminal offenses, no one has yet been charged in connection with the case.

arstechnica.com

On Friday, a lone Microsoft developer rocked the world when he revealed a backdoor had been intentionally planted in xz Utils, an open source data compression utility available on almost all installations of Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
The person or people behind this project likely spent years on it. They were likely very close to seeing the backdoor update merged into Debian and Red Hat, the two biggest distributions of Linux, when an eagle-eyed software developer spotted something fishy.

Interesting update from arstechnica regarding the recent xz backdoor that was discovered. Makes you wonder if other pieces of software you use have been backdoored?

bbc.com

Just last month the national force said it was no longer able to investigate every "low level" crime, including some cases of theft and criminal damage.

It has, however, pledged to investigate every hate crime complaint it receives.

Another nail in the coffin for free speech in the UK.

nytimes.com In Anchorage, affluent families set off on ski trips and other lengthy vacations, with the assumption that their children can keep up with schoolwork online.

In a working-class pocket of Michigan, school administrators have tried almost everything, including pajama day, to boost student attendance.

And across the country, students with heightened anxiety are opting to stay home rather than face the classroom.

In the four years since the pandemic closed schools, U.S. education has struggled to recover on a number of fronts, from learning loss, to enrollment, to student behavior.

imdb.com

I'm watching the tv series 3 Body Problem, based on the book with the same name.
Now I have to admit I haven't read the book, but if you're a sci fi nerd like me, you better watch it, and probably read the book. Despite the relatively low ratings on imdb(7.8!) I think it's a great show.

ec.europa.eu

Today, the Commission has opened non-compliance investigations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) into Alphabet's rules on steering in Google Play and self-preferencing on Google Search, Apple's rules on steering in the App Store and the choice screen for Safari and Meta's “pay or consent model”.

I'm not a big fan of EU, but I'm glad someone is clamping down on these deeply destructive software policies.

businessinsider.com

US Adm. John Aquilino said China's military is building up at a rate not seen since World War II.

That puts it on the path to meeting its goal of being ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, he said.

Aquilino, the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, urged Washington to accelerate military development.

I wish everyone would just calm down. Do we really need to be battling it out with A.I. enhanced drones? I don’t want a grenade dropped on my head by some asshole drone operator and I’m guessing neither do you.
But what’s worse is, I find it difficult to disagree with the admiral. Clearly China poses a threat to the rest of the world.

Also, let me get this straight. First we export our trade secrets to China, literally dismantling our own manufacturing industries, sending all the tooling to china from the 90s onwards, just so a few well connected individuals can make a quick buck. Suddenly, China are our enemies?

archive.is (nytimes.com)

Surgeons in Boston have transplanted a kidney from a genetically engineered pig into an ailing 62-year-old man, the first procedure of its kind. If successful, the breakthrough offers hope to hundreds of thousands of Americans whose kidneys have failed.

nytimes.com

The Justice Department joined 16 states and the District of Columbia to file an antitrust lawsuit against Apple on Thursday, the federal government’s most significant challenge to the reach and influence of the company that has put iPhones in the hands of more than a billion people.

In an 88-page lawsuit, the government argued that Apple had violated antitrust laws with practices that were intended to keep customers reliant on their iPhones and less likely to switch to a competing device.

The tech giant prevented other companies from offering applications that compete with Apple products like its digital wallet, which could diminish the value of the iPhone, the government said. Apple’s policies hurt consumers and smaller companies that compete with some of Apple’s services, in the form of “higher prices and less innovation,” the lawsuit said.

cbsnews.com

Vaughan Gething was elected as the new first minister of Wales on Wednesday, becoming the first Black leader of a government in the U.K. Gething was elected to lead the government by members of the Welsh parliament in Cardiff, four days after winning the contest to be leader of Wales' governing Labour Party. He secured 27 of 51 votes in the legislature, the Senedd, where Labour is the biggest party.

wired.com

Removing cars from urban areas means lower carbon emissions, less air pollution, and fewer road traffic accidents. So why are residents so resistant?

Amazing progress by SpaceX. Their latest test launch of the Starship rocket show's how far they've come. It seems to me they have shown that they will manage to land their rockets soon, bringing down costs to launch stuff into space by an order of magnitude.

spacex.com

Starship returned to integrated flight testing with its third launch from Starbase in Texas. While it didn’t happen in a lab or on a test stand, it was absolutely a test. What we achieved on this flight will provide invaluable data to continue rapidly developing Starship.

reuters.com

WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill on Wednesday that would give TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the U.S. assets of the short-video app, or face a ban, in the greatest threat to the app since the Trump administration. The bill passed 352-65, with bipartisan support, but it faces a more uncertain path in the Senate where some favor a different approach to regulating foreign-owned apps posing security concerns. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will review the legislation.

edition.cnn.com

Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per month, or about 3 million a year, according to NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production shared with CNN, as well as sources familiar with Western efforts to arm Ukraine. Collectively, the US and Europe have the capacity to generate only about 1.2 million munitions annually to send to Kyiv, a senior European intelligence official told CNN.

The US military set a goal to produce 100,000 rounds of artillery a month by the end of 2025 — less than half of the Russian monthly output — and even that number is now out of reach with $60 billion in Ukraine funding stalled in Congress, a senior Army official told reporters last week.

oilprice.com

Utilization rates at electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in the United States have surged over the past year, making the Level 3 charging stations in many states profitable, a new report by start-up Stable Auto Corporation shows.

spacenews.com
WASHINGTON — Spacecraft propulsion and launch company Astra Space has accepted a proposal from its founders to take the company private after previously warning its only other alternative was bankruptcy.

As I predicted, Astra is slowly failing. They NASDAQ stock exchange recently threatened to delist Astra from the stock market, Astra has preemptively chosen to delist themselves from the public markets and go private.

news.mit.edu

Detailed study of magnets built by MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems confirms they meet requirements for an economic, compact fusion power plant.

9to5mac.com

After a whirlwind of events, Epic Games says Apple has reinstated their App Store developer account. The move clears the way for Epic to bring its Epic Games Store to the EU, avoiding the App Store structure altogether. The turnaround is somewhat unexpected as Apple seemed to stand by its decision to revoke Epic’s developer account on Wednesday.

Well, I will remember this and so should you.

fda.gov

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared for marketing the first over-the-counter (OTC) continuous glucose monitor (CGM). The Dexcom Stelo Glucose Biosensor System is an integrated CGM (iCGM) intended for anyone 18 years and older who does not use insulin, such as individuals with diabetes treating their condition with oral medications, or those without diabetes who want to better understand how diet and exercise may impact blood sugar levels. Importantly, this system is not for individuals with problematic hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) as the system is not designed to alert the user to this potentially dangerous condition.

epicgames.com

We recently announced that Apple approved our Epic Games Sweden AB developer account. We intended to use that account to bring the Epic Games Store and Fortnite to iOS devices in Europe thanks to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). To our surprise, Apple has terminated that account and now we cannot develop the Epic Games Store for iOS. This is a serious violation of the DMA and shows Apple has no intention of allowing true competition on iOS devices.

The DMA requires Apple to allow third-party app stores, like the Epic Games Store. Article 6(4) of the DMA says: “The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper.”

Another user hostile decision by everyone’s favourite tech giant.

metro.co.uk

Lasse travels 600 miles a day throughout Germany aboard Deutsche Bahn trains. He travels first class, sleeps on night trains, has breakfast in DB lounges and takes showers in public swimming pools and leisure centres, all using his unlimited annual railcard.

reuters.com
BRUSSELS, March 4 (Reuters) - Brussels on Monday fined Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab 1.84 billion euros ($2 billion) for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals via restrictions on its App Store, the iPhone maker's first ever penalty for breaching EU rules.
A basic penalty of 40 million euros was inflated by a huge lump sum included as a deterrent - a first for the European Union's antitrust authorities.
The European Commission charged Apple last year with preventing Swedish streaming service Spotify (SPOT.N), opens new tab and others from informing users of payment options outside its App Store, following a 2019 complaint by Spotify.

openculture.com

Atomic physicist Niels Bohr is famously quoted as saying, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Yet despite years of getting things wrong, magazines love think pieces on where we’ll be in several decades, even centuries in time. It gives us comfort to think great things await us, even though we’re long overdue for the personal jetpack and moon colonies.

phoronix.com

For three years there has been a bug report around 4K@120Hz being unavailable via HDMI 2.1 on the AMD Linux driver. Similarly, there have been bug reports like 5K @ 240Hz not possible either with the AMD graphics driver on Linux.

As covered back in 2021, the HDMI Forum closing public specification access is hurting open-source support. AMD as well as the X.Org Foundation have been engaged with the HDMI Forum to try to come up with a solution to be able to provide open-source implementations of the now-private HDMI specs.

