Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 10/20/24. We aim to educate people about this crucial area along with providing information of what is taking place.
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For all the Kindle lovers out there, Amazon has some good news – the e-commerce behemoth has now expanded its Kindle lineup with four new devices, including one that finally gets colour display.
“There’s never been a better time to pick up a Kindle. Amazon is introducing an entirely new lineup of Kindle devices, including the first-ever color Kindle, a reimagined Kindle Scribe, the fastest Kindle Paperwhite ever, and a new entry Kindle in a fun, new Matcha color,” the company noted in an official statement. The launch comes on the same day when Apple announced a fresh iteration of its iPad mini line-up.
For users who are unwilling to empty their pockets, Amazon offers an entry-level device, which sports “premium Kindle features.” These include a front light that is now 25% brighter, improved page-turn speeds, 16GB storage, a higher contrast display, and improved page-turn speeds. There is also a new colour option – Matcha Green – and is priced at $109.99.
Known as the Kindle ColorSoft Signature Edition, Amazon’s offering into the color e-reader market provides richer visuals, high contrast, faster page turns, as well as two modes — standard and vibrant color. These modes allow users to highlight text in various colors instead of the typical grayscale. The Kindle also comes with wireless charging and is waterproof. Interested users can get their hands on it from October 30 (pre-orders begin today) and the device is priced at $279.99.
“Everything about Kindle Colorsoft was meticulously designed to deliver rich, paper-like color. It uses an oxide backplane with custom waveforms for fast performance and a higher contrast on both color and black-and-white content. Its custom Colorsoft display includes a new light-guide with nitride LEDs that, when combined with our custom algorithms, enhances color and increases brightness, all without washing out details. You can zoom in on images without worrying about pixelation, and you can choose between standard or vibrant color styles,” Amazon noted.
Next comes the Kindle Scribe, which sports a 300 ppi screen. Among the new devices, this one offers a realistic writing experience. The device also comes with the Premium Pen (which feels like you are using an actual pen to jot down notes directly on book pages or use a side panel, which they can hide or display at their discretion. One of the more interesting features of Kindle Scribe is the new Active Canvas, which lets readers annotate pages without disrupting the text flow itself. To add to this, Amazon also brings AI into the Scribe’s notebook feature, which can summarize pages of handwritten notes into concise bullet points. The device will be priced at $399.99, and pre-orders are available now. Users will have to wait for a while to get their hands on it, though, since shipping starts from December 4.
Next comes the Kindle Paperwhite, which Amazon describes as the “fastest Kindle ever.” Coming with a larger display – 7 inches – the Kindle Paperwhite comes with an improved battery lifetime (lasting up to three months on a single charge) as well as 16 GB of storage. the device will come in a thinner design and Raspberry, Jade, and Black colors, while its improved internals promise 25% faster page-turn speeds. This version starts at $159.99, while the Signature version is priced at $199.99. The pricier model offers 32GB of storage, amongst other features.
SpaceX has now achieved a historic new milestone – this time, the space company successfully captured the Super Heavy booster from its Starship rocket as it descended back to the launchpad in southern Texas. This development comes a few months after the space company achieved its first successful splashdown with its Starship vehicle, and marks the fifth test flight of the Starship rocket.
The mission commenced at 7:25 AM local time from the Boca Chica starbase, with the Starship rocket lifting off under clear skies. The rocket stands 397 feet (121 meters) tall once it is fully assembled. During the launch, the Super Heavy booster separated from the upper stage at an altitude of 40 miles (65 kilometers). The upper stage then proceeded to reach an altitude of nearly 90 miles, completing a fast-paced orbit around the Earth at approximately 17,000 mph. Once the objectives were achieved, the upper stage successfully splashed down in the Indian Ocean.
As the Super Heavy booster re-entered the atmosphere, it ignited three of its Raptor engines to decelerate, thus aligning itself for a landing at the launchpad. This recovery process involved the use of the “Mechazilla,” large mechanical arms on the pad gantry that have been designed to catch the descending booster and hold it securely at the launch pad. This is a big step – it marks the first time SpaceX has executed such a maneuver and achieved success, and if this success continues, then it will massively increase the reusability of rocket components. It also allows rockets to return directly to the launch site instead of landing on distant platforms or in the ocean, and cuts down on the time required to refurbish and prepare the rockets for future launches.
“Folks, this is a day for the engineering history books,” a spokesperson for SpaceX. “The tower has caught the rocket!!” Elon Musk, SpaceX founder, posted on social media platform X. The company went on to reveal that its engineers have “spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success.”
This comes after the upper stage faced challenges during the re-entry – the separation from the booster was followed by the Starship utilizing its improved heat-shielding tiles to protect against the extreme temperatures generated during re-entry. The vehicle eventually successfully landed in the Indian Ocean, but managed to tip over and explode upon hitting the water. It is unknown whether the explosion was a controlled detonation or not, but Musk said the ship landed “precisely on target!”
The most recent flight of Starship, the most powerful spacecraft in the world, may have been a step towards reducing the interval between space flights and thus making them cheaper. In an unprecedented feat, SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, managed to bring the first stage of the ship, the Super Heavy rocket — the most powerful in history — back to the launch pad.
Measuring 70 meters high and 9 meters in diameter, he was captured while still in the air, using the mechanical arms of the structure known as Mechazilla.
Musk hopes that, in the future, the ship itself can also be fully recovered (it separates from the rocket after a few minutes and continues its course alone into space, until it returns to the Earth's atmosphere). On Sunday, the capsule (without a crew) landed in the Gulf of Mexico, but exploded shortly after.
The ultimate goal is that this set (rocket and ship) can be put back into flight almost immediately after completing a trip. “This is the fork in the road of destiny that will allow humanity to become a multi-planetary civilization,” Musk said.
“Total and immediate reuse with low-cost propellant [fuel] will mean a marginal cost per ton approximately 100 times better than that of the Falcon [another smaller rocket from SpaceX], which is already 10 times better than that of the Shuttle [the space shuttles, from NASA]”, he stated.
– Savings on transportation: when the rocket lands directly at the launch base, the company reduces costs and time to bring the vehicle back compared to landing at sea, for example. “There is a cost to going there to get it. If the rocket returns alone, it is much cheaper”, explains Annibal Hetem, professor of space propulsion on the aerospace engineering course at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC);
In the mission on the 13th, the Super Heavy undocked from Starship minutes after takeoff, after reaching an altitude of around 70 km. The capsule continued flying through space until it landed in the Indian Ocean, about an hour after launch.
After separating from the spacecraft, the rocket began the movement that would take it back to the ground. As the launch is shaped like an arc, the Super Heavy rose another 26 km, practically horizontally, until it began its descent, where it reached almost 4,400 km/h.
When approaching Mechazilla (the system that will grab it at the launch base), with a speed of around 200 km/h, the rocket turned on its main and side engines, to have more control of the descent.
The landing ended 7 minutes after launch, with the platform's mechanical arms “embracing” the vehicle. “There is no reverse gear on a rocket, what SpaceX did was balance the weight. What makes it descend is the weight, the gravity, in a controlled way”, says Hetem.
“The main difficulty with this type of thing is knowing the dynamics of the vehicle in advance. What was done was simulated thousands of times, everything is pre-calculated”, adds Dourado.
A Nvidia fez um movimento importante no campo da inteligência artificial ao lançar um novo modelo de IA que superou as ofertas das principais empresas do setor, como a OpenAI e Anthropic. Embora o lançamento tenha sido feito de maneira discreta, os resultados falam por si, posicionando a Nvidia como uma potência não apenas em hardware, mas também em software de IA.
Essa conquista representa um marco importante para a Nvidia, uma empresa tradicionalmente conhecida por suas GPUs (unidades de processamento gráfico), essenciais para o treinamento de grandes modelos de IA. Entretanto, ao lançar seu próprio modelo de linguagem, a empresa mostra sua capacidade de competir diretamente com as gigantes de software.
A Nvidia utilizou o modelo Llama 3.1 de código aberto da Meta como base para o desenvolvimento do Nemotron. O processo incluiu técnicas avançadas de treinamento, como o Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), que permite à IA ajustar suas respostas de acordo com as preferências humanas.
Isso significa que o modelo pode oferecer respostas mais naturais e contextualizadas, o que é um grande diferencial em comparação aos modelos concorrentes.
O conceito de “alinhamento” é uma das principais vantagens do novo modelo da Nvidia.
Esse termo refere-se à capacidade da IA de gerar respostas que correspondem às necessidades e preferências de seus usuários.
Na prática, isso significa menos erros e uma maior satisfação do cliente, algo crucial para empresas que dependem da IA para aprimorar o atendimento ao cliente e automatizar processos.
Para as empresas que buscam soluções de IA, o Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct oferece uma alternativa robusta e acessível.
A Nvidia disponibiliza o modelo gratuitamente para inferências por meio de sua plataforma build.nvidia.com, facilitando o acesso de empresas de todos os portes a uma IA de ponta.
À medida que o Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct é testado e utilizado em diversas indústrias, espera-se que novas aplicações surjam. Empresas de setores como saúde, educação e finanças já estão explorando como o modelo pode ser integrado em seus sistemas para automatizar processos e melhorar a eficiência.
Se a Nvidia conseguir continuar inovando e expandindo suas ofertas de IA, é provável que veremos uma reconfiguração do setor nos próximos anos. A empresa já demonstrou que tem a capacidade de competir com gigantes como a OpenAI, mas a verdadeira prova será a adoção em larga escala de suas soluções.
A federal judge in California has ruled that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, must face lawsuits from U.S. states (reported by Reuters). These states accuse Meta of causing mental health issues among teenagers by making its platforms addictive. The judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, decided that the lawsuits can continue, although she noted some limits on the claims. She agreed with Meta that a federal law called Section 230 provides some protection to online platforms, but she found enough evidence in the states’ arguments to allow most of the case to proceed.
The lawsuits involve more than 30 states, including California and New York, as well as a separate one from Florida. The ruling also affects personal injury lawsuits filed by individuals against Meta and other social media companies like TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat. These companies sought to dismiss the personal injury cases, but the judge denied their requests, allowing these cases to move forward as well.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated that Meta should be held responsible for the harm it has caused to children across the country. Lawyers representing the young people involved in the lawsuits called the judge’s decision a significant win for those negatively affected by social media addiction.
Meta responded by saying they disagreed with the ruling but highlighted their efforts to create tools that help parents and teens, such as new “Teen Accounts” on Instagram with extra protections. A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, called the allegations against them untrue and stated that providing a safer experience for young users is a priority.
The lawsuits are seeking court orders to stop Meta’s alleged harmful business practices and are asking for unspecified monetary damages.
Many lawsuits have been filed against various social media companies, claiming that their addictive algorithms contribute to issues like anxiety, depression, and body image problems among teenagers, and that they fail to warn users about these risks.
Drone-maker DJI filed a lawsuit Friday against the US Department of Defense over its inclusion on a DoD list of “Chinese military companies.”
A DJI spokesperson said the company filed the suit after “attempting to engage with the DoD for more than sixteen months” and deciding “it had no alternative other than to seek relief in federal court.”
“DJI is not owned or controlled by the Chinese military, and the DoD itself acknowledges that DJI makes consumer and commercial drones, not military drones,” the spokesperson said.
The Chinese company was added to the DoD’s list in 2022, following similar actions from other government agencies — in 2020, DJI was placed on Department of Commerce’s Entity List that essentially blocked US companies from selling to it, and it was placed on the Treasury Department’s investment blocklist the following year, due to DJI’s alleged involvement in the surveillance of Uyghur Muslims. (The company said it had “nothing to do with treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.”)