AMD Linux engineers have spent months working with their legal team and evaluating all HDMI features to determine if/how they can be exposed in their open-source driver. AMD had code working internally and then the past few months were waiting on approval from the HDMI Forum... Sadly, the HDMI Forum has turned down AMD's request for open-source driver support.

courthousenews.com

"OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity," Musk says in the suit.

Musk brings claims including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices against OpenAI and asks for the company to revert back to open source. Musk also requests an injunction to prevent OpenAI, its president Gregory Brockman and its CEO Sam Altman — named as co-defendants in the case — as well as Microsoft, from profiting off of the company's artificial general intelligence technology.

variety.com

Apple TV+ has ordered a series adaptation of the William Gibson novel “Neuromancer,” Variety has learned.

The 10-episode series hails from co-creators Graham Roland and JD Dillard. Roland will also serve as showrunner, while Dillard will direct the pilot. Skydance Television will co-produce with Anonymous Content.

twitter.com



Some are saying that the apparently bizarre behavior of one Big Tech AI or another is an opportunity for other Big Tech AI to differentiate by being objective, reasonable, and unbiased.

This is not the case; there is no differentiation opportunity among Big Tech or the New Incumbents in AI. These companies all share the same ideology, agenda, staffing, and plan. Different companies, same outcomes.

And they are lobbying as a group with great intensity to establish a government protected cartel, to lock in their shared agenda and corrupt products for decades to come.

The only viable alternatives are Elon, startups, and open source — all under concerted attack by these same big companies and aligned pressure groups in DC, the UK, and Europe, and with vanishingly few defenders.

bloomberg.com

Executives tell staff to end work on endeavor known as Titan

Employees on some car teams will move to Apple’s AI division

Apple Inc. is canceling a decadelong effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company.

Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the announcement wasn’t public. The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the effort, according to the people.

letter.open-web-advocacy.org

Dear Tim Cook, We write to express our concern at Apple’s decision to remove Web Apps (PWAs) from iOS and Safari in the European Union (EU), and to avail ourselves of our rights under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Apple points to Web Apps as the open alternative to the App Store, and actions to remove them have created deep concern in the web community. iOS demoting Web Apps to shortcuts threaten data loss and undermine the web as a reliable platform for iOS users. These silently-introduced changes threaten critical features including integration with iOS, push notifications, unread count badging, and the ability to run full screen. Their removal will break Web Apps for students, governments, health care institutions, journalists, and startups.

infrequently.org

The immediate impact of iOS 17.4 in the EU will be broken apps and lost data, affecting schools, governments, startups, gamers, and anyone else with the temerity to look outside the one true app store for even a second.

The data loss will be catastrophic for many, as will the removal of foundational features like reliable data storage, app-like UI, settings integration, Push Notifications, and unread counts. This will just so happen to render PWAs useless to worldwide businesses looking to reach EU users. A regrettable accident, to be sure.

japantimes.co.jp

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has stressed the importance of maintaining solidarity with Kyiv — including the need for boosted support and more sanctions on Moscow — as mounting setbacks sap momentum for Ukraine against Russian invaders.

In talks with Group of Seven leaders marking the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine late Saturday, the Japanese leader stressed the importance of the G7 “uniting” with Ukraine “precisely because the war has been prolonged and the situation remains difficult,” according to Japan’s Foreign Ministry.

bundestag.de

Nach langer politischer Auseinandersetzung hat der Bundestag am Freitag, 23. Februar 2024, den Gesetzentwurf der Bundesregierung „zum kontrollierten Umgang mit Cannabis“ (20/8704, 20/8763) gebilligt. Mit dem Gesetz soll Erwachsenen künftig der Besitz von bis zu 50 Gramm Cannabis für den Eigenkonsum im privaten Raum erlaubt werden. Im öffentlichen Raum soll die Höchstgrenze bei 25 Gramm liegen. In namentlicher Abstimmung votierten 407 Abgeordnete für das Gesetz, 226 stimmten dagegen und vier enthielten sich ihrer Stimme.

I can't believe it! Germany legalizes weed! This is a historic, landmark decision.

spacenews.com

Intuitive Machines delayed the landing by two hours to perform an additional orbit of the moon. The company said that it determined that laser rangefinders on the lander, a key instrument to enable a precise landing, were not working properly.

Controllers uploaded a software patch to enable to the lander to use in their place use a NASA Doppler lidar payload originally intended to be a technology demonstration.

cnbc.com

The Nikkei 225 hit an all-time high of 38,924.88 as robust corporate earnings and steps aimed at boosting investor returns fuel a blistering rally in Japanese equities this year.

Nikkei and Topix have been standout outperformers in Asia Pacific, up more than 10% in 2024 after surging more than 25% in 2023 — their respective best annual gain in at least a decade.

theverge.com

Generative AI has a history of amplifying racial and gender stereotypes — but Google’s apparent attempts to subvert that are causing problems, too.

japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

About 2,000 North Korean workers dispatched to China’s Jilin Province started a riot in mid-January triggered by anger over unpaid wages, a North Korean source told The Yomiuri Shimbun.

According to the source, the first large-scale demonstration by North Korean workers also highlights the rebellious spirit of the country’s young, who are not content to live in slave-like conditions. Many former female soldiers in their 20s also participated in the riot, the source added.

japantimes.co.jp

The successful launch of Japan’s next-generation H3 rocket on Saturday has given a much-needed morale boost to officials and engineers involved in its development, following a series of setbacks in recent years.

The H3 — which replaces the H-IIA as the nation’s flagship rocket — will be used in a wide range of government-funded missions in areas such as national security, scientific research and weather forecasting.

theguardian.com

Britain’s insecure jobs market and high housing costs are leading to the growth of a precarious middle class struggling to maintain a decent living standard on household incomes as high as £60,000 a year, a report has said.

bbc.co.uk

Australia's parliament has passed a motion calling on the US and UK to release Julian Assange, ahead of a crucial legal hearing.

Mr Assange will appear in front of the UK's High Court next week for his final appeal against US extradition.

The Australian citizen, currently in London's Belmarsh Prison, is wanted in the US on espionage charges and faces up to 175 years in prison.

Australian MPs voted 86-42 that Mr Assange should be allowed to come home.

nypost.com

Thiel is among several high-profile venture capitalists who have backed the project, including billionaire Christian Angermayer of Apeiron Investment Group and Balaji Srinivasan, the former chief technology officer of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

D’Souza would not reveal how much money was raised, telling The Post it was in the “high single-digit millions” — a sum that is “enough to produce the first games.”

D’Souza said that Enhanced Games are negotiating with several host cities “that have requisite infrastructure” though he declined to specify which venue will host the inaugural competition, which he expects to get underway by the middle of next year.

nytimes.com

China’s BYD was a battery manufacturer trying its hand at building cars when it showed off its newest model in 2007. American executives at the Guangzhou auto show gaped at the car’s uneven purple paint job and the poor fit of its doors.

“They were the laughingstock of the industry,” said Michael Dunne, a China auto industry analyst.

Nobody is laughing at BYD now.

nbcnews.com

HONG KONG — Organizers of the Hugo Awards, one of the most prominent literary awards in science fiction, excluded multiple authors from shortlists last year over concerns their work or public comments could be offensive to China, leaked emails show.

Questions had been raised as to why writers including Neil Gaiman, R.F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer had been deemed ineligible as finalists despite earning enough votes according to information published last month by awards organizers. Emails released this week revealed that they were concerned about how some authors might be perceived in China, where the Hugo Awards were held last year for the first time.

openai.com

Introducing Sora, our text-to-video model. Sora can generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality and adherence to the user’s prompt.

Holy shit is this impressive and scary. Watch the videos and you'll know what I mean.

bbc.com

The House of Representatives has narrowly voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, making him the first cabinet member to face impeachment in nearly 150 years.

Many Republicans blame Mr Mayorkas for an unprecedented influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border.

The Republican-led chamber voted 214 to 213 for the measure, after the first attempt failed last week.

The issue now heads to the Democratic-led Senate, where it is likely to fail.

japantimes.co.jp

Donald Trump’s latest provocation — reciting an old conversation where he said he’d let Russia do "whatever the hell they want” to NATO members in arrears — had officials in Europe going back to that time and remembering it somewhat differently.

Several European officials who interacted with Trump at multiple summits of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said they couldn’t recall the version of events the former president and current Republican frontrunner shared with a rally of supporters in South Carolina, nor that he ever went as far as saying he’d invite a Russian attack.

cbc.ca

Worldwide, families are shrinking, according to a kinship study published in December in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. That study, using international demographic data for every country in the world, projected a 38 per cent global decline in living relatives for individuals aged 65 by the year 2095, compared to 1950.

The composition of family networks is also expected to change, with grandparents and great-grandparents living longer, but the number of cousins, nieces and nephews declining, the authors noted.

arstechnica.com

The Vision Pro is the strangest product Apple has introduced in the time I've been covering the company. By now, it's well established that the headset is both impressively cutting-edge and ludicrously expensive.

You could certainly argue that its price means it’s only for Silicon Valley techno-optimists with too much money to burn or for developers looking to get in on the ground floor on the chance that this is the next gold rush for apps. But the platform will need more than those users to succeed.

npr.org

Sales leveled off at around 9% of the new car market, and even dipped down at the start of the year. Hertz is selling off a bunch of EVs, citing low demand for them. Ford is slashing production of the F-150 Lightning. GM cut its near-term investment in EVs and is now bringing back plug-in hybrids, which run on electricity and gasoline.

Even Tesla, the all-electric juggernaut that has shaped the rise of EVs in the U.S., warned investors that it's in between "growth waves" and has a quieter year ahead.

pcgamer.com

It's been an interesting couple of years for Henry Cavill, the Superman-turned-Witcher actor who, in a shockingly brief run of bad luck, ended up out of both jobs. But he landed on his feet at the head of a new Warhammer 40,000 "cinematic universe," and in a new interview with Josh Horowitz he said there's nowhere he'd rather be.

bloomberg.com

Boeing Co. found more mistakes with holes drilled in the fuselage of its 737 Max jet, a setback that could further slow deliveries on a critical program already restricted by regulators over quality lapses.

The latest manufacturing slip originated with a supplier and will require rework on about 50 undelivered 737 jets to repair the faulty rivet holes, Boeing commercial chief Stan Deal said in a note to staff.

businessinsider.com

Top workers are 16% less likely to want to stay in a job when an employer is strict on office days.

A firm return-to-office mandate can also put off workers in general, according to Gartner.

The research firm said women, millennials are likelier to want to leave jobs with strict RTO rules.

Link to Gartner research.

npr.org

Hundreds of thousands of people across California are waking up Monday morning without electricity, as a major rain and wind storm works itself south, just days after a separate storm drenched the area.

More than 600,000 customers were without electricity early Monday, according to poweroutage.us, primarily in Northern California.

Meteorologists and local officials have warned residents in Los Angeles and beyond to prepare for potentially life-threatening conditions as the storm moved south.

npr.org

The U.S. struck Iranian-linked targets in the Middle East for a second consecutive day Saturday.

The U.S. and allies hit 36 Houthi targets at 13 locations in Yemen, the Pentagon said Saturday. On Friday, the U.S. struck facilities in Iraq and Syria, as part of a broader campaign that U.S officials say is in retaliation for a drone attack that killed three American soldiers. The U.S. says it struck Iran-backed proxies in each country.

nikkei.com

Japan will establish a new visa status that will make it easier for IT engineers and other workers for overseas companies to reside in the country, the Immigration Services Agency said Friday.

The planned status will allow highly skilled workers to work in Japan on a teleworking basis for up to six months while enjoying sightseeing trips, the agency said.

electronicsweekly.com

The goal of the EU’s $43 billion Chips Act of achieving a 20% world market share for European producers by 2030 is ‘totally unrealistic’, says ASML CEO Peter Wennink.

Investments in fab by TSMC, Bosch, NXP and Infineon are “good for the European car industry but it’s not enough. It’s not enough at all,” says Wennink, “if you want to get to 20%, you just have to calculate how much you need to build here.”

nytimes.com

After multiple delays and even a few faint glimmers of hope, a Hong Kong court has sounded the death knell for what was once China’s biggest real estate firm.

Months after China Evergrande ran out of cash and defaulted in 2021, investors around the world scooped up the property developer’s discounted i.o.u.’s, betting that the Chinese government would eventually step in to bail it out.

On Monday it became clear just how misguided that bet was. After two years in limbo, and with over $300 billion in debt, Evergrande was ordered by a judge in Hong Kong to liquidate, a move that will set off a race by lawyers to try to find and grab anything belonging to Evergrande that can be sold.

edition.cnn.com

Three US Army soldiers were killed and more than 30 service members were injured in a drone attack overnight on a small US outpost in Jordan, US officials told CNN, marking the first time US troops have been killed by enemy fire in the Middle East since the beginning of the Gaza war.

The killing of three Americans at Tower 22 in Jordan near the border with Syria is a significant escalation of an already-precarious situation in the Middle East. Officials said the drone was fired by Iran-backed militants and appeared to come from Syria.

military.com

The Army is tossing its mandate for potential recruits to have a high school diploma or GED certificate to enlist in the service, in one of the most dramatic moves yet in the escalating recruiting crisis hitting the entire Defense Department.

On Thursday, the service announced that individuals may enlist without those previously required education certifications if they ship to basic training this fiscal year, which ends Oct. 1.

Recruits must also be at least 18 years old and otherwise qualify for a job in the active-duty Army. They also must score at least a 50 on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, an SAT-style quiz to measure a potential recruit's academic ability.

reuters.com

Ukraine expects to start construction work on four new nuclear power reactors this summer or autumn, Energy Minister German Galushchenko told Reuters on Thursday, as the country seeks to compensate for lost energy capacity due to the war with Russia.

Two of the units - which include reactors and related equipment - will be based on Russian-made equipment that Ukraine wants to import from Bulgaria, while the other two will use Western technology from power equipment maker Westinghouse. All four reactors will be built at the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant in the west of Ukraine, Galushchenko added.

cnn.com

The face of Japanese beauty is now a Ukrainian-born model — at least according to pageant judges who sparked a debate on cultural identity by naming 26-year-old Karolina Shiino as Miss Japan on Monday.

The annual Miss Nippon contest, which takes its title from the country’s Japanese name, awards the tiara to the contestant representing the “Foremost Beauty of All Japanese Women,” according to the organizers’ website. The decision to pick a winner with European heritage has raised questions about beauty standards and what it means to be Japanese.

apple.com

For developers, the changes include new options for app distribution and payment processing

For users, the changes include new controls and disclosures, and expanded protections to reduce privacy and security risks the DMA creates

kyivpost.com

This is the fourth Russian oil-and-gas processing facility hit by Kyiv in the last six days. Russia launched kamikaze drones of their own: 11 of 14 shot down, two apartment buildings in Odesa hit.

Explosions rocked Russia’s biggest oil refinery on the Black Sea late Wednesday evening, in a Ukrainian drone strike run by the country’s national spy agency the SBU.

Multiple still images and video showed the fire was on the premises of a Tuapse oil refinery operated by the Russian oil company Rosneft.’ The major fuel and lubricants processing facility is Russia’s main oil terminal on the Black Sea, in pre-war years producing two million tons of product a year, almost all of it for export.

It’s been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft. As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we’ve set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we’re all aligned on the best opportunities for growth.

As part of this process, we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1900 roles out of the 22,000 people on our team. The Gaming Leadership Team and I are committed to navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible. The people who are directly impacted by these reductions have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and the Xbox teams, and they should be proud of everything they’ve accomplished here. We are grateful for all of the creativity, passion and dedication they have brought to our games, our players and our colleagues. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws. Those whose roles will be impacted will be notified, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with the respect and compassion that is consistent with our values.

Looking ahead, we’ll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I’m as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together.

Phil

from Internal memo by Microsoft Gaming CEO, Phil Spencer

nbcnews.com

The CEO of Alaska Airlines said new, in-house inspections of the carrier's Boeing 737 Max 9 planes in the wake of a near-disaster earlier this month revealed that “many” of the aircraft were found to have loose bolts.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News senior correspondent Tom Costello, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci discussed the findings of his company's inspections so far since the Jan. 5 incident, in which a panel on one of its Max 9 jets blew out midair on a flight carrying 177 people.

“I’m more than frustrated and disappointed,” he said. “I am angry. This happened to Alaska Airlines. It happened to our guests and happened to our people. And — my demand on Boeing is what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house.”

phoronix.com

I’ve been interested in a Framework Laptop for ages now. They are truly customisable, excellent laptops for the hardcore computer nerds.

newyorker.com

One evening in September of 1957, viewers across America could turn on their television sets and tune in to a CBS broadcast during which a young woman dropped acid.

She sat next to a man in a suit: Sidney Cohen, the researcher who had given her the LSD. The woman wore lipstick and nail polish, and her eyes were shining. “I wish I could talk in Technicolor,” she said. And, at another point, “I can see the molecules. I . . . I’m part of it. Can’t you see it?” “I’m trying,” Cohen replied.

reuters.com

Jan 21 (Reuters) - Russian energy company Novatek (NVTK.MM), said on Sunday it had been forced to suspend some operations at a huge Baltic Sea fuel export terminal due to a fire started by what Ukrainian media said was a drone attack.