Toyota-backed autonomous vehicle company Pony AI has joined the list of Chinese firms going public on the U.S. stock market after a multi-year ban
Toyota-backed autonomous vehicle company Pony AI has joined the list of Chinese firms going public on the U.S. stock market after a multi-year ban from Beijing on offshore capital raising.
Chinese autonomous vehicle (AV) startup Pony.ai has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York ⇪ Exchange×, offering a glimpse into the company's operations, financials, and future prospects. The filing comes at a time when Chinese tech companies are facing increased scrutiny in the U.S. markets, and the AV industry continues to grapple with technological and regulatory challenges.
Pony.ai, previously valued at $8.5 billion in a 2022 funding round, has significantly lowered its expectations for the IPO. The company's board of directors has reduced the minimum valuation target to $4 billion, less than half of its previous valuation. Additionally, Pony.ai has cut its minimum fundraising goal from $425 million to $200 million, indicating a more conservative approach in the current market climate.
The company's operations are primarily focused in China, with a modest fleet of 190 "robotrucks" operating in Beijing and Guangzhou, and over 250 robotaxis across Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. Pony.ai has achieved fully driverless operations in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and can charge for robotaxi fares in three of these cities.
Pony.ai reports an average of 15 daily orders per robotaxi from its 220,000 registered users on the PonyPilot app. The company has accumulated over 20 million autonomous driving miles, though only 2.4 million of these were fully driverless.
While Pony.ai has seen revenue growth, with $24.7 million in the first half of 2024 (nearly double the same period last year), the company continues to operate at a loss. In 2022 and 2023, Pony.ai reported gross profits but net losses exceeding $270 million, primarily due to high R&D expenses.
The company's workforce of about 1,300 employees is heavily skewed towards R&D (44%), with operations accounting for only 28.5% of staff. This allocation reflects the company's continued focus on technology development over immediate profitability.
Despite the challenges, Pony.ai paints an optimistic picture of its technology and future potential. The company projects increased revenues, particularly from robotaxi fares, though it acknowledges that costs are likely to remain high in the near term.
Pony.ai's IPO filing provides valuable insights into the state of the AV industry and the specific challenges faced by Chinese tech companies entering U.S. markets. As the company moves forward with its public offering, investors and industry observers will be watching closely to see how Pony.ai navigates the complex landscape of autonomous vehicle development and commercialization.
The article begins by highlighting the challenges faced by employers in enforcing their return-to-office (RTO) policies. Despite the growing trend of remote work, many companies are struggling to implement and enforce their RTO mandates. This is largely due to the fact that many employees are refusing to comply with these policies, either by working from home or finding alternative arrangements that allow them to avoid the office.
So, why are employees resisting the return to office? There are several reasons, including:
Flexibility and autonomy: Many employees value the flexibility and autonomy that comes with working from home. They enjoy the freedom to create their own schedules and work at times that are most productive for them.
Work-life balance: With the rise of remote work, employees are better able to balance their work and personal life. They can attend to family responsibilities, take care of health issues, or simply enjoy more time with loved ones.
Productivity and focus: Some employees believe that they are more productive and focused when working from home. They can avoid distractions, create a quiet and comfortable workspace, and work at their own pace.
Career advancement and opportunities: Many employees feel that working from home limits their opportunities for career advancement and professional development. They may feel that they are missing out on important networking opportunities, training, and mentorship.
The Risks of Micromanaging
The article also highlights the risks of micromanaging, which is a common approach employed by some employers to enforce RTO policies. Micromanaging involves tracking every aspect of an employee's work, from their hours worked to their activities online. This approach can lead to a toxic culture of mistrust and fear, where employees feel like they are being watched and judged all the time.
The article suggests that the return to office can actually weaken company culture and team morale. When employees are forced to work in an office, they may feel like they are just going through the motions, rather than being part of a team that is working together towards a common goal. This can lead to a culture of transactional relationships, where employees are seen as mere commodities rather than valued members of the team.
The article highlights the broader job market shift that is taking place, with 57% of workers expecting increased flexibility and 42% stating that location flexibility is a prerequisite before applying for a job. This shift is driven by the pandemic, which has forced many companies to adopt remote work arrangements. However, it also reflects a broader cultural shift, where workers are demanding more flexibility and autonomy in their careers.
The Freelance Economy
The article also mentions the rise of the freelance economy, which is driven by workers who are seeking more flexibility and autonomy in their careers. Freelancing offers workers the opportunity to work on a project-by-project basis, choose their own clients and projects, and work from anywhere. This approach can be attractive to workers who value flexibility and autonomy, but it also poses challenges for employers, who may struggle to attract and retain top talent.
Finally, the article emphasizes the importance of remote work in the modern workplace. Remote work offers workers the flexibility and autonomy they need to be productive and focused, while also allowing companies to access a global talent pool and reduce costs. However, it also requires companies to rethink their approach to work and management, and to prioritize a culture of trust and collaboration.
Overall, the article suggests that the return to office is a short-sighted approach that may damage company culture and employee morale in the long term. Instead, companies should prioritize a balanced and flexible approach to remote work, one that values the needs and contributions of all employees.
A new AI model developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School is making waves in cancer diagnosis and treatment.
A new AI model developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School is making waves in cancer diagnosis and treatment. This AI model can perform a variety of tasks for 19 different types of cancer. It goes beyond many current AI systems that are usually limited to one specific job, like just detecting cancer or predicting a tumor’s genetic makeup.
The AI, named CHIEF (Clinical Histopathology Imaging Evaluation Foundation), analyzes digital images of tumor tissues. It detects cancer cells, predicts the tumor’s molecular profile, and even forecasts patient survival rates. Researchers found that CHIEF is more accurate than most current AI methods, achieving nearly 94% accuracy in detecting cancer.
The researchers believe CHIEF could help identify patients who might benefit from experimental treatments that target specific genetic variations. This capability is especially valuable in areas with limited access to advanced testing.
Get an exclusive first look at Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra! Discover sleek design, innovative features, and what makes it a must-have in 2025.
The tech world is buzzing with excitement as leaks and rumors about Samsung’s upcoming flagship, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, continue to circulate. A recent render has emerged, providing us with a tantalizing glimpse of what we can expect from this highly anticipated device.
One of the standout features showcased in the render is the rear camera rings design. Inspired by the Galaxy Z Fold 6, this unique arrangement adds a touch of sophistication to the device’s aesthetics. The camera sensor layout appears similar to that of the S24 Ultra, suggesting we can expect comparable camera capabilities.
Perhaps most notably, the render confirms the inclusion of the S Pen. This beloved stylus has become a staple of the Galaxy S Ultra series, offering users a versatile tool for note-taking, drawing, and more. The S Pen slot is likely housed within the device’s bottom edge, maintaining the familiar design we’ve come to expect.
Google is removing uBlock Origin from Chrome, pushing users to adopt Manifest V3 and limiting ad-blocking options.
Google is removing the popular ad-blocking extension uBlock Origin from the Chrome Web Store. This change is part of a bigger shift towards using a new system called Manifest V3, which has been in development since 2018. Google claims that this new system improves security, but it also makes it harder for extensions like uBlock Origin to work effectively.
Currently, if you search for uBlock Origin in the Chrome Web Store, you might find it unavailable because it no longer meets Google’s new rules for extensions. However, some users still have access to it, particularly in the EU. For those who already use uBlock Origin, Google has started showing warnings that the extension will soon be outdated.
Under Manifest V3, extensions have limited access to the browser and the web. This is a big issue for ad blockers and security tools because they rely on being able to access data to do their job.
As a result, many developers of popular extensions, including uBlock Origin, may have to stop supporting their products in Chrome. Users will then have fewer options, mainly switching to lighter versions or alternatives like uBlock Origin Lite or AdGuard.
Discover the October 2024 Feature Drop for Pixel Watch, featuring quick contacts, emoji email reactions, and expanded safety features.
Google has just started rolling out the October 2024 Feature Drop update for its Pixel Watches, smartphones, and tablets. This update brings some exciting new features for Pixel Watch users. The update will be gradually available on your devices, so keep an eye out for it!
One of the most useful new features is the individual contact tile. Now, you can easily reach your favorite contacts directly from your watch. You can choose which contact you want to see on your watch face and quickly call or message them with just one tap. This makes staying in touch with friends and family super simple!
Another fun addition is the ability to send emoji reactions to your emails. If you receive a Gmail notification, you can now respond with a thumbs up or a smiley face right from your Pixel Watch. This makes it easier to react to messages without needing to pull out your phone.
AI voice Scam costs California Senior $25,000 in Elaborate Bail fraud
In a disturbing case that highlights the growing sophistication of technology-enabled fraud, a California senior citizen fell victim to an elaborate scam involving artificial intelligence voice cloning. The incident, which resulted in the loss of $25,000, serves as a stark warning about the evolving tactics of modern fraudsters and the need for increased vigilance among vulnerable populations.
The victim, identified only as Anthony to protect his privacy, received a phone call that would set in motion a chain of events leading to significant financial loss and emotional distress. The voice on the other end of the line was unmistakably familiar - it was his son's voice, or so Anthony believed. "It was his voice. It was absolutely his voice," Anthony later recounted to ABC 7 news, emphasizing, "There was no doubt about it."
The caller, using an AI-generated voice that perfectly mimicked Anthony's son, spun a tale of urgent crisis. The impersonator claimed to have been involved in a "horrible accident" while driving, stating that he had struck a pregnant woman who was subsequently "rushed to the ICU." This shocking news immediately put Anthony on high alert, priming him for what was to come next.
The initial call was brief, but it set the stage for the more elaborate phases of the scam. Within minutes, Anthony received a second call, this time from a man identifying himself as Michael Roberts, purportedly his son's lawyer. Roberts wasted no time in pressing the urgency of the situation, telling Anthony, "You need to get $9,200 as fast as you can if you want your son out of jail. Otherwise, he's in for 45 days."
To his credit, Anthony's initial reaction was one of suspicion. The sudden demand for a large sum of money raised red flags, prompting him to attempt to verify the story directly with his son. He tried calling his son's number, but the call went straight to voicemail, further heightening his anxiety and lending credibility to the scammer's narrative.
This moment of doubt could have been the turning point that saved Anthony from falling victim to the fraud. However, the scammers had anticipated such a reaction and had already taken steps to isolate their target from potential sources of verification. The unanswered call to his son left Anthony with little choice but to take the scammer's claims at face value, especially given the perceived urgency of the situation.
Despite his misgivings, Anthony's paternal instincts and fear for his son's well-being ultimately overrode his caution. He made his way to the bank, where he withdrew $9,200. In a detail that underscores the complex psychology at play in such scams, Anthony told the bank teller that the money was for solar panel installation. This white lie was not just an attempt to avoid scrutiny; it also reveals Anthony's subconscious awareness that something about the situation might not be quite right.
Upon returning home, Anthony's daughter became involved, adding another layer of perceived legitimacy to the scam. She called the supposed lawyer back, and was informed that an Uber would soon arrive to collect the bail money. This use of a legitimate ride-sharing service as an unwitting accomplice is a clever tactic employed by modern scammers to distance themselves from the physical collection of funds.
Surveillance footage from Anthony's home captured the moment when his daughter handed over the money to the Uber driver, verifying the license plate number in the process. This attention to detail, ironically, served to further convince the victims of the scam's authenticity.
In a cruel twist that demonstrates the scammers' psychological acumen, they were not content with their initial success. Shortly after the first payment was collected, Anthony received yet another call. This time, the caller identified himself as Mark Cohen, claiming to be another lawyer working on his son's case. Cohen delivered devastating news: the pregnant woman allegedly struck by Anthony's son had died, and as a result, his son's bail had been increased significantly.
This escalation served multiple purposes for the scammers. First, it allowed them to extract even more money from their victim. Second, it reinforced the sense of urgency and crisis, preventing Anthony from taking a step back to rationally assess the situation. Finally, it played on the natural human tendency to commit to a course of action once invested, a psychological principle known as the sunk cost fallacy.
Under immense emotional strain, Anthony once again went to the bank, this time withdrawing between $15,800 and $25,000. The exact amount is unclear from the report, but it represents a substantial sum, especially for a senior citizen likely living on a fixed income. Once more, an Uber driver was dispatched to collect the funds, completing the second phase of the scam.
It was only after the second payment had been made and the calls ceased that Anthony and his family began to suspect something was amiss. As they waited anxiously for news of his son's release, Anthony's daughter took the initiative to research the phone numbers and details provided by the scammers. Her online investigation led to a heartbreaking conclusion: "Dad, I hope I'm wrong. I think you've just been scammed out of $25,000."
Anthony's reaction to this revelation is telling. He admitted that the possibility of a scam had "never even crossed" his mind until that moment. This statement provides insight into the effectiveness of the scammers' tactics, which rely on creating a sense of crisis that overwhelms the victim's critical thinking abilities.
"I never had a chance to do a second call unless I were to say to them, 'Hold it. I'm stopping this whole thing for a minute. I want to talk to my son. I don't care if he's in jail or where he is, I want to talk to my son.' You don't think that way. You don't," Anthony explained, articulating the psychological trap in which he found himself.
The speed and intensity of the scam were key factors in its success. Anthony noted that everything happened so "fast" that he didn't have time to question the authenticity of the calls or the demands being made. This rapid pace is a deliberate tactic used by scammers to keep their victims off-balance and prevent them from seeking outside verification or advice.
The Los AngelesPolice Department is investigating the incident, with detective Chelsea Saeger providing insights into the evolving nature of such scams. "They are using social media and technology to craft these very believable and convincing stories, and people really do believe they're talking to a grandchild or a government official," Saeger explained to ABC 7.
The detective's comments highlight a crucial aspect of modern scams: the integration of advanced technology with traditional social engineering tactics. The use of AI-generated voices, in particular, represents a significant escalation in the capabilities of fraudsters. This technology allows scammers to create highly convincing impersonations, bypassing one of the traditional defenses against phone scams - recognizing that the caller's voice doesn't match that of the person they claim to be.
Saeger also shed light on how scammers obtain the voice samples necessary for such impersonations. "They call, and when you answer, and it's a scammer, there's silence," she explained. "They want you to say 'hello' or 'is anybody there?' aLL they need is three seconds of your voice to input it into AI and to clone it." This revelation underscores the importance of being cautious even during seemingly innocuous phone calls.
Moreover, the detective pointed out that scammers often harvest voice samples from social mediaposts, particularly video content. This tactic allows them to clone voices without direct interaction with their intended victims, making the scam even more insidious.
An interesting aspect of this case is the use of legitimate ride-sharing services like Uber to collect the fraudulently obtained funds. Detective Saeger noted that the drivers involved in such schemes are typically unaware that they are participating in a scam. They are simply completing a task assigned through the app, which adds another layer of complexity to investigating and prosecuting these crimes.
This use of ride-sharing services as unwitting accomplices serves several purposes for the scammers. It allows them to maintain physical distance from the crime, reducing their risk of apprehension. It also lends an air of legitimacy to the transaction, as victims may be less likely to suspect fraud when interacting with a recognized service. Finally, it complicates the money trail, making it more difficult for law enforcement to trace the funds back to the perpetrators.
Beyond the significant financial loss, the emotional and psychological toll of such scams cannot be overstated. Anthony's statement, "I look like a fool. I feel like a fool, but I don't care," reveals the deep sense of shame and self-recrimination that victims often experience. This emotional aftermath can be as damaging as the financial loss, potentially leading to depression, anxiety, and a loss of trust in others.
However, Anthony's willingness to share his story publicly demonstrates remarkable courage and a desire to prevent others from falling victim to similar scams. By coming forward, he is contributing to public awareness and potentially saving others from the same fate.
This case is far from isolated. It represents a growing trend in technology-enabled fraud that targets vulnerable populations, particularly the elderly. The sophistication of these scams, combining social engineering with advanced technology like AI voice cloning, presents significant challenges for law enforcement and consumer protection agencies.
To combat such scams, experts recommend several strategies:
Verification: Always verify the identity of callers claiming to be family members in distress. This can be done by hanging up and calling the family member directly using a known number.
Detective Saeger emphasized that legitimate government agencies and financial institutions will never call and demand immediate money transfers. She also warned about requests to deposit money into cryptocurrencyATMs or transfer funds to crypto accounts, which are common red flags in modern scams.
The case of Anthony and his $25,000 loss serves as a sobering reminder of the evolving nature of fraud in the digital age. As technology advances, so too do the methods employed by scammers, requiring constant vigilance and education on the part of potential victims and their families.
This incident also raises important questions about the regulation and ethical use of AI technology. As voice cloning becomes more accessible and convincing, there may be a need for new legal frameworks to address its potential for misuse.
Ultimately, while technology plays a significant role in these scams, the human element remains crucial. Fraudsters continue to exploit basic human emotions - fear, love for family, and the desire to help - to bypass our rational defenses. By sharing stories like Anthony's and fostering open discussions about fraud, we can build a more resilient society better equipped to recognize and resist these increasingly sophisticated scams.
As we move forward in an increasingly digital world, striking a balance between technological innovation and personal security will be an ongoing challenge. Cases like this underscore the importance of continued research, public education, and adaptive law enforcement strategies to stay ahead of those who would exploit technology for nefarious purposes.
JUNO, the underground facility in Kaiping, will boot up in 2025.
China hopes a giant laboratory 2,300 feet underground is key to beating the US at discovering the secrets of the universe’s most mysterious particles–neutrinos.
Slated for completion next year, after over a decade of construction, the roughly $311 million Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) relies on a nearly 115-foot-wide stainless steel and acrylic spherical machine designed to help measure incomprehensibly small subatomic units that move almost at the speed of light. Despite blanketing the universe (100 trillion are believed to pass through your body every second), very little is known about neutrinos and their behavior due how difficult it is to detect them.
The "mass hierarchy" problem is a fundamental challenge in particle physics that refers to the lack of knowledge about the masses of neutrinos, subatomic particles that are thought to occupy one of three mass states. Neutrinos are created in the cores of stars and in nuclear reactors, and they interact with matter through the weak nuclear force. However, their masses are still unknown, and this lack of knowledge has significant implications for our understanding of the universe.
To understand the mass hierarchy problem, it's essential to understand the basics of neutrinos and their behavior. Neutrinos are created when certain types of atomic nuclei undergo radioactive decay. They are extremely light, with masses that are typically measured in electronvolts (eV). However, neutrinos can also oscillate between different mass states, which means that their mass is not fixed and can vary over time.
There are three known mass states for neutrinos, which are denoted by the letters "e," "μ," and "τ." The "e" state is associated with electrons, the "μ" state with muons, and the "τ" state with tau particles. The problem is that we don't know which state corresponds to which mass.
One way to understand the mass hierarchy problem is to consider the behavior of neutrinos in the universe. Neutrinos are created in the cores of stars and in nuclear reactors, and they interact with matter through the weak nuclear force. However, their masses are still unknown, and this lack of knowledge has significant implications for our understanding of the universe.
For example, neutrinos are thought to play a crucial role in the formation and evolution of stars. The masses of neutrinos determine how they interact with matter, which in turn affects the way that stars form and evolve. However, without a complete understanding of the masses of neutrinos, we can't fully appreciate their role in the universe.
The mass hierarchy problem also has significant implications for our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics. The masses of neutrinos are closely tied to the Higgs boson, a particle that is responsible for giving other particles mass. The Higgs boson is a key component of the Standard Model of particle physics, which is the most comprehensive theory of particle physics that we have today. However, the masses of neutrinos are still unknown, and this lack of knowledge has significant implications for our understanding of the Higgs boson and the fundamental laws of physics.
The JUNO experiment is a cutting-edge neutrino detector that is designed to solve the mass hierarchy problem. The detector is located deep beneath the Earth, where it can detect the faint signals produced by neutrinos that interact with matter. The JUNO experiment uses a innovative design to detect neutrinos, which involves using a large, spherical detector that is filled with liquid scintillator.
The liquid scintillator is a special type of material that is designed to detect the faint signals produced by neutrinos. The scintillator is filled with a cocktail of organic compounds that are designed to absorb the energy produced by neutrinos. When a neutrino interacts with the scintillator, it produces a signal that is measured by the detector. The signal is then used to calculate the properties of the neutrino, including its mass.
The JUNO experiment is expected to provide a wealth of new information about the masses of neutrinos. By detecting thousands of neutrino events per second, the detector is able to determine the properties of the neutrinos with high precision. The experiment is also designed to detect the faint signals produced by neutrinos that interact with matter, which provides a unique opportunity to study the properties of the neutrinos in great detail.
The JUNO experiment is a significant step forward in the study of neutrinos and their properties. By solving the mass hierarchy problem, the experiment is expected to provide new insights into the fundamental laws of physics and the behavior of neutrinos in the universe. The results of the JUNO experiment are expected to be published in the coming years, and they are expected to have a significant impact on the field of particle physics.
In summary, the mass hierarchy problem is a fundamental challenge in particle physics that refers to the lack of knowledge about the masses of neutrinos. The JUNO experiment is a cutting-edge neutrino detector that is designed to solve the mass hierarchy problem. The detector uses a innovative design to detect neutrinos, which involves using a large, spherical detector that is filled with liquid scintillator. The experiment is expected to provide a wealth of new information about the masses of neutrinos and is a significant step forward in the study of neutrinos and their properties.
The mass hierarchy problem refers to the lack of knowledge about the masses of neutrinos.
Neutrinos are created in the cores of stars and in nuclear reactors, and they interact with matter through the weak nuclear force.
The masses of neutrinos determine how they interact with matter, which in turn affects the way that stars form and evolve.
The mass hierarchy problem has significant implications for our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics.
The JUNO experiment is a cutting-edge neutrino detector that is designed to solve the mass hierarchy problem.
The detector uses a innovative design to detect neutrinos, which involves using a large, spherical detector that is filled with liquid scintillator.
The experiment is expected to provide a wealth of new information about the masses of neutrinos and is a significant step forward in the study of neutrinos and their properties.
OpenAi has released a fascinating webinar in which they talk about the future of their new AI models, the 01 series. This webinar is fascinating because it allows us to look at where the new series of models is headed, as OpenAI has recently released the 01 model and in doing so they've created a separate model series in relation to the GPT Series. So nOW we have two separate model series, the 01 series and the GPT series, and both models over the coming years will be increasingly more intelligent.
One of the interesting things that OpenAI mentioned in the webinar is that they are planning to make several updates to these models over the coming months, including adding web browsing, file and image uploading, and other features to make them more useful in use cases in Chat GPT. Additionally, OpenAI plans to continue developing and releasing models in the new OpenAI 1 series as well as their GPT Series.