The giant Ust-Luga complex, located on the Gulf of Finland about 170 km (110 miles) west of St. Petersburg, is used to ship oil and gas products to international markets. It processes stable gas condensate - a type of light oil - into light and heavy naphtha, kerosene and diesel to be shipped by sea.

bbc.com

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis suspends his campaign for US president, saying there is no "clear path to victory"

dw.com

After two days of mass protests, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of German cities on Sunday to demonstrate against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and its anti-immigration agenda.

From Friday through the weekend, demonstrations were called in about 100 locations across Germany. On Sunday, rallies were held in major cities such as Cologne, Munich and Berlin. Several other German cities, including Cottbus, Dresden and Chemnitz in the east, also planned to hold demonstrations.

Police in Munich said that some 80,000 people participated in the march, while organizers put the figure at 200,000. The march had to be called off due to overcrowding.


Alternative für Deutschland(AfD) recently came into the spotlight again after it was revealed members of the party where meeting members of Neo Nazi organizations to makes plans with the goal of implementing a mass deportation scheme, including undesirable German citizens.

arstechnica.com

Beginning in late November 2023, the threat actor used a password spray attack to compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account and gain a foothold, and then used the account’s permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions, and exfiltrated some emails and attached documents. The investigation indicates they were initially targeting email accounts for information related to Midnight Blizzard itself. We are in the process of notifying employees whose email was accessed.

I don't even know what to say. This is extremely embarrassing for Microsoft.

npr.org

The first all-European commercial crew is on its way to the International Space Station after an early evening SpaceX launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Unlike a NASA mission, this one is paid for by Axiom Space, a Houston-based company flying its third group of paying passengers to the I.S.S. It contracts with SpaceX to get to and from the orbital laboratory. Axiom plans to build its own space station in orbit one day and it's using these missions to help in its planning and designs.

spacenews.com

Japan’s SLIM “Moon Sniper” spacecraft made a successful lunar landing Friday, making the country just the fifth to robotically land on the moon.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft began its descent from a 15-kilometer perilune shortly after 10:00 a.m. Eastern, Jan. 19 (1500 UTC), decelerating from a speed of around 1,700 meters per second.

twitter.com
Watch this incredible AI translation of Argentinian president Javier Mileis speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

twitter.com

A quick summary of glaring problems we've found so far:

1) Apple has introduced an anticompetitive new 27% tax on web purchases. Apple has never done this before, and it kills price competition. Developers can't offer digital items more cheaply on the web after paying a third-party payment processor 3-6% and paying this new 27% Apple Tax.

2) Apple dictates all aspects of these links and doesn't allow them in the app's ordinary payment flow. Rather, links must be separated out into a different section of the app, away from places where users actually buy stuff.

3) Apple requires developers to open a generic web browser session, forcing the user to log in to the developer's web site again, to make a purchase. And because of #2, users will have to search all over again for the digital item they wanted to buy.

4) Apple will front-run competing payment processors with their own "scare screen" to disadvantage them.

Epic will contest Apple's bad-faith compliance plan in District Court.

- Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems are throwing us a small bone with an update from what's going on on their factory floor. Together with SpaceX, Commonwealth Fusion Systems is easily the most exciting technology company.

ORANGE MAN BAD

wsj.com
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa—Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses Monday night with the largest margin in the history of the first Republican presidential nominating contest, cementing an early victory in his defiant bid to return to the White House.

Unsurprisingly, when the entire political establishment is corrupt, including the mass media, the people will prefer voting for an outsider, even a dislikable candidate like Donald Trump.

spacenews.com
SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk says a propellant dump caused the destruction of the Starship upper stage on a November test flight, giving him confidence that the vehicle can reach orbit on its next launch.

On that Nov. 18 launch, the Starship upper stage, or ship, was nearing the end of its burn to place it on a long suborbital trajectory when contact was lost. Hosts of the SpaceX webcast said it appeared the automated flight termination system was activated, but did not give a reason why, and the company provided few details since.

In further news, SpaceX are targeting a February launch for their third attempt at launching their super heavy rocket Starship.

ORANGE MAN BAD

aljazeera.com
Donald Trump is ahead of his Republican opponents on key measures of popularity, while US President Joe Biden’s job approval rating has hit a new low, according to a new poll.

The findings from an ABC News/Ipsos poll published on Sunday come a day ahead of the Iowa caucuses as the 2024 race to the US presidential elections speeds up.

The survey showed that former President Trump leads with a huge advantage against the other Republican candidates – Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson – on three fronts.

At least 68 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say Trump is the candidate with the “best chance” of getting elected in November. That plummets to 12 percent for Haley, 11 percent for DeSantis and single digits for the rest, the report said.

forbes.com
Ukrainian air-defenses reportedly shot down two of the Russian air force’s rarest and most valuable command aircraft on Sunday: a Beriev A-50 radar early-warning plane and an Ilyushin Il-22 airborne command post.

Ukrainian media has cited government officials confirming the purported shoot-downs, but there’s little hard evidence of the incidents.

Ukraine’s RBC Radio posted what it claimed was an audio recording of the Il-22’s crew radioing an S-O-S to controllers apparently in Anapa, on the Russian side of the Sea of Azov’s southern coast. “Urgently requesting ambulance and fire crew,” the crew radioed.

japantimes.co.jp

The 225-issue Nikkei average crossed the 36,000 mark for the first time in 34 years on Monday, powered by shippers and financials, with a retreat in U.S. bond yields and a stabilization in the yen exchange rate buoying sentiment.

The Nikkei finished the day nearly 1% higher at 35,901.73, after touching the highest since February 1990 at 36,008.23.

theintercept.com
OpenAI this week quietly deleted language expressly prohibiting the use of its technology for military purposes from its usage policy, which seeks to dictate how powerful and immensely popular tools like ChatGPT can be used.

Here we go. With the quashing of the rebellion now over, and Sam Altman firmly in charge, OpenAI has dropped every pretence of being the good guy.

I hope, pray and write to Santa Claus that there will be a true open source alternative to the commercial releases.

english.news.cn
China on Thursday sent a sea-launched Gravity-1 (YL-1) carrier rocket into space, sending three satellites into the planned orbit.

The Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center launched the commercial rocket from waters off the coast of Haiyang, east China's Shandong Province, at 1:30 p.m. (Beijing Time).

It was the first flight mission of the YL-1 commercial carrier rocket.

ismyplanea737max.com

Refuse to fly on the Boeing 737 Max.

nytimes.com
The Justice Department is in the late stages of an investigation into Apple and could file a sweeping antitrust case taking aim at the company’s strategies to protect the dominance of the iPhone as soon as the first half of this year, said three people with knowledge of the matter.

The agency is focused on how Apple has used its control over its hardware and software to make it more difficult for consumers to ditch the company’s devices, as well as for rivals to compete, said the people, who spoke anonymously because the investigation was active.

Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch works better with the iPhone than with other brands, as well as how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service. They have also scrutinized Apple’s payments system for the iPhone, which blocks other financial firms from offering similar services, these people said.

nasaspaceflight.com
Preparations for the third flight of Starship are making solid progress after both vehicles completed their respective solo test campaigns. Booster 10 rolled back to the Shipyard for final mods and checkouts before its flight, and Ship 28 wasn’t far behind. Both vehicles are now in their Bays for final work before rolling back to the launch site for integrated stack testing and launch.

space.com
NASA's supersonic plane has moved closer to the runway in preparation for its debut flight.

New photos show the X-59 supersonic plane parked on the flight line — the space between the hangar and the runway — at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. The plane was moved from its construction site to the flight line on June 19, according to a statement from NASA.

This milestone kicks off a series of ground tests to ensure the X-59 is safe and ready to fly as part of NASA's Quesst mission, which aims to demonstrate that the aircraft can fly faster than the speed of sound (or Mach 1) without generating the loud sonic booms generally produced by supersonic planes.

english.elpais.com
Attacks by Yemeni Houthi rebels on merchant ships heading for the Suez Canal via the Red Sea are causing one of the biggest disruptions to world trade since the Covid-19 pandemic.

At least 18 shipping lines, including Danish giant Maersk, have already rerouted their vessels around South Africa to avoid passing through the strategic Gulf of Aden, an alternative that makes journeys between Asia and Europe significantly longer and more expensive.

The impact on freight rates has been astronomical: they have almost tripled since the attacks, which the rebel militia claims are aimed at punishing Israel for the war in Gaza, intensified in mid-December. The escalating cost of transport threatens the world economy with a further inflationary setback, although experts are confident that the effect will be limited.

fortune.com
For the average Joe, being over in serious debt can feel like a crushing burden—but not for Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki. The finance guru has a rather blasé attitude towards borrowing large amounts from the banks and recently boasted about having over $1 billion in debt hanging over his head.

“I use debt as money and I don’t save cash because in 1971 the dollar became debt,” he added, referring to the Nixon shock, where the former president ended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold, devalued the currency, and ultimately, led to the rise of cryptocurrencies.

Instead, Kiyosaki uses debt to buy assets, like gold, which can withstand market crashes and spiraling inflation—unlike cash saved in the bank. “If I go bust, the bank goes bust,” he added. “Not my problem.”

Well, can't argue with that logic.

businessinsider.com
The transition to an all-EV future seemed like a slam dunk. It would not only give the government a highly visible way to show it's fighting the climate crisis but boost the economy through new jobs and investment. But the electric-vehicle takeover has hit some serious roadblocks.

nytimes.com
Federal labor officials accused the rocket company SpaceX on Wednesday of illegally firing eight employees for circulating a letter critical of the company’s founder and chief executive, Elon Musk.

According to a complaint issued by a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board, the company fired the employees in 2022 for calling on SpaceX to distance itself from social media comments by Mr. Musk, including one in which he mocked sexual harassment accusations against him.

The letter circulated by the employees also called on SpaceX, which has more than 13,000 employees, to clarify its harassment policies and enforce them consistently.

arxiv.org
With copper-substituted lead apatite below room temperature, we observe diamagnetic dc magnetization under magnetic field of 25 Oe with remarkable bifurcation between zero-field-cooling and field-cooling measurements, and under 200 Oe it changes to be paramagnetism. A glassy memory effect is found during cooling. Typical hysteresis loops for superconductors are detected below 250 K, along with an asymmetry between forward and backward sweep of magnetic field.

Our experiment suggests at room temperature the Meissner effect is possibly present in this material.

arstechnica.com
Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as hair care line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret.

Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media—despite the fact that she is entirely fictional.

Aitana is a “virtual influencer” created using artificial intelligence tools, one of the hundreds of digital avatars that have broken into the growing $21 billion content creator economy.

arstechnica.com
On Thursday night, the launch company sent two more rockets into orbit from Florida. One was a Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket in commercial service, carrying the US military's X-37B spaceplane from a launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 8:07 pm EST (01:07 UTC). Less than three hours later, at 11:01 pm EST (04:01 UTC), SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 launcher took off a few miles to the south with a payload of 23 Starlink Internet satellites.

The Falcon Heavy's two side boosters and the Falcon 9's first stage landed back on Earth for reuse.

These were SpaceX's final launches of 2023. SpaceX ends the year with 98 flights, including 91 Falcon 9s, five Falcon Heavy rockets, and two test launches of the giant new Super Heavy-Starship rocket. These flights were spread across four launch pads in Florida, California, and Texas.

engadget.com
It'll be a few more months before Xiaomi announces the prices, but it's already claiming that the SU7 Max has a range of up to 800km (497 miles; according to China Light-Duty Vehicle Test Cycle aka CLTC), as well as a 0-100km/h acceleration of just 2.78s, both of which apparently beating Tesla's Model S and Porsche's Taycan Turbo.

This is partly thanks to battery maker CATL's generous 101kWh 800V high-voltage platform, which offers a 220km range with just a 5-minute charge, or 390km in 10 minutes, or 510km in 15 minutes. The base model, however, only supports 400V charging for its smaller 73.6kWh battery, which has a range of up to 668km or 415 miles.

eia.gov
A new reactor at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant is now in commercial operation, according to an announcement from Georgia Power, one of the plant’s owners. It is the first new nuclear reactor to start up in the United States since the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar 2 was commissioned in 2016.

theatlantic.com
A week before Christmas in 1983, two chemists at Yale University made a breakthrough that they thought could change the world. “It was like opening up a door and seeing a light,” one of the scientists, Stuart Schreiber, later told The New York Times. The pair had produced a substance, periplanone-B, that sends the male American cockroach into a thrashing, sexual frenzy.

theverge.com
The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming the two companies built their AI models by “copying and using millions” of the publication’s articles and now “directly compete” with its content as a result.

asia.nikkei.com
Japan is preparing regulations that would require tech giants like Apple and Google to allow outside app stores and payments on their mobile operating systems, Nikkei has learned, in a bid to curb abuse of their dominant position in the Japanese market.

Legislation slated to be sent to the parliament in 2024 would restrict moves by platform operators to keep users in the operators' own ecosystems and shut out rivals, focusing mainly on four areas: app stores and payments, search, browsers, and operating systems.

whitehouse.gov
As I have said before, convictions for simple possession of marijuana have imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities. Through this proclamation, consistent with the grant of Proclamation 10467, I am pardoning additional individuals who may continue to experience the unnecessary collateral consequences of a conviction for simple possession of marijuana, attempted simple possession of marijuana, or use of marijuana.

A merry Christmas to my fellow weed smokers in America!

theatlantic.com
The sprawl has become disorienting. Some of my peers in the media have written about how the internet has started to feel “placeless” and more ephemeral, even like it is “evaporating.” Perhaps this is because, as my colleague Ian Bogost has argued, “the age of social media is ending,” and there is no clear replacement. Or maybe artificial intelligence is flooding the internet with synthetic information and killing the old web. Behind these theories is the same general perception: Understanding what is actually happening online has become harder than ever.

imf.org
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing, and the pace of progress has accelerated in recent years. ChatGPT, released in November 2022, surprised users by generating human-quality text and code, seamlessly translating languages, writing creative content, and answering questions in an informative way, all at a level previously unseen.

Yet in the background, the foundation models that underlie generative AI have been advancing rapidly for more than a decade. The amount of computational resources (or, in short, “compute”) used to train the most cutting-edge AI systems has doubled every six months over the past decade. What today’s leading generative AI models can do was unthinkable just a few years ago: they can deliver significant productivity gains for the world’s premier consultants, for programmers, and even for economists (Korinek 2023).

edition.cnn.com
US Steel has agreed to be bought by Nippon Steel, Japan’s largest steelmaker, in a $14.1 billion deal.

The deal marks the latest step in a gradual decline for the iconic 122-year old company, which was once the largest company on the planet. It was one of the first major conglomerates and a symbol of American industrial might.

But it is no longer even the largest US steelmaker, having been surpassed by Nucor Steel years ago.

ec.europa.eu
The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether X may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.

nature.com
The stadium-sized laser facility, housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, has unequivocally achieved its goal of ignition in four out of its last six attempts, creating a reaction that generates pressures and temperatures greater than those that occur inside the Sun.

…

The NIF works by firing 192 laser beams at a frozen pellet of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium that is housed in a diamond capsule suspended inside a gold cylinder. The resulting implosion causes the isotopes to fuse, creating helium and copious quantities of energy. On 5 December 2022, those fusion reactions for the first time generated more energy — roughly 54% more — than the laser beams delivered to the target.

Read the paper explaining how it works over on nature.com

spacenews.com
Rocket Lab successfully launched a Japanese radar imaging satellite on the first flight of its Electron rocket since a failure nearly three months ago.

The Electron rocket lifted off from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 11:05 p.m. Eastern Dec. 14. The vehicle deployed its payload, the QPS-SAR-5 or Tsukuyomi-1 satellite for Japanese company iQPS, nearly 57 minutes after liftoff into a 575-kilometer orbit.

The launch was the first for Electron since a Sept. 19 failure during a launch of another radar imaging satellite for Capella Space. On that mission, the first stage performed as expected but the engine of the second stage appeared to shut down immediately after ignition, preventing it from reaching orbit.

economist.com
Over a thousand miles from Gaza, a naval crisis is unfolding that could transform the war between Israel and Hamas into a global affair with implications for the world economy. Since December 15th four of the world’s five largest container-shipping companies, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk and MSC, have paused or suspended their services in the Red Sea, the route through which traffic from the Suez Canal must pass, as Iran-backed Houthi militants, armed with sophisticated weapons, escalate their attacks on global shipping flows. As one of the world’s major trade arteries suddenly closes, America and its allies are ramping up naval activity in the Middle East, and may even attack the Houthis, in order to re-establish free passage.

theguardian.com
Paris intends to triple parking charges for large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in order to push them out of the city and limit emissions and air pollution, the mayor has said.

“It is a form of social justice,” Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday of the plan to deliberately target the richest drivers to tackle the climate breakdown and air pollution. “This is about very expensive cars, driven by people who today have not yet made the changes to their behaviour that have to be made [for the climate].”

reuters.com
Europe must race to ensure it can better defend itself as new military threats could emerge by the end of the decade even as the focus of security ally the United States shifts towards the Indo-Pacfic, Germany's defense minister said.
That the Europeans so quickly dismantled their armed forces after the fall of the Soviet Union was an obvious mistake for anyone with any understanding of how the world works.

edition.cnn.com
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a computer glitch that’s causing a bit of a communication breakdown between the 46-year-old probe and its mission team on Earth.