Another interesting thing that OpenAI mentioned is that they are working on making these models more autonomous. For example, OpenAI is working on enabling chat GPT to automatically choose the right model for your given prompt, so that you don't have to switch between models yourself. Additionally, OpenAI is working on adding more agentic capabilities to these models, so that they can be used for more complex tasks.
Finally, OpenAI mentioned that they are working on making these models more powerful. For example, OpenAI is working on making the 01 model even better at coding and math. Additionally, OpenAI is working on making these models more accessible, by making them available to more customers.
Overall, it is clear that OpenAI is committed to developing these models into powerful and useful tools. It is also clear that OpenAI is committed to making these models accessible to everyone. I am excited to see what the future holds for these models.
Drones Revolutionize Hurricane Response: From Delivery Lifelines to Damage Assessment
In the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton's devastating impact on the Southeastern United States, a new hero has emerged in disaster response efforts: drones. These unmanned aerial vehicles are proving to be invaluable assets in various aspects of hurricane relief, from delivering critical supplies to assessing damage and aiding in search and rescue operations.
One of the most striking examples of drone utilization comes from Marion, North Carolina, where Walmart has partnered with drone company Wing to provide a crucial lifeline to a senior center cut off from essential resources. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted special approval for Wing's drones to operate beyond visual line of sight, allowing them to deliver prescription medications, baby formula, and other vital supplies from a nearby Walmart supercenter to the shelter.
This operation demonstrates the potential for drones to overcome logistical challenges in disaster-stricken areas, providing rapid and targeted assistance where traditional methods may fall short.
The article highlights several ways in which drones are being employed by first responders and government agencies:
Pre-landfall storm analysis: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) deployed drones into the eye of the hurricanes to gather critical data on temperature, wind, and pressure, aiding in predicting storm trajectories and severity.
Search and rescue: Local officials partnered with drone maker Skydio to assist in locating survivors. Many drones are equipped with thermal imaging cameras, allowing rescue teams to detect heat signatures of missing persons obscured by debris.
Damage assessment: High-resolution cameras on drones captured real-time footage of infrastructure damage, helping officials prioritize aid efforts and restore essential services.
Emergency response: In Asheville, North Carolina, the startup Paladin used drones to respond to 911 calls and deliver emergency supplies, helping to clear false alarms and improve overall emergency response efficiency.
The increasing affordability and accessibility of consumer drones have led to a surge in civilian involvement in disaster response:
Volunteer groups like First To Deploy and the Unmanned Search and Rescue (USAR) Drone Team have used drones to document destruction, identify areas at risk for further damage, and assist in search efforts.
Local farmers have repurposed agricultural drones to create makeshift delivery vehicles for food and supplies in hard-to-reach areas.
The rapid increase in drone activity during disaster response has not been without its challenges:
A 300% increase in air traffic over affected areas in North Carolina led to 30 mid-air close-call events in a single day.
The FAA issued temporary flight restrictions to prevent collisions, which sparked some controversy among residents concerned about limiting aid efforts.
Walmart's drone delivery operation serves as a proof of concept for future relief efforts, with the potential to make a lasting positive impact on disaster response strategies.
As drone technology continues to advance and regulatory frameworks evolve, these unmanned aerial vehicles are poised to play an increasingly crucial role in mitigating the impact of natural disasters and saving lives in the process.
Sierra Space’s machine can also recycle water from the garbage.
NASA will test a state-of-the-art trash compactor aboard the International Space Station—and yes, it resembles a certain Pixar character tasked with the same job responsibilities. If all goes well, Sierra Space’s Trash Compaction and Processing System (TCPS) will be operational for ISS astronauts to use by the end of 2026.
The TCPS system is a waste management system designed for use in space, with the goal of efficiently converting solid waste into a usable form. The system consists of a compact, off-white receptacle cube with multiple blue hose nozzles, which serves as the input point for waste. The system then uses a combination of heating, sterilization, and compression to convert the waste into a usable form.
The CatOx component is a critical component of the TCPS system. It is a catalyst that helps to break down the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other byproducts generated by waste. The CatOx is designed to be more energy efficient and safer than other VOC removal methods, such as thermal incineration.
The CatOx works by reacting with the VOCs and other byproducts to break them down into simpler compounds. This process is facilitated by a controlled atmosphere, where the temperature and pressure are adjusted to optimize the reaction. The resulting reaction produces a gas that can be collected and processed.
The TCPS system uses a combination of heating and sterilization to convert the waste into a usable form. The waste is first heated to a high temperature, typically around 1000°C, to kill any bacteria or other microorganisms. This process is followed by a period of sterilization, where the waste is exposed to a controlled atmosphere that is free from oxygen.
The heating and sterilization process has several benefits. It reduces the volume of waste, making it easier to store and transport. It also reduces the weight of the waste, which is critical in space where resources are limited. Finally, it produces a sterile product that can be used for a variety of purposes, including radiation shielding.
After the heating and sterilization process, the waste is compressed into small, flat tiles. These tiles are made up of the converted waste, which has been transformed into a usable form. The tiles are typically around 1-2 cm in size and can be stacked and stored easily.
The compression process uses a combination of heat and pressure to compact the waste into the desired shape. The resulting tiles are strong, lightweight, and can be used for a variety of purposes, including radiation shielding.
One of the key benefits of the TCPS system is its ability to recover water from the waste stream. The system uses a combination of filtration and condensation to recover up to 98% of the water from the waste. This water can then be reused for a variety of purposes, including life support systems and propulsion.
The system also processes the gas produced during the heating and sterilization process. The gas is collected and processed to remove any contaminants or byproducts. This process produces a clean gas that can be reused for a variety of purposes, including life support systems and propulsion.
Sierra Space has completed its system design and review, which was presented to NASA for additional analysis. The company is currently finalizing a TCPS Ground Unity for further testing in the coming months, followed by the construction of a Flight Unit destined for the ISS.
The TCPS Ground Unity will undergo a series of tests to validate the system's performance and functionality. These tests will include simulations, experiments, and performance assessments to ensure that the system meets the required specifications.
The Flight Unit will then be constructed and transported to the ISS, where it will undergo a series of tests and evaluations. The system will be integrated with the existing waste management infrastructure on the ISS and will undergo a series of performance tests to validate its functionality.
These are just a few examples of the potential applications of the TCPS system. As the technology continues to develop, it is likely that we will see a wide range of new and innovative applications for this revolutionary waste management system.
An Army unit recently demonstrated 3D-printing a repair part at the tactical edge during a major training rotation, but more work is needed.
Army officials are pushing to add new 3D models to a repository of data files that troops can one day use to print spare parts close to the front line, according to a senior service official.
The US Army's efforts to expand its 3D printing capabilities at the tactical edge are a significant development in the field of additive manufacturing. Here's a more detailed look at the initiatives and technologies involved:
Establishing a Centralized Hub of 3D Printing Data
The Army's goal is to establish a centralized hub of 3D printing data, which will enable units at the tactical level to access and utilize the information they need to produce parts on demand. This hub, currently featuring around 1,000 parts mapped and loaded, is expected to grow as more data is added.
The hub is expected to be a critical component of the Army's 3D printing strategy, providing a single point of access for units to retrieve and use 3D printing data. This will enable the army to leverage the power of additive manufacturing to enhance its operations, while also reducing reliance on traditional supply chains.
The Army is working to map and load a wide range of parts into the centralized hub, including those that are no longer under contract or which the original contractor no longer stocks. This process involves identifying the technical data package (TDP) for each part, which includes detailed information about the part's design, materials, and manufacturing process.
Once the TDP is identified, it is loaded into the hub, where it can be accessed and used by units at the tactical level. The Army is also working to integrate data from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), which will enable the service to tap into a vast repository of 3D printing data.
When a unit requests a 3D printed part, the Army must first determine whether it has the necessary technical data package (TDP) to produce the part. If the TDP is available, the part can be loaded into the hub and produced using 3D printing technology.
However, if the TDP is not available, the Army must use reverse engineering techniques to recreate the part. This involves analyzing the part's design and materials to identify the necessary data for 3D printing.
Once the data is obtained, it is loaded into the hub and used to produce the first article of the part. The first article is a prototype or a production part that is used to test the part's performance and quality.
The Army's 3D printing efforts are driven in part by the exponential growth of requirements coming from units in Europe. As the service expands its operations in Europe, it has encountered a significant increase in requests for 3D printed parts.
To address this growth, the Army has been working to develop a more robust 3D printing capability, which will enable it to produce parts more quickly and efficiently. This includes the use of advanced manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing and advanced manufacturing techniques to improve the production of forgings and castings.
The Army's 3D printing efforts are focused on the tactical edge, which refers to the units closest to combat. These units are the most likely to require 3D printed parts, and the Army is working to develop a capability that can support their needs.
The Army's tactical edge 3D printing capability is still in its early stages of development, but it is expected to play a critical role in enhancing the service's ability to respond to emerging threats and adapt to changing circumstances on the battlefield.
One of the key challenges facing the Army's 3D printing efforts is the need to establish control measures to ensure that complex parts are produced safely and reliably. To address this challenge, the Army is working to develop a set of guidelines and protocols that will govern the use of 3D printing technology in its operations.
These guidelines and protocols will focus on ensuring that 3D printed parts meet or exceed the performance and quality standards of traditional parts. They will also include measures to prevent the use of 3D printing technology for malicious purposes, such as the production of counterfeit parts.
The Army is also working to enhance training and education for soldiers who will be responsible for advanced manufacturing at the tactical level. This includes the development of new curricula and training programs that will focus on the use of 3D printing technology and other advanced manufacturing techniques.
The Army's goal is to ensure that soldiers have the skills and knowledge they need to operate effectively in a 3D printing-enabled environment. This includes the ability to design and manufacture parts using 3D printing technology, as well as the ability to troubleshoot and repair 3D printed parts.
There are several particular challenges and considerations that the Army must address as it expands its 3D printing capabilities. These include:
Complexity of parts: The Army is working to develop a capability that can produce complex parts, including those made from titanium.
Scalability: The Army must be able to scale its 3D printing capability to meet the needs of its operations, which may require the production of large quantities of parts.
Quality control: The Army must establish a robust quality control process to ensure that 3D printed parts meet or exceed the performance and quality standards of traditional parts.
Cybersecurity: The Army must take steps to prevent the use of 3D printing technology for malicious purposes, such as the production of counterfeit parts.
Integration with existing systems: The Army must ensure that its 3D printing capability is integrated with existing systems and processes, including supply chain management systems.
The US Army's efforts to expand its 3D printing capabilities at the tactical edge are a significant development in the field of additive manufacturing. The Army's goal is to establish a centralized hub of 3D printing data, which will enable units at the tactical level to access and utilize the information they need to produce parts on demand.
The Army is also working to develop a robust 3D printing capability, which will enable it to produce parts more quickly and efficiently. This includes the use of advanced manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing and advanced manufacturing techniques to improve the production of forgings and castings.
While there are several particular challenges and considerations that the Army must address as it expands its 3D printing capabilities, the potential benefits of additive manufacturing are clear. The Army's efforts to develop a 3D printing capability that can support its operations are likely to have a significant impact on the future of military manufacturing.
Exponential Growth and the Promise of the Singularity
In a recent video, David Shapiro discusses the concept of the singularity, a hypothetical future point in time when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible. Shapiro argues that the exponential growth of computing power, as exemplified by Moore's Law, will lead to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) that surpasses human intelligence in every way.