Engineers are currently trying to solve the issue as the aging spacecraft explores uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system.

propublica.com
Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have been spent on what was sold as a revolution in transparency and accountability. Instead, police departments routinely refuse to release footage — even when officers kill.

apple.com
With iOS 17.2, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max users can now record spatial videos — a groundbreaking new capability that helps users capture life’s precious moments — and relive those memories on Apple Vision Pro, starting early next year.

Not really an Apple fanboy, but spatial video is a damn cool feature.

theverge.com
Three years after Fortnite-maker Epic Games sued Apple and Google for allegedly running illegal app store monopolies, Epic has a win. The jury in Epic v. Google has just delivered its verdict — and it found that Google turned its Google Play app store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly.

That these mega corporations have completely taken over large parts of the digital economy is scary, and is bordering on fascism. What else can you call it whee we n the state and the corporations are joined at the hip.
As I've written earlier Google is no longer the cuddly friendly tech start up, it's pretending to be, and hasn't been since Eric Schmidt took the helm and turned it into an advertisement company.

fortune.com
America is back to work.
The productivity of U.S. workers grew 5.2% in the third quarter, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report, released Wednesday.

That’s the fastest pace of growth since the third quarter of 2020. Productivity also grew last quarter, by 2.4%, making these the first two consecutive quarters of productivity growth in nearly three years.

oilprice.com
China started up the world's first fourth-generation nuclear reactor this week.

The Shidaowan nuclear power plant, which features the world's first fourth-generation reactor, started commercial operations on December 6.

Lantau Group's David Fishman: "China is arguably peerless in actually building and commercializing next-generation nuclear power technology."

reuters.com
The rise of inexpensive Chinese electric vehicles has upped the pressure on legacy automakers who have turned to suppliers, from battery materials makers to chipmakers, to squeeze out costs and develop affordable EVs quicker than previously planned.

statnews.com
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the world’s first medicine based on CRISPR gene-editing technology, a groundbreaking treatment for sickle cell disease that delivers a potential cure for people born with the chronic and life-shortening blood disorder.

The new medicine, called Casgevy, is made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. Its authorization is a scientific triumph for the technology that can efficiently and precisely repair DNA mutations — ushering in a new era of genetic medicines for inherited diseases.

aljazeera.com
The US Justice Department filed three felony and six misdemeanour tax offences against Biden, 53, on Thursday, according to an indictment filed in the US District Court, Central District of California.

He is accused of failing to file and pay taxes, evading tax assessment and making a false or fraudulent tax return, according to court documents presented in Los Angeles.

bloomberg.com
For the first time, the House of Nahyan has joined Bloomberg’s annual ranking of family fortunes, and done so at the very top.
With a $305 billion fortune, the Al Nahyans of Abu Dhabi topped the Waltons of Walmart Inc. by a cool $45 billion. Another new entrant: the Al Thanis, the royal family of Qatar, at No. 5.

The petro-fortunes are reshaping global business as never before. Their flexing of personal — as well as sovereign — financial firepower adds multibillion-dollar exclamation points to the region’s growing influence. All three Gulf families on the ranking are likely far richer than these conservative estimates.

theregister.com
Swedish Tesla employees have gone on strike, and unions in neighboring Denmark and Norway have joined boycotts of Elon Musk's electric automaker.

Danish union 3F and Norway's Fellesforbundet, the largest private-sector unions in their respective nations, both announced plans this week to get in Tesla's way.

3F, which covers multiple industries in Denmark, has limited its sympathy strike to its Transportation arm, which union chair Jan Villadsen explained will mean transportation workers at docks, including drivers, won't unload or transport Tesla vehicles bound for Sweden.

reuters.com
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via their apps' push notifications, a U.S. senator warned on Wednesday.

In a letter to the Department of Justice, Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data from Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Apple (AAPL.O). Although details were sparse, the letter lays out yet another path by which governments can track smartphones.

phys.org
A radical theory that consistently unifies gravity and quantum mechanics while preserving Einstein's classical concept of spacetime has been announced in two papers published simultaneously by UCL (University College London) physicists.

apnews.com
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States committed Saturday to the idea of phasing out coal power plants, joining 56 other nations in kicking the coal habit that’s a huge factor in global warming.

U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry announced that America was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which means the Biden Administration commits to building no new coal plants and phasing out existing plants. No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go, but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in the works had meant no coal by 2035.

live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io
Harvard University dismantled its prestigious team of online disinformation experts after a foundation run by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $500 million to the university, a whistleblower disclosure filed by Whistleblower Aid reveals.

Dr. Joan Donovan, one of the world’s leading experts on social media disinformation, says she ran into a wall of institutional resistance and eventual termination after she and her team at Harvard’s Technology and Social Change Research Project (TASC) began analyzing thousands of documents exposing Facebook’s knowledge of how the platform has caused significant public harm.

techradar.com
In recent years, attention has shifted to electrification and motorcycles boasting batteries and electric motors are becoming ever more prevalent.

This year, a number of established names in the biking world dropped the silk sheet on electrified bikes, while Milan’s Esposizione Internazionale del Ciclo also played host to a plethora of emerging brands from exotic markets that you've perhaps never heard of.

wolfstreet.com
In October, $18.5 billion were plowed into construction of manufacturing plants in the US ($246 billion annualized), up by 73% from a year ago, by 136% from two years ago, and by 166% from October 2019.

The relentless pace of the month-to-month increases is what’s amazing – from $12.5 billion spent in January to $18.5 billion in October.

world-nuclear-news.org
Work on the device began in 2007 and resulted from the Broader Approach Agreement between the European Union and Japan, a scientific collaboration to promote know-how in fusion through various projects.

Construction at Japan’s National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology in Naka was completed in 2020 with first plasma in October this year. The total cost is estimated to have been EUR560 million (USD608 million).

As I've written before, I believe fusion power is around the corner. As the demand for cheap energy becomes desperate, fusion power will start to look like a real alternative again.

playstation.com
As of 31 December 2023, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers,
you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library.

Expect to see a lot more of this behavior, where content owners block you from watching content that you've paid for using some obscure clause hidden deep in their ToL.

ft.com
New members of the global super-rich gained more of their assets through inheritance than through wealth creation this year — the first time that this has been recorded by Swiss bank UBS in its nine years of surveying global billionaires.

A total of $141bn was amassed by 84 self-made billionaires around the world in 2023, while $151bn was passed on to 53 heirs, the bank’s research found.

Can't wait to watch this film on IMAX, Mad Max: Fury Road was the best action sci fi since Terminator 2.
I don't know if Furiosa can equal Fury Road, but with George Miller directing, the chances are good it's going to be great.

kyivpost.com
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) blew up a freight train in a tunnel on a vital rail link between Russia and China, sources have told Kyiv Post.

The operation, conducted overnight, struck in the Severomuysky Tunnel on the Baikal Amur Mainline deep inside Russia, north of Mongolia.

A source in Ukraine’s military leadership told Kyiv Post four explosions targeted the train as it passed through the tunnel.

They added: “Currently, the Russians use this route, including for military supplies. After the explosion, it was paralyzed.”

astronomy.com
A newly discovered system of six planets circling a nearby Sun-like star may be the key to unlocking how planetary systems form. All between the size of Earth and Neptune, the worlds are orbiting in a so-called resonant chain — a configuration that it’s relatively rare to observe in nature, making the system a valuable find that offers a window into a uniquely “gentle” history.

cnbc.com
The U.S. economy grew at an even stronger pace then previously indicated in the third quarter, the product of better-than-expected business investment and stronger government spending, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

Gross domestic product, a measure of all goods and services produced during the three-month period, accelerated at a 5.2% annualized pace, the department’s second estimate showed. The acceleration topped the initial 4.9% reading and was better than the 5% forecast from economists polled by Dow Jones.

rollingstones.com

I am reminded of Hunter S Thompsons eulogy for Nixon. Henry Kissinger was a war criminal and he should have died in jail. The world is a better place without him. Good riddance!

apnews.com
A gay couple in Nepal on Wednesday became the first in the nation to receive official same-sex marriage status. The Himalayan nation is one of the first in Asia to allow it.

public.substack.com
The whistleblower's documents describe everything from the genesis of modern digital censorship programs to the role of the military and intelligence agencies, partnerships with civil society organizations and commercial media, and the use of sock puppet accounts and other offensive techniques.

e360.yale.edu
At the forthcoming UN climate talks, diplomats will push for a tripling of renewable power by 2030. A new analysis finds the world is likely already on track to hit this goal.

arstechnica.com
On Tuesday, Stability AI released Stable Video Diffusion, a new free AI research tool that can turn any still image into a short video—with mixed results. It's an open-weights preview of two AI models that use a technique called image-to-video, and it can run locally on a machine with an Nvidia GPU.

nature.com
To find diverse CRISPR systems in nature, Zhang, MIT bioengineer Han Altae-Tran and their colleagues developed an algorithm called FLSHclust, which analyses genetic sequences in public databases. These databases contain hundreds of thousands of genomes from bacteria and archaea, hundreds of millions of sequences that haven’t been linked to a particular species and billions of genes that encode proteins. FLSHclust found CRISPR-associated genes by looking for similarities between genetic sequences and grouping them into about 500 million clusters.

By looking at the predicted function of the clusters, the researchers found around 130,000 genes associated in some way with CRISPR, 188 of which had never been seen before, and tested several in the lab to find out what they do. Their experiments reveal various strategies that CRISPR systems use to attack bacteriophages, including unwinding the DNA double helix, and cutting DNA in ways that allow genes to be inserted or deleted. They also identified ‘anti-CRISPR’ fragments of DNA that might help a phage to escape bacterial defences.

Original paper on science.org

theregister.com
"I have serious concerns about the legality of this surveillance program, and the materials provided by the DoJ contain troubling information that would justifiably outrage many Americans and other members of Congress," Wyden wrote in a letter [PDF] to US Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Under Hemisphere, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) pays telco AT&T to provide all federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies with the ability to request searches of trillions of domestic phone records dating back to at least 1987, plus the four billion call records added every day.

reuters.com
Nov 22 (Reuters) - Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s four days in exile, several staff researchers wrote a letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

[...]

Some at OpenAI believe Q* (pronounced Q-Star) could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for what's known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), one of the people told Reuters. OpenAI defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.

Given vast computing resources, the new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, the person said on condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak on behalf of the company. Though only performing math on the level of grade-school students, acing such tests made researchers very optimistic about Q*’s future success, the source said.

As I wrote previously, it is time to pull the plug.

twitter.com
We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.

We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.

northvolt.com
Northvolt today announced a state-of-the-art sodium-ion battery, developed for the expansion of cost-efficient and sustainable energy storage systems worldwide. The cell has been validated for a best-in-class energy density of over 160 watt-hours per kilogram at the company’s R&D and industrialization campus, Northvolt Labs, in Västerås, Sweden.

twitter.com
We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI's new leadership team and working with them. And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.
- Sataya Nadella, CEO Microsoft

pbsnc.org
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has announced that 21 species once deemed “endangered” by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) are now extinct. Officially, this process is called “delisting species due to extinction.”

Unofficially, you could say the species are dead and never to be seen again.

space.com
Stunning photos and video by SpaceX, Space.com, news wires and the public show the sheer spectacle of the Starship second test launch, which SpaceX launched early Saturday (Nov. 18) from its Starbase facility near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas.

In a big milestone for SpaceX, the rocket's two stages separated successfully. The Super Heavy booster exploded shortly thereafter, while the Starship upper stage detonated before completing its launch burn. Still, SpaceX hailed the second test flight, which reached space and flew higher, farther and longer than a debut launch in April, as a success and will now study the flight to make any enhancements needed for the next launch.

goldmansachs.com
Goldman Sachs Research now expects battery prices to fall to $99 per kilowatt hour (kWh) of storage capacity by 2025 — a 40% decrease from 2022 (the previous forecast was for a 33% decline). Our analysts estimate that almost half of the decline will come from declining prices of EV raw materials such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt. Battery pack prices are now expected to fall by an average of 11% per year from 2023 to 2030, writes Nikhil Bhandari, co-head of Goldman Sachs Research’s Asia-Pacific Natural Resources and Clean Energy Research, in the team’s report.

openai.com
The board of directors of OpenAI, Inc., the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities, today announced that Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.

sfstandard.com
A knowledgeable source said the board struggle reflected a cultural clash at the organization, with Altman and Brockman focused on commercialization and Sutskever and his allies focused on the original non-profit mission of OpenAI.

twitter.com

I’m giving up smoke.
- Snoop Dogg

oilprice.com
Sweden will build two new nuclear reactors by 2035 in a hedge on low-carbon energy security, with 10 new reactors hoped for by 2045.

On Thursday, the Swedish government took definitive sides in Europe’s polarized take on nuclear energy and its role in the clean energy transition, with energy security dealing the final blow to nuclear energy opponents.

ethz.ch
3D printing is advancing rapidly, and the range of materials that can be used has expanded considerably. While the technology was previously limited to fast-​curing plastics, it has now been made suitable for slow-​curing plastics as well. These have decisive advantages as they have enhanced elastic properties and are more durable and robust.

The use of such polymers is made possible by a new technology developed by researchers at ETH Zurich and a US start-​up. As a result, researchers can now 3D print complex, more durable robots from a variety of high-​quality materials in one go. This new technology also makes it easy to combine soft, elastic, and rigid materials. The researchers can also use it to create delicate structures and parts with cavities as desired.

kyivpost.com
President Zelensky’s Chief of Staff has confirmed the establishment of bridgeheads by Ukrainian Marines east of the Dnipro River in southern Kherson, paving the way to future operations to recapture Crimea.

“Against all odds, Ukraine's Defense Forces have gained a foothold on the left (east) bank of the Dnipro,” Andriy Yermak said on Tuesday evening at the Hudson Institute during a US diplomatic visit.

arstechnica.com
For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a large portion of cryptographic keys used to protect data in computer-to-server SSH traffic are vulnerable to complete compromise when naturally occurring computational errors occur while the connection is being established.

electrek.co
The 10-minute figure for a 0-80% recharge of the Yadea Kemper isn’t the bike’s only impressive claim on its spec sheet. A top speed of 160 km/h (99.4 mph) and a centrally-mounted motor rated for 23 kW of continuous power and 40 kW of peak power (up to 53 horsepower) put this naked sport bike in the performance territory.

gizmodo.com
Fans can look forward to the arrival of The Mercy of Gods, a space opera trilogy “that sees humanity fighting for its survival in a war as old as the universe itself,” according to a press release from publisher Orbit. This book will kick off the Captive’s War trilogy, and it will be released August 6, 2024.

fortune.com
Nearly 7% of for-sale homes in the U.S. posted a price drop during the four weeks ending Oct. 29, which is the highest portion since Redfin started tracking this data in 2012 and far surpasses the 3.6% of homes that lower their price in an average month.

eff.org
The EU is poised to pass a sweeping new regulation, eIDAS 2.0.

Buried deep in the text is Article 45, which returns us to the dark ages of 2011, when certificate authorities (CAs) could collaborate with governments to spy on encrypted traffic—and get away with it.

Article 45 forbids browsers from enforcing modern security requirements on certain CAs without the approval of an EU member government. Which CAs? Specifically the CAs that were appointed by the government, which in some cases will be owned or operated by that selfsame government. That means cryptographic keys under one government’s control could be used to intercept HTTPS communication throughout the EU and beyond.

theguardian.com
The first patient to receive a spinal implant to treat advanced Parkinson’s disease has described experiencing “a rebirth” after the treatment allowed him to walk again without falling over.

Marc, 63, from Bordeaux, France, was diagnosed with the degenerative disease more than 20 years ago and had developed severe mobility problems, including balance impairments and freezing of gait. After receiving the implant, which aims to restore normal signalling to the leg muscles from the spine, he has been able to walk more normally and regained his independence.

cnbc.com
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday that the company’s Starlink satellite internet business “achieved breakeven cash flow.”

Musk did not specify whether the milestone was hit on an operating basis or for a different specified time period.

SpaceX’s valuation has soared to about $150 billion, with Starlink seen as a key economic driver of the company’s goals.

jonathanhaidt.substack.com
People often ask me to explain their kids to them. They are baffled by the children that they raised and yet somehow do not know.

It sounds impossible and yet makes sense—considering that the hours their kids spent under the same roof were also spent in a maze of digital crevices. Parents always expected that their sons and daughters would soon return from the dark side of the dreaded adolescent years, but more and more seem afraid that their children will never come back from wherever it is they’re going.

These are strangers in their own home.