Shapiro believes that the Singularity will occur around 2045, when computers will be able to perform more calculations than aLL of humanity combined. He argues that this will enable AI to solve complex problems such as aging and disease, as well as develop new materials and technologies.
Shapiro's argument is based on the idea that if a problem can be simulated on a computer, it can be solved. He points to the success of AlphaFold, a deep learning system that can predict the 3D structure of proteins, as evidence that this approach is feasible.
However, Shapiro also acknowledges that there are challenges to be overcome, such as the need to develop new algorithms and hardware to enable AI to simulate complex systems. He also warns that the Singularity could have negative consequences, such as job displacement and social unrest.
Despite these challenges, Shapiro remains optimistic about the future. He believes that the Singularity is an inevitable consequence of technological progress, and that it will ultimately benefit humanity.
The Singularity is a hypothetical future point in time when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible.
The exponential growth of computing power, as exemplified by Moore's Law, will lead to the development of AI that surpasses human intelligence in every way.
The Singularity will occur around 2045, when computers will be able to perform more calculations than all of humanity combined.
The concept of the Singularity is a controversial one, and there is no consensus among experts about whether or when it will occur.
Some argue that the Singularity is inevitable, while others believe that it is unlikely or even impossible.
The potential consequences of the Singularity are also a matter of debate. Some believe that it could lead to a utopia, while others warn of a dystopian future.
It is important to be aware of the potential risks and benefits of the Singularity, and to be prepared for the challenges that it may bring.
The term "singularity" is often applied to technology, such as when people like Ray Kurzweil mention. This is a derivative from physics where the term is used to describe a black hole phenomenon.
Another layer off this is the economic singularity. That is where the growth rate of economic output is an order of magnitude greater than what is presently enjoyed. Much of this growth comes from technological advancements.
Researchers hope predictive machine learning can help prevent injuries on the job.
Manufacturing jobs have some of the highest injury rates of any industry, often due to workers’ high levels of physical and mental fatigue. In an attempt to improve job sites, researchers have designed a system of wearable sensors that rely on machine learning to monitor workers for signs of physical strain and tiredness. In doing so, they hope their new devices will help prevent accidents and injuries.
The design is detailed in a study published by a team at Northwestern University in the October issue of PNAS Nexus. To measure fatigue and physical health, researchers developed an interconnected array of six wearable sensors placed across a wearer’s torso and arms. These were coupled with two depth cameras to measure joint movements and an HD webcam to analyze movement intensity, repetition, and diminished strength over time.
Once enabled, these devices continuously monitored heart rate, skin temperature, and locomotion patterns. But given that there are no widely accepted, universal biomarker metrics for fatigue, researchers relied on the wearer’s self-reported perceived exertion levels on a 0-10 scale that they then entered into a machine learning model. Once trained, this model was then used to predict a user’s fatigue levels in real-time to provide a “more nuanced understanding of the subject’s physical state” than past studies, according to researchers.
“The adoption of new technologies for real-time fatigue prediction holds the potential to revolutionize manufacturing by optimizing work schedules and implementing adaptive work/rest cycles, [while also] addressing the issue of a lack of deterministic biomarkers,” the team wrote in their paper.
Moflin the wiggling robot is ‘always by your side in your heart.’
Casio, perhaps best known for watches and calculators, is expanding its product line to include hypoallergenic, robotic pets. Say hello to “Moflin,” a “soothing” and “adorable” AI-powered fur ball that “becomes attached to its owner,” according to the company’s October 10 announcement in Japanese. While currently only accepting pre-orders in Japan ahead of a November 7 release, the hamster-like device is described to be based on the concept of “Always by your side in your heart.”
A promotional video showcases a day in the life of a Moflin owner. Available in either gold or silver fur, the palm-sized companion sort of resembles a rabbit without ears, or even a Star Trek tribble. An owner is shown turning to her Moflin in times of stress or relaxation, cuddling with her pet, and even taking it out with her on a picnic. It doesn’t seem to be able to really walk, and instead wriggles in place depending on the interaction. Still, the movements admittedly appear far less robotic than mechanical animal stand-ins of the past, even when it’s hard to not focus on its dull, beady eyes.
The earliest hints at our impending Moflin Moment first arrived in 2021 through a Kickstarter from the company Vanguard Industries. Since then, it appears the (fully funded) endeavor caught Casio’s eye, who is now hyping the 59,400 yen (roughly $400) device. Each Moflin also includes an official “MofLife” dedicated app, as well as an additional paid subscription service offering discounted “hospitalization” and “fur care” fees.
China’s countryside is emerging as an unlikely epicenter of viral content.
In the quiet backwaters of Yunnan, Dong Meihua – though her followers know her by the public alias Dianxi Xiaoge – has done something remarkable: She’s taken the pastoral simplicity of rural China and made it irresistible to millions. In her hands, a village kitchen becomes a stage, and the rhythms of farm life become a story as compelling as any novel. She is one of many rural influencers returning to their roots.
The Rise of Rural Influencers: Redefining China's Countryside
In an unexpected turn of events, China's countryside has become the epicenter of a digital revolution, challenging long-held perceptions and narratives. This transformation is led by a new breed of social media influencers who are reshaping the image of rural China from a land of poverty and stagnation to one of bucolic bliss and cultural richness.
To understand the significance of this shift, it's crucial to examine China's rural history:
The Great Leap Forward (late 1950s-early 1960s): Mao Zedong's disastrous attempt at rapid industrialization led to widespread famine and millions of deaths in rural areas.
The Cultural Revolution: Further disrupted rural life as educated youth were sent to the countryside for "reeducation."
The Hukou System: Implemented in the late 1950s, this system tied social benefits to birthplace, creating a stark urban-rural divide.
Reform Era (post-1978): While cities boomed under Deng Xiaoping's reforms, rural areas lagged behind, leading to mass migration to urban centers.
Recent Developments: The abolition of agricultural taxes in 2006 and Xi Jinping's "rural revitalization" strategy have aimed to bridge the urban-rural gap.
Despite these efforts, a significant income disparity persists, with rural households earning only about 40% of their urban counterparts.
The term "new farmer" encapsulates the rise of rural social media celebrities who are using platforms like Douyin and Weibo to document and commercialize their way of life. Notable figures include:
Li Ziqi and Dianxi Xiaoge: Pioneering influencers who have gained massive followings.
Sister Yu: With over 23 million followers, she showcases the rustic charm of northeast China.
Peng Chuanming: A Fujian farmer whose videos on traditional tea-making have captivated millions.
These influencers tap into urban dwellers' nostalgia and desire for authenticity, offering a glimpse into a life many thought lost to China's rapid development.
The rise of rural influencers has had far-reaching effects:
Economic Boost: tourism in once-forgotten villages is booming, and traditional crafts are finding new markets. In 2020, Taobao Villages reported sales of 1.2 trillion yuan (around $169.36 billion).
Government Support: The Chinese government has embraced this trend, seeing it as an opportunity to promote rural revitalization and polish its image as a champion of traditional values.
Cultural Bridge: These viral videos are narrowing the cultural disconnect between China's rural and urban populations, fostering understanding in ways that government programs couldn't.
Economic Necessity: The post-COVID-19 economic downturn, marked by high youth unemployment in cities, has driven some to seek livelihoods in the countryside.
While the "new farmer" movement offers many benefits, it also raises questions:
Authenticity vs. Performance: As rural influencers gain popularity, there's increasing pressure to perform "authenticity," blurring the line between genuine representation and curated fantasy.
Beneficiaries: It's unclear whether this trend truly empowers rural communities or simply commodifies rural life for urban consumption.
Government Involvement: Local governments offering subsidies to rural content creators have led to skepticism about the grassroots nature of this content.
The rise of rural influencers in China represents a significant shift in the country's cultural and economic landscape. While challenges and questions remain, this digital revolution offers an opportunity to challenge urban-centric narratives and rethink the value of traditional rural ways of life. As this trend continues to evolve, it may play a crucial role in bridging China's long-standing urban-rural divide and shaping the country's future development path.
Eric Council, Jr., allegedly used a SIM swap to help access the SEC’s X account in January.
An Alabama man has been arrested by the FBI for allegedly hacking the Securities and Exchange Commission’s social media account on X in a bid to juice Bitcoin’s worth.
While the exact evidence that led the Feds to his door isn’t clear, it’s possible Eric Council, Jr., suspected their eventual arrival—prior to his capture, the 25-year-old reportedly searched the internet on his personal computer for phrases including “SECGOV hack,” “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI,” and “what are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
On January 9, 2024, the SEC’s official X account tweeted “Today the SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.” A landmark ruling on whether or not the cryptocurrency could serve as an exchange-traded fund (ETF) had been anticipated for months, the results of which would likely boost or sink at least some of Bitcoin’s value.
In the hours following the apparent approval, the crypto’s net worth rose roughly $1,000 per coin. But there was a problem: the SEC actually hadn’t granted a decision yet, and the tweet claiming otherwise came from someone who apparently gained access to the Commission’s social media account.
The nose of this autonomous variant of the UH-72 Lakota will open up, allowing weapons or larger pieces of cargo to be front-loaded into the helicopter.
Airbus U.S. Space and Defense has conducted its first demonstration as part of a program to build an autonomous, uncrewed version of the UH-72 Lakota transportation helicopter for the U.S. Marine Corps.
The UH-72 Logistics Connector, also known as the Lakota variant, is a modified version of the UH-72 helicopter designed to meet the needs of the US Marine Corps' Aerial Logistics Connector (ALC) program. Here are some key details about the project:
Background
The ALC program is a Defense Department initiative aimed at improving logistical support for troops in distributed environments during high-intensity conflicts. The program seeks to develop a versatile, autonomous, and adaptable aircraft that can transport cargo and supplies to remote areas, reducing the need for manned transport aircraft.
The UH-72 Logistics Connector is a modified internal chassis of the UH-72 helicopter, with aLL crew stations removed to make room for cargo throughout the body. The helicopter's nose may open up like a clamshell or swing open to one side on a hinge, providing additional cargo storage space. This configuration allows for the front-loading of larger containers or equipment that would not fit in the standard Lakota's side doors.
Airbus conducted a demonstration of the UH-72 Logistics Connector at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina, showcasing the helicopter's ability to carry standard Marine cargo containers and specialized cargo without the need for a cockpit. The test also highlighted the potential for the UH-72 Logistics Connector to be adapted for autonomous flight, should the Marine Corps or another customer decide to pursue strike capability in the future.
Airbus is working closely with the Marine Corps, Leonardo, and Honeywell to develop the necessary technology for the UH-72 Logistics Connector. The partnership brings together expertise in autonomous systems, logistics, and transportation to create a cutting-edge solution for the US military.
The UH-72 Logistics Connector is currently in the design phase, with the aim of delivering a flying prototype by 2028 or 2029. The Marine Corps aims to make a production decision by the end of 2029, with the ALC program set to conclude in late 2025.
While details on the cost of the UH-72 Logistics Connector remain unclear, Forsling stated that the helicopter would be applicable across the joint environment and with allies. The Marine Corps aims to use the UH-72 Logistics Connector for a variety of missions, including:
Logistical support: The helicopter will be used to transport cargo and supplies to remote areas, reducing the need for manned transport aircraft.
Autonomous operations: The UH-72 Logistics Connector will be used for autonomous operations, including surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike missions.
Adaptability: The helicopter's modular design will enable it to be adapted for a range of missions, including medical evacuation, search and rescue, and disaster response.