Parents ask me: Why are my kids so anxious and depressed? Where do they go all day on their devices? How can I get them back?

dunenewsnet.com
Spice intake may be especially high for Dune fans next year. This morning at HBO and Max’s 2024 content slate presentation, division CEO and chairman Casey Bloys announced that their Dune prequel TV series—co-produced with Legendary Television—is expected to debut on the Max streaming service in fall 2024.

spacex.com
The second flight test of a fully integrated Starship could launch as soon as mid-November, pending regulatory approval.

arstechnica.com
One notable change is the addition of a "hot staging" ring between the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage. This technique will call for the Starship's Raptor engines to ignite before the upper stage separates from the Super Heavy first stage. This is more technically challenging than waiting for stage separation, but will eventually result in a higher payload-to-orbit capability for Starship.

oilprice.com

• Rising climate change awareness is leading to a renewed interest in nuclear energy, with public support in the U.S. at a decade high.
• Recent advances in small modular reactors and existing nuclear infrastructure position nuclear power as a viable, stable energy source.
• Increased demand and higher uranium prices signal the market's bullish outlook for nuclear, with the U.S. possessing significant uranium reserves.

aljazeera.com
Democracy declined around the world for the sixth consecutive year in 2022 as half the world’s countries slid backwards on indicators such as freedom of expression and political participation, according to a prominent think tank.

theverge.com
YouTube is broadening its efforts to crack down on ad blockers. The platform has “launched a global effort” to encourage users to allow ads or try YouTube Premium, YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton says in a statement provided to The Verge.

hollywoodreporter.com
U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Monday found that copyright infringement claims cannot move forward against Midjourney and DeviantArt, concluding the accusations are “defective in numerous respects.” Among the issues are whether the AI systems they run on actually contain copies of copyrighted images that were used to create infringing works and if the artists can substantiate infringement in the absence of identical material created by the AI tools. Claims against the companies for infringement, right of publicity, unfair competition and breach of contract were dismissed, though they will likely be reasserted.

techcrunch.com
Apple has warned over a half dozen Indian lawmakers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s main opposition of their iPhones being targets of state-sponsored attacks, these people said Tuesday, in a remarkable turn of events just months before the general elections in the South Asian nation

apple.com
The industry’s first 3-nanometer chips for a personal computer debut a next-generation GPU architecture and deliver dramatic performance improvements, a faster CPU and Neural Engine, and support for more unified memory

npr.org reports

For the last several days, the Israel Defense Forces had mounted a series of limited incursions into Gaza, in which soldiers left soon after entering. But Saturday's announcement was the first extended presence of Israeli troops in the territory. In a televised press conference on Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the escalation that began on Friday marked "the second stage" of the campaign and said Israelis should anticipate "a difficult and long war."

cnbc.com
The U.S. economy grew even faster than expected in the third quarter, buoyed by a strong consumer in spite of higher interest rates, ongoing inflation pressures, and a variety of other domestic and global headwinds.

chinadaily.com.cn
The process of internationalizing the Chinese currency took another major step forward with the first crude oil transaction settled with the digital renminbi on Thursday.
By buying 1 million barrels of crude oil, PetroChina International Corp Ltd completed the first-ever international crude oil trade to be settled in e-CNY at the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange (SHPGX).

It is well known that Israel has the most advanced intelligence services in the world, so why did they miss the October 7 attack by Hamas?
Short answer, too much surveillance hides the actual danger.

october7.org
On October 7th, 2023, Israel was hit by the terrorist organization, Hamas, which launched a brutal assault on southern Israel. Without mercy or remorse, they murdered and kidnapped hundreds of innocent civilians, including the elderly, women, and children. They infiltrated peaceful towns, setting homes ablaze and subjecting families to the horrors of abduction and annihilation. Their cruelty reached an unfathomable peak with a devastating massacre, claiming the lives of hundreds of individuals at a vibrant music festival. What was once an evening of joy became a symphony of unimaginable suffering.

I was born broke. My parents, God bless those two sweethearts, were poor all their lives and never learned how to make money.
Instead they slaved away their whole lives making a buck for someone else.
But I am determined to make it and I am determined to be successful. Here's what I've learned about making money. Here's everything I know.

The U.K. parliament passed the Online Safety Bill into law. With this law can the United Kingdom still be considered a democracy? A little snitch in every pocket, always present, eagerly spying on the servants of the State. It's disgusting.

Another interesting space company kind of flying under the radar is Stoke Space.
They successfully trialed their test vehicle Hopper 2 just a few days ago. Stoke has a very interesting engine design. Check out this cool video from Everyday Astronaut for more information.
I'm looking forward to following them and their development. Stokes Space's website..

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying
-Arthur C. Clarke

What are the chances that we are the only intelligent species in a universe with two hundred billion trillion stars? My wild guess? Very low. Most probably, there are countless of alien civilizations in the Universe. But if alien civilizations are so numerous, how come we haven't observed them yet?

SpaceX test-fires booster for second Starship launch . Still no launch date confirmed yet.

SpaceXs Starship is a game changer, with a massive 100t to LEO in its reusable configuration. It will be the largest rocket ever flown, surpassing even the Saturn V. Once operational, it will completely disrupt the space market, decreasing launch costs down by magnitudes.

"In the late 19th century, scientists observed that compressing the main artery in the neck – alongside which the vagus nerves run – could help to prevent or treat epilepsy. This idea was resurrected in the 1980s, when the first electrical stimulators were implanted into the necks of epilepsy patients, helping to calm down the irregular electrical brain activity that triggers seizures.

Check out Melodysheep on YouTube for some sweet science videos. Some of my favorites are Timelapse of the Future and his Symphony of Science series.

Am I scared of artificial intelligence? You bet I am. When we have an artificial intelligence as smart as the smartest people, all bets are off. I do not believe it likely the A.I. will consider us a threat to it's existence, but we are competing for it's resources.
Will it deliberately exterminate us? Unlikely. More likely it will form an economic organization and simply out-compete us. Perhaps we will still be useful for sorting scrap metals or something.

So the last three German nuclear reactors were shut down, a decision rooted in fear caused by the Fukushima meltdown.
The anti-nuclear mania started in Germany in the 1970s and really took over Germanys energy politics in the 1986s with Chernobyl. But it wasn't until the Fukushima tsunami in 2011, which caused a reactor meltdown at the nuclear power plant, they decided to close down their own reactors.
Despite the near zero amount of fatalities, the Fukushima meltdown fueled the Germans irrational fear of nuclear technology.
I doubt Germany will remain without nuclear power for long though, I think it's much likelier that the Germans will vote in new leadership.

It's a disturbing trend in the western world that people call out for censoring opinions that the they don’t like both from the left, right and center. Imprisonment and fines face people that express thoughts not aligned with the current mass delusion, imposed by the ruling elites. Was it always like this? Probably it was worse... Hard to say when history keeps getting rewritten and then forgotten. I'm a believer in both freedom of speech and democracy and I believe you can't have one without the other - They go hand in hand.

The advantages of electrical airplanes are obvious. Fast regional air travel is a game changer and will compete with cars, commuter rail and buses,, not with other airplanes. Electric airplanes will be cheap to operate, easy to maintain and quiet. Heart Aerospace and Wright Electric are changing the game with electrical propulsion.

You're terrified of a nuclear meltdown, so instead of nuclear power you subject global civilization to decades of unnecessary fossil fuel burning? If we had been consistently building nuclear power plants since the 1960s we wouldn't be in this global warming catastrophe. I'm curious what our global CO2 levels would be if all the major industrialized nations had transitioned to 100% nuclear over the previous 60 years?

Without nuclear power there’s only one option left to keep the global warming below 2 degrees Celsius - by severely reducing our power consumption and by being forced to make "different lifestyle choices". Without nuclear power you can kiss goodbye to a modern lifestyle and say welcome to the dark ages. Hyperbolic? Maybe a little. But our wealth is completely dependent on cheap energy. Energy equals wealth.

Fundamentally, when the people have a say about the future of their society their society becomes better.
I believe that the best society is one that is highly cohesive(we help each other when we can), highly democratic(vote on everything where it is practically reasonable) and with free enterprise for the individual. What we have in the so called democratic part of the world however is not democracy in its true form - What we have instead is something else, and it's pretty lack luster.

Access to space is no longer reserved for the worlds richest nation states and the occasional billionaire. Reusable rockets are decreasing the cost for sending stuff into space making new exciting things possible. The choke hold that was held by Old Space companies have had on the launch industry has finally been defeated by trailblazers like SpaceX and Rocket Lab. Sooner than you think we’ll have damn cool things in orbit and beyond, much thanks to these young entrepreneurial companies. Hotels, advanced satellite constellations, Lunar and Mars bases... And further out on the timeline, asteroid mining? It's easy to get carried away but humanity is finally becoming space faring for real.

In January 2022 the Chinese EAST fusion reactor broke the world record and managed to sustain a 70 million Kelvin plasma for more than 17 minutes. Research into fusion power is achieving milestone after milestone in a very short span of time and I believe we will see commercial fusion reactors before the end of the next decade. Within 5 years, we will have experimental reactors that for the first time generate more energy than they consume.

No. I am more worried about the rest of the world economy than I am about Rocket Lab.

I'm still a believer in Peter Beck and his merry band of rocket enthusiasts. Below is my take on the last 6 months and what I still think the future holds.

Rocket Lab has had an amazing growth since it's inception, having literally gone from being a rocket nerd making rocket parts in his garden shed to a 1000+ employee operation. In this article I will outline the potential for Rocket Lab as well as the risks. Space is indeed the final frontier and Rocket Lab will be one of the big winners in this awesome market.

No nonsense technology and bigger picture news.