Overall, the UH-72 Logistics Connector represents a significant step forward in the development of autonomous logistics aircraft, with the potential to transform the way the US military delivers logistical support to troops in distributed environments.
The Marine Corps briefing slides showed at the Modern Day Marine conference note this Aerial Logistics Connector will be the aviation contribution to a larger contested logistics effort. Service leaders signed an acquisition decision memorandum in March to begin this prototyping phase, and the slides show four companies will be awarded contracts to build prototypes.
In April, Carl Forsling, Airbus’ senior manager of business development and strategy for Marine Corps programs, told Defense News the company had already been developing its UH-72 Unmanned Logistics Connector using internal company funds.
Forsling said the Marines are looking at light and medium unmanned aerial systems to resupply squads and other small units operating away from ships and logistics hubs. This effort aims to create a large platform that can resupply larger units, such as the Marine littoral regiments the Corps is establishing in the Pacific to conduct expeditionary advanced base operations.
Mike Sori :Assistant Professor of Planetary Science, Purdue University
Jupiter’s moons hide giant subsurface oceans.
On Oct. 14, 2024, NASA launched a robotic spacecraft named Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s moons. Clipper will reach the ice-covered Jovian moon Europa in 2030 and spend several years collecting and sending valuable data on the moon’s potential habitability back to Earth.
On Oct. 14, 2024, NASA launched a robotic spacecraft named Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s moons. Clipper will reach the ice-covered Jovian moon Europa in 2030 and spend several years collecting and sending valuable data on the moon’s potential habitability back to Earth.
Clipper isn’t the only mission highlighting researchers’ interest in Jupiter and its moons.
On April 13, 2023, the European space Agency launched a rocket carrying a spacecraft destined for Jupiter. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – or JUICE – will spend at least three years on Jupiter’s moons after it arrives in 2031.
I’m a planetary scientist who studies the structure and evolution of solid planets and moons in the solar system.
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There are many reasons my colleagues and I are looking forward to getting the data that Europa Clipper and JUICE will hopefully be sending back to Earth in the 2030s. But perhaps the most exciting information will have to do with water. Three of Jupiter’s moons – Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – are home to large, underground oceans of liquid water that could supportlife.
Four moons next to a large red spot on the surface of Jupiter.
This composite image shows, from tOP to bottom, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto next to Jupiter. NASA, CC BY-ND
Meet Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto
Jupiter has dozens of moons. Four of them in particular are of interest to planetary scientists.
Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are, like Earth’s Moon, relatively large, spherical complex worlds. Two previous NASA missions have sent spacecraft to orbit the Jupiter system and collected data on these moons. The Galileo mission orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003 and led to geological discoveries on aLL four large moons. The Juno mission is still orbiting Jupiter today and has provided scientists with an unprecedented view into Jupiter’s composition, structure and space environment.
These missions and other observations revealed that Io, the closest of the four to its host planet, is abuzz with geological activity, including lava lakes, volcanic eruptions and tectonically formed mountains. But it is not home to large amounts of water.
Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, in contrast, have icy landscapes. Europa’s surface is a frozen wonderland with a young but complex history, possibly including icy analogs of plate tectonics and volcanoes. Ganymede, the largest moon in the entire solar system, is bigger than Mercury and has its own magnetic field generated internally from a liquid metal core. Callisto appears somewhat inert compared to the others, but serves as a valuable time capsule of an ancient past that is no longer accessible on the youthful surfaces of Europa and Io.
Most exciting of all: Europa, Ganymede and Callisto all almost certainly possess underground oceans of liquid water.
A diagram showing a cutaway of Europa.
Warmth from Europa’s interior and tidal energy from Jupiter likely maintain a massive liquid ocean beneath the moon’s icy surface. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Carroll
Ocean worlds
Europa, Ganymede and Callisto have chilly surfaces that are hundreds of degrees below zero. At these temperatures, ice behaves like solid rock.
But just like Earth, the deeper underground you go on these moons, the hotter it gets. Go down far enough and you eventually reach the temperature where ice melts into water. Exactly how far down this transition occurs on each of the moons is a subject of debate that scientists hope to resolve with JUICE and Europa Clipper. While the exact depths are still uncertain, scientists are confident that these oceans exist.
The best evidence of these oceans comes from Jupiter’s magnetic field. Saltwater is electrically conductive. So as these moons travel through Jupiter’s magnetic field, they generate a secondary, smaller magnetic field that signals to researchers the presence of an underground ocean. Using this technique, planetary scientists have been able to show that the three moons contain underground oceans. And these oceans are not small – Europa’s ocean alone might have more than double the water of all of Earth’s oceans combined.
An obvious and tantalizing next question is whether these oceans can support extraterrestrial life. Liquid water is an important piece of what makes for a habitable world, but far from the only requirement for life. Life also needs energy and certain chemical compounds in addition to water to flourish. Because these oceans are hidden beneath miles of solid ice, sunlight and photosynthesis are out. But it’s possible other sources could provide the needed ingredients.
On Europa, for example, the liquid water ocean overlays a Rocky interior. That rocky seafloor could provide energy and chemicals through underwater volcanoes that could make Europa’s ocean habitable. But it is also possible that Europa’s ocean is a sterile, inhospitable place – scientists need more data to answer these questions.
Artist's impression of the JUICE spacecraft approaching Jupiter and the jovian moons.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer spacecraft will travel for eight years before reaching Jupiter. ESA/ATG medialab/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/J. Nichols
Upcoming missions from ESA and NASA
Europa Clipper and JUICE are set up to give scientists game-changing information about the potential habitability of Jupiter’s moons. While both missions will gather data on multiple moons, JUICE will spend time orbiting and focusing on Ganymede, and Europa Clipper will make dozens of close flybys of Europa.
Both of the spacecraft will carry a suite of scientific instruments built specifically to investigate the oceans. Onboard radar will allow Europa Clipper and JUICE to probe into the moons’ outer layers of solid ice. Radar could reveal any small pockets of liquid water in the ice, or, in the case of Europa, which has a thinner outer ice layer than Ganymede and Callisto, hopefully detect the larger ocean.
Magnetometers will also be on both missions. These tools will give scientists the opportunity to study the secondary magnetic fields produced by the interaction of conductive oceans with Jupiter’s field in great detail and will hopefully give researchers clues to salinity and volumes of the oceans.
Scientists will also observe small variations in the moons’ gravitational pulls by tracking subtle movements in both spacecrafts’ orbits, which could help determine if Europa’s seafloor has volcanoes that provide the needed energy and chemistry for the ocean to support life.
Finally, both craft will carry a host of cameras and light sensors that will provide unprecedented images of the geology and composition of the moons’ icy surfaces.
Maybe one day, a spacecraft will be able to drill through the miles of solid ice on Europa, Ganymede or Callisto and explore oceans directly. Until then, observations from spacecraft like Europa Clipper and JUICE are scientists’ best bet for learning about these ocean worlds.
When Galileo discovered these moons in 1609, they were the first objects known to directly orbit another planet. Their discovery was the final nail in the coffin of the theory that Earth – and humanity – resides at the center of the universe. Maybe these worlds have another humbling surprise in store.
Bradley Hansen: Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles
What is the difference between a planet-satellite system as we have with the Earth and moon, versus a binary planet – two planets orbiting each other in a cosmic do-si-do?
I am an astronomer interested in planets orbiting nearby stars, and gas giants – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in our solar system – are the largest and easiest planets to detect. The crushing pressure within their gassy atmosphere means they are unlikely to be hospitable to life. But the rocky moons orbiting such planets could have conditions that are more welcoming. Last year, astronomers discovered a planet-sized exomoon orbiting another gas giant planet outside our solar system.
In a new paper, I argue that this exomoon is really what is called a captured planet.
Is the first detected ‘exomoon’ really a moon?
True Earth analogues, that orbit Sun-like stars, are very hard to detect, even with the large Keck telescopes. The task is easier if the host star is less massive. But then the planet has to be closer to the star to be warm enough, and the star’s gravitational tides may trap the planet in a state with a permanent hot side and a permanent cold side. This makes such planets less attractive as a potential location that could harbor life. When gas giants orbiting Sun-like stars have rocky moons, these may be more likely places to find life.
In 2018, two astronomers from Columbia University reported the first tentative observation of an exomoon – a satellite orbiting a planet that itself orbits another star. One curious feature was that this exomoon Kepler-1625b-i was much more massive than any moon found in our solar system. It has a mass similar to Neptune and orbits a planet similar in size to Jupiter.
Astronomers expect moons of planets like Jupiter and Saturn to have masses only a few percent of Earth. But this new exomoon was almost a thousand times larger than the corresponding bodies of our solar system – moons like Ganymede and Titan which orbit Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. It is very difficult to explain the formation of such a large satellite using current models of moon formation.
In a new model I developed, I discuss how such a massive exomoon forms through a different process, wherein it is really a captured planet.
ALL planets, large and small, start by gathering together asteroid-sized bodies to make a rocky core. At this early stage in the evolution of a planetary system, the rocky cores are still surrounded by a gaseous disk left over from the formation of the parent star. If a core can grow fast enough to reach a mass equivalent to 10 Earths, then it will have the gravitational strength to pull gas in from the surrounding space and grow to the massive size of Jupiter and Saturn. However, this gaseous accumulation is short-lived, as the star is draining away most of the gas in the disk, the dust and gas surrounding a newly formed star.
If there are two cores growing in close proximity, then they compete to capture rock and gas. If one core gets slightly larger, it gains an advantage and can capture the bulk of the gas in the neighborhood for itself. This leaves the second body without any further gas to capture. The increased gravitational pull of its neighbor drags the smaller body into the role of a satellite, albeit a very large one. The former planet is left as a super-sized moon, orbiting the planet that beat it out in the race to capture gas.
A remnant core as a look back into history
Viewed in this context, the captured planet is unlikely to be habitable. Growing planetary cores have gaseous envelopes, which make them more like Uranus and Neptune – a mix of rocks, ice and gas that would have become a Jupiter if it had not been so rudely cut off by its larger neighbor.
However, there are other implications that are almost as interesting. Studying the cores of giant planets is very difficult, because they are buried under several hundred Earth masses of hydrogen and helium. Currently, the JUNO mission is attempting to do this for Jupiter. However, studying the properties of this exomoon may enable astronomers to see the naked core of a giant gaseous planet when it is stripped of its gaseous envelope. This can provide a snapshot of what Jupiter may have looked like before it grew to its current enormous size.
This exomoon system Kepler-1625b-i is right at the edge of what is detectable with current technology. There may be many more objects like this that could be uncovered with future improvements in telescope capabilities. As astronomers’ census of exoplanets continues to grow, systems like the exomoon and its host highlight an issue that will become more important as we go forward. This exomoon reveals that the properties of a planet are not solely a consequence of its mass and position, but can depend on its history and the environment in which it formed.
'It would be very inconvenient for us if we were being repeatedly blasted by supernovae.'
One of the key components for the evolution of life as we know it is the presence of “volatiles”: elements and compounds that can be vaporized easily at relatively low temperatures. This means that understanding where these volatiles came from, and whether Earth is unusually rich in them, is critical to understanding what makes life possible—and a new study, published October 11 in Science Advances, suggests that most originate in a relatively small proportion of the material from which the planet formed.
Planets form from the gradual accretion of smaller pieces of material, referred to as planetesimals. There are two basic categories of planetesimal: differentiated and undifferentiated. Both start off as what Rayssa Martins, the study’s first author, describes as “big lumps of dust and other small rocky bits (often loosely) stuck together.” Undifferentiated planetesimals basically remain this way; differentiated planetesimals, by contrast, are characterized by having been subjected to enough heat to melt all their component parts together.
This melting is caused by the radioactive decay of aluminum-26 (Al-26), an unstable isotope of aluminum. As it decays, Al-26 generates so much heat that it essentially melts the material around it. “In this process,” explains Martins, “a lot of volatiles are degassed.” Once vaporized, the volatiles simply drift away into space: “[They are] lost due to the low gravity of these small bodies.”
Thankfully for us, all the Al-26 in our solar system decayed away very early on, leaving enough undifferentiated material to supply the Earth with the volatile compounds it needed to evolve life. And once Al-26 is gone, it’s gone. The isotope is formed in the heart of stars that have burned through all their hydrogen and are hurtling toward their explosive final moments.
Let's dive deeper into the world of planetesimals.
Formation of Planetesimals
The formation of planetesimals is a complex process that involves the interaction of small particles in a solar nebula. A solar nebula is a cloud of gas and dust that surrounds a young star, and it's the raw material from which planets are formed.
There are several mechanisms that can lead to the formation of planetesimals:
Accretion: accretion occurs when small particles in the solar nebula collide and merge, growing larger and more massive over time. This process continues until the particles become large enough to become planetesimals.
Gravitational collapse: Small particles in the solar nebula can collapse under their own gravity, forming small, solid bodies called planetesimals.
Fragmentation: Large particles in the solar nebula can break apart into smaller pieces, which can then grow into planetesimals.
Condensation: Material from the solar nebula can condense and become part of a planetesimal.
There are several types of planetesimal formation, including:
Core accretion: This is the most widely accepted model of planetesimal formation. It involves the accretion of small particles to form a solid core, which is then surrounded by a mantle of rock and metal.
Planetary differentiation: This model involves the differentiation of a planetesimal into its component parts, such as a core, mantle, and crust.
Gravitational collapse: This model involves the collapse of a large particle in the solar nebula, which can form a planetesimal.
Fragmentation: This model involves the break-up of a large particle in the solar nebula, which can form smaller planetesimals.
Planetesimals have several properties that are of interest to scientists:
Density: The density of a planetesimal can provide information about its composition and formation history.
Composition: The composition of a planetesimal can provide information about the early solar system and the processes that formed it.
Shape: The shape of a planetesimal can provide information about its rotation rate and gravitational structure.
Orbital characteristics: The orbital characteristics of a planetesimal, such as its semi-major axis and eccentricity, can provide information about its formation history and evolution.
Detecting and studying planetesimals can be challenging due to their small size and the fact that they often reside in the outer reaches of the solar system. However, several techniques have been developed to study planetesimals, including:
Asteroid hunting: Astronomers use telescopes to detect and track asteroids, which are thought to be remnants of planetesimals.
Comet studies: Comets are thought to be icy planetesimals that have been perturbed from their orbits and are nOW traveling through the solar system.
Laboratory experiments: Scientists use laboratory experiments to simulate the conditions under which planetesimals form and evolve.
Computer simulations: Scientists use computer simulations to model the formation and evolution of planetesimals.
The formation of planetary cores is a critical process in the formation of planets. Planetesimals can accrete to form cores, which are then surrounded by a mantle of rock and metal.
Core Accretion Model
The core accretion model is the most widely accepted model of planetary core formation. It involves the accretion of small particles to form a solid core, which is then surrounded by a mantle of rock and metal.
Core Differentiation
Core differentiation is the process by which a planetesimal differentiates into its component parts, such as a core, mantle, and crust.
Gravitational Collapse
Gravitational collapse is the process by which a large particle in the solar nebula collapses under its own gravity, forming a planetesimal.
Fragmentation is the process by which a large particle in the solar nebula breaks apart into smaller pieces, which can then grow into planetesimals.
Consequences of Planetesimal Formation
The formation of planetesimals has several consequences for the formation of planets:
Accretion of material: The formation of planetesimals leads to the accretion of material, which can form planets.
Differentiation of planets: The formation of planetesimals can lead to the differentiation of planets, which can result in the formation of a core, mantle, and crust.
Influence on planetary orbits: The formation of planetesimals can influence the orbits of planets, which can result in the formation of a stable planetary system.
Studying planetesimals can be challenging due to their small size and the fact that they often reside in the outer reaches of the solar system. However, several techniques have been developed to study planetesimals, including:
Asteroid hunting: Astronomers use telescopes to detect and track asteroids, which are thought to be remnants of planetesimals.
Comet studies: Comets are thought to be icy planetesimals that have been perturbed from their orbits and are NOW traveling through the solar system.
Laboratory experiments: Scientists use laboratory experiments to simulate the conditions under which planetesimals form and evolve.
Computer simulations: Scientists use computer simulations to model the formation and evolution of planetesimals.
Future research directions in the field of planetesimal science include:
Studying the early solar system: Scientists are working to study the early solar system and the processes that formed it.
Investigating the formation of planetary cores: Scientists are working to investigate the formation of planetary cores and the differentiation of planets.
Developing new detection techniques: Scientists are working to develop new detection techniques for planetesimals, such as asteroid hunting and comet studies.
Modeling the evolution of planetesimals: Scientists are working to model the evolution of planetesimals and the processes that form them.
In conclusion, planetesimals are small, solid particles that played a crucial role in the formation and evolution of planetary systems, including our own. By studying planetesimals, we can gain insights into the early history of the solar system and the formation of our planet, Earth.
Global Intelligence claims its Cybercheck technology can help cops find key evidence to nail a case. But a WIRED investigation reveals the smoking gun often appears far less solid.
Just after 9 pm on an August night in 2020, Kimberly Thompson and Brian James pulled the car into a driveway in Akron, Ohio, and stepped out into a barrage of gunfire. They were shot in the legs, rushed to a hospital, and survived. But Thompson’s 20-month-old grandson, Tyree Halsell, who was still sitting in the car, was shot in the head and mortally wounded.
In the aftermath, Akron police collected video footage from the neighborhood and asked for the public’s help with identifying two men who’d been seen approaching the victims, firing, then fleeing in a truck. Within months, detectives narrowed in on a suspect, Phillip Mendoza, and obtained a search warrant for his cell phone location data from Sprint, according to court records. They also served a geofence warrant on Google, seeking information on devices whose GPS, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth records placed them near the scene of the shooting. Neither warrant turned up any evidence locating Mendoza or his devices on the 1200 block of Fifth Avenue, where the shooting occurred, that night.
Even the makers of the Guardian Cap admit it looks silly. But for a sport facing an existential brain-injury crisis, once unthinkable solutions have now become almost normal.
Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged forward, and lowered his body to brace for contact. The side of his helmet smacked the face mask of linebacker Quay Walker, and the back of it whacked the ground as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his feet after the 9-yard gain, Granson tossed the football to an official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the next snap.
Aside from it being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this otherwise ordinary play was only noteworthy because of what Granson was wearing at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protective helmet covering called a Guardian Cap.
Already mandatory for most positions at all NFL preseason practices, as well as regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these soft shells received another vote of confidence this year when the league greenlit them for optional game use, citing a roughly 50 percent drop in training camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. Through six weeks of action this fall, only 10 NFL players had actually taken the field with one on, according to a league spokesperson. But the decision was easy for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself covered by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts logo to simulate the design of the helmet underneath—in preseason games before committing to wear it for real.
The Hidden Danger of Contact Sports: Understanding Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease that has gained significant attention in recent years due to its alarming connection to contact sports, particularly Americanfootball. CTE is a silent killer, often masquerading as other conditions, and its devastating consequences have left countless families shattered. In this article, we will delve into the world of CTE, exploring its causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and the dangers associated with this insidious disease.
What is CTE?
CTE is a progressive brain disease caused by repetitive head trauma, leading to the buildup of abnormal tau protein in the brain. This protein accumulation triggers a cascade of events that ultimately result in brain cell death and tissue damage. CTE was first identified in 2002 by Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist, in the brain of former Pittsburgh Steelers player Mike Webster.
Causes and risk Factors
CTE is primarily associated with contact sports, including:
American Football: The repeated blows to the head sustained by players, especially linemen and linebackers, increase the risk of developing CTE.
Ice Hockey: checks to the head and body can lead to concussions and subconcussive hits.
Soccer: Heading the ball can cause repeated head trauma.
Rugby: Full-contact tackles and collisions increase the risk.
Boxing and Mixed martial arts (MMA): Repeated blows to the head are inherent to these sports.
Concussions: A single severe Concussion or multiple mild concussions can contribute to CTE.
Subconcussive hits: Repeated blows that don't cause immediate symptoms can still lead to CTE.
Genetic predisposition: Some individuals may be more susceptible to CTE due to genetic factors.
Age: CTE can affect individuals of aLL ages, but symptoms often manifest later in life.
CTE symptoms can vary in severity and may not appear until years or even decades after the initial head trauma. Common symptoms include:
Memory loss: Difficulty recalling recent events or learning new information.
Mood changes: depression, anxiety, irritability, and mood swings.
Personality changes: Impulsivity, emotional instability, and erratic behavior. executive function decline: Difficulty with decision-making, planning, and organization.
Motor function impairment: Tremors, difficulty with balance and coordination.
Sleep disturbances: Insomnia or excessive sleepiness.
Suicidal thoughts: CTE has been linked to an increased risk of suicidal behavior.
Diagnosing CTE is challenging, as symptoms can mimic other conditions, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Currently, CTE can only be definitively diagnosed after death, through an autopsy and brain tissue analysis.
Researchers are working to develop biomarkers and imaging tests to diagnose CTE in living individuals. These include:
Tau protein imaging: PET scans to detect abnormal tau protein in the brain.
MRI and DTI: Magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging to assess brain damage.
Biomarkers: Blood and cerebrospinal fluid tests to identify CTE-specific proteins.
CTE poses significant dangers to athletes, their families, and society as a whole:
Loss of identity: CTE can erase an individual's sense of self and personality.
Strained relationships: Families struggle to cope with the emotional and behavioral changes.
Financial burden: Medical expenses, lost income, and potential long-term care costs.
Increased risk of dementia: CTE increases the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Suicide risk: CTE has been linked to an increased risk of suicidal behavior.
Prevention and Mitigation
While CTE cannot be completely prevented, steps can be taken to reduce the risk:
Concussion protocols: Implementing and enforcing strict concussion protocols in sports.
Helmet safety: Improving helmet design and safety standards.
Reducing contact: Limiting full-contact practices and games. education and awareness: Informing athletes, coaches, and parents about CTE risks.
Research and funding: Supporting research into CTE causes, diagnosis, and treatment.
CTE is a devastating disease that has shaken the foundations of contact sports. As our understanding of CTE grows, it is essential to acknowledge the risks and take proactive measures to protect athletes. By promoting education, awareness, and research, we can work towards preventing CTE and ensuring the long-term health and well-being of athletes.
Researchers looked at the brains of deceased individuals under age 30 who had played contact sports. Of 152 former athletes with a history of repetitive head injuries, 63 had CTE. Those with CTE were disproportionately former U.S. football players and were significantly more likely to have played professional football. However, it’s important to note that several well-done, long-term epidemiologic studies have found no difference in neurodegenerative diseases in high school football players compared to those who did not play football.
Parents may look at collision or contact sports like football, ice hockey, rugby and soccer and decide the risk of a concussion or CTE is too great. However, to properly weigh the pros and cons, one must consider the negative impacts of taking children and adolescents out of positive social, physical and emotional activities such as team sports.
Bots that “remove clothes” from images have run rampant on the messaging app, allowing people to create nonconsensual deepfake images even as lawmakers and tech companies try to crack down.
In early 2020, deepfake expert Henry Ajder uncovered one of the first Telegram bots built to “undress” photos of women using artificial intelligence. At the time, Ajder recalls, the bot had been used to generate more than 100,000 explicit photos—including those of children—and its development marked a “watershed” moment for the horrors deepfakes could create. Since then, deepfakes have become more prevalent, more damaging, and easier to produce.
Durov, who was arrested in France in August in connection with a range of crimes as well as refusal to communicate information or documents, has made some alterations that address user safety and user privacy.
Telegram says the changes are expected to also reduce criminal activity on the app. But users are concerned that the changes make the app more compliant with legal requests from authorities.
While Durov’s political and legal tussle continues in the EU, at home in Russia Telegram remains one of the most influential media platforms. It is one of the only places where both opposition and official voices coexist.
It is particularly popular with Russians between the ages of 12 and 24, with around 85% of them using Telegram. Around 25 of its 30 most popular channels are news and politics related. Telegram is also popular for calls and messaging.
The platform is a vital space for the independent journalism and activism that survives in Russia. Independent media outlets and commentators covering Russian affairs and using Telegram include Meduza (1.3 million subscribers), TV Rain (500,000 subscribers) and Mediazona. aLL are using Telegram to reach the public but are operating from outside Russia’s borders.
Pro-government channels also attract big audiences on Telegram, often with even larger followings than the independent outlets mentioned above. The most popular Telegram channels are Ria Novosti with 3.3 million subscribers, Readovka with 2.6 million subscribers, and Solovyov Live (1.3 million subscribers), along with several others promoting pro-government lines and supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Additionally, alternative voices such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch and prominent Kremlin critic, and Ekaterina Shulman, a respected political scientist and commentator, are steadily gaining audiences. Both have been labelled as foreign agents or extremists in Russia.
Where do Russians get news?
In the past decade, Russia’s media landscape has undergone significant censorship due to increasing state control. radio stations have closed down and many journalists have left the country to be able to report.
Percentage of Russians using different media
MediaScope, author provided (no reuse)
Traditional media sources, such as television, continue to have a massive audience. Television has a monthly reach of 98%, while radio has a monthly reach of 79%. (Reach is the total number of different people or households exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period).
Both remain significant in today’s Russia. While television remains a primary news source for many Russians, the Internet is used by 84% of people daily.
Since 2012, the state has progressively tightened control over political information. People and organisations will self-censor, and there is legislation penalising social media reposts and other forms of dissent. These laws claim to be addressing users who “discredit the armed forces” or “spread fake news”, but are actually aimed at cracking down on dissent.
Most viewed Telegram channels in Russia during July 2024
Most popular Telegram channels, July 2024 data from BrandAnalytics, Author provided (no reuse)
As of 2024, over 2,000 administrative cases and more than 273 criminal cases have been initiated under these laws. Individuals and organisations critical of the official Kremlin narrative have been fined, had their assets confiscated and been imprisoned.
Another government method used to control online discussion includes slowing down or blocking social media platforms. The state blocked major western platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in March 2022, leading millions of Russian users to migrate to Telegram.
Content creators followed en masse, transforming Telegram into a vital hub for news and political debate. Alternatives to Telegram in Russia include state-controlled domestic networks like VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki, which have strong ties to figures close to the Kremlin.
Why is Telegram allowed?
The use of Telegram for propaganda, influencing public opinion, and promoting the positions of the state and Putin could be one of the reasons why Telegram has not faced the same restrictions as other platforms.
Another reason for its popularity is the platform’s ease of use as a messaging app, including for state organisations. This makes it less of a direct threat to state control over public opinion, while still serving as a crucial tool for those seeking alternative sources of information.
Its appeal to the Russian government is strengthened by the fact that Telegram is not owned by global (western) companies such as Meta, which owns WhatsApp (also popular in Russia). Additionally, issues surrounding legally questionable content, such as the near-official tolerance of digital piracy, have long been controversial in Russia.
Telegram’s moderation policies have often been associated with a less regulated approach to content, which has contributed to its popularity in Russia. These new changes may make ordinary Russians worry more about whether what they say on the app is safe from the state’s prying eyes.
The platform’s prominence in Russian public life is undeniable, but so too are the challenges it faces. How Telegram and its leadership navigate the coming years will have profound implications, not just for the platform, but for broader public debate in Russia.
Durov’s arrest underscores the growing pressure on Telegram, from some quarters, and reflects a critical juncture for platform leaders navigating state intervention. But for Russian people looking for a space where they can exchange news and views, it remains one of most free platforms they can still access.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly making its presence felt in more areas of our lives, certainly since the launch of ChatGPT. Depending on your view, it’s that big bad bogeyman that’s taking jobs and causing widespread copyright infringement, or a gift with the potential to catapult humanity into a new age of enlightenment.
What many have achieved with the new tech, from Midjourney and LLMs to smart algorithms and data analysis, is beyond radical. It’s a technology that, like most of the silicon-based breakthroughs that came before it, has a lot of potency behind it. It can do a lot of good, but also, many fear, a lot of bad. And those outcomes are entirely dependent on how it’s manipulated, managed, and regulated.
It’s not surprising then, given how rapidly AI has forced its way into the zeitgeist, that tech companies and their sales teams are equally leaning into the technology, stuffing its various iterations into their latest products, all in the aim of encouraging us to buy their hardware.
Check out this new AI powered laptop, that motherboard that utilizes AI to overclock your CPU to the limit, those new webcams featuring AI deep-learning tech. You get the point. You just know that from Silicon Valley to Shanghai, share-holders and company execs are asking their marketing teams “How can we get AI into our products?" in time for the next CES or the next Computex, no matter how modest the value will actually be for us consumers.
We’re all familiar with chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot: they’re great for drafting emails, rewriting your text or generating images of your ideas, but they don’t have much of a personality behind them. They’re a bit like a blank slate – reflecting the world around them, rather than defining it. There is one chatbot however that has more than enough personality to make up for the rest of them put together, and that’s Character.ai.
Character AI is a place where you can have a chatbot conversation with Mick Jagger, Steve Jobs and J.R.R. Tolkien at the click of a button. Of course, these are the chatbot versions of famous musicians, tech visionaries and authors, not the real people, and they all come with the disclaimer, "Remember: everything characters say is made up!"
There is one use of Character.ai that most haven’t considered though, and that's creating a chatbot of yourself.
Why, you might ask, would you want to do that? Well, firstly, who wouldn’t want to ask an AI version of themselves a thing or two for free? But secondly, and most importantly, your friends will have a great time making fun of you, or rather, what the AI 'you' is saying, which is often unintentionally hilarious.
Will we ever see the Samsung XR headset? That’s the question I’m left asking after yet another report that the rumored XR hardware collaboration Samsung and Google have been working on is delayed – this time saying it won’t arrive until 2025 or perhaps even 2026.
Previous reports paint Samsung's headset as an Apple Vision Pro competitor, and Daily Korea reports that Samsung no longer feels an urgency to release it soon given LG withdrawing from its plan to release a high-end Meta Horizon OS headset in 2025 and Apple reportedly suspending work on Vision Pro 2 to focus on a cheaper headset first.
Daily Korea's report comes two months after Business Insider's Hugh Langley, who previously revealed the existence of the Android XR operating system before it was publicly known, reported that the headset had been delayed to March 2025, with developer kit distribution planned for October. Daily Korea references this early reporting and suggests the headset is now delayed even further.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth shared images from a recent visit to the company's research labs.
In one of the six images that were shared to Instagram and Threads, Bosworth is seen holding a tethered headset that appears to have canted lenses and a wide curved body extending beyond the strap arms horizontally, suggesting a wide field of view.
The other five images show a Ray-Ban Meta glasses prototype, Project Aria research glasses attached to a Quest 3, a silhouette appearing to be him wearing a headset, and two shots of him sitting with Meta's Chief Scientist Michael Abrash, who leads Reality Labs Research.
"Visiting our research labs is always a highlight. They’re making incredible progress on hard technological problems and I can’t wait to share more", Bosworth wrote on Threads.
Sophie Blondel: Research Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering, University of Tennessee
Fusion energy has the potential to be an effective clean energy source, as its reactions generate incredibly large amounts of energy. Fusion reactors aim to reproduce on Earth what happens in the core of the sun, where very light elements merge and release energy in the process.
Engineers can harness this energy to heat water and generate electricity through a steam turbine, but the path to fusion isn’t completely straightforward.
Controlled nuclear fusion has several advantages over other power sources for generating electricity. For one, the fusion reaction itself doesn’t produce any carbon dioxide. There is no risk of meltdown, and the reaction doesn’t generate any long-lived radioactive waste.
I’m a nuclear engineer who studies materials that scientists could use in fusion reactors. Fusion takes place at incredibly high temperatures. So to one day make fusion a feasible energy source, reactors will need to be built with materials that can survive the heat and irradiation generated by fusion reactions.
Fusion material challenges
Several types of elements can merge during a fusion reaction. The one most scientists prefer is deuterium plus tritium. These two elements have the highest likelihood of fusing at temperatures that a reactor can maintain. This reaction generates a helium aTOM and a neutron, which carries most of the energy from the reaction.
In the D-T fusion reaction, two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, fuse and produce a helium atom and a high-energy neutron. Sophie Blondel/UT Knoxville
Humans have successfully generated fusion reactions on Earth since 1952 – some even in their garage. But the trick nOW is to make it worth it. You need to get more energy out of the process than you put in to initiate the reaction.
Fusion reactions happen in a very hot plasma, which is a state of matter similar to gas but made of charged particles. The plasma needs to stay extremely hot – over 100 million degrees Celsius – and condensed for the duration of the reaction.
To keep the plasma hot and condensed and create a reaction that can keep going, you need special materials making up the reactor walls. You also need a cheap and reliable source of fuel.
While deuterium is very common and obtained from water, tritium is very rare. A 1-gigawatt fusion reactor is expected to burn 56 kilograms of tritium annually. But the world has only about 25 kilograms of tritium commercially available.
Researchers need to find alternative sources for tritium before fusion energy can get off the ground. One option is to have each reactor generating its own tritium through a system called the breeding blanket.
The breeding blanket makes up the first layer of the plasma chamber walls and contains lithium that reacts with the neutrons generated in the fusion reaction to produce tritium. The blanket also converts the energy carried by these neutrons to heat.
The fusion reaction chamber at ITER will electrify the plasma.
Fusion devices also need a divertor, which extracts the heat and ash produced in the reaction. The divertor helps keep the reactions going for longer.
These materials will be exposed to unprecedented levels of heat and particle bombardment. And there aren’t currently any experimental facilities to reproduce these conditions and test materials in a real-world scenario. So, the focus of my research is to bridge this gap using models and computer simulations.
My colleagues and I work on producing tools that can predict how the materials in a fusion reactor erode, and how their properties change when they are exposed to extreme heat and lots of particle radiation.
As they get irradiated, defects can form and grow in these materials, which affect how well they react to heat and stress. In the future, we hope that government agencies and private companies can use these tools to design fusion power plants.
Our approach, called multiscale modeling, consists of looking at the physics in these materials over different time and length scales with a range of computational models.
We first study the phenomena happening in these materials at the atomic scale through accurate but expensive simulations. For instance, one simulation might examine how hydrogen moves within a material during irradiation.
From these simulations, we look at properties such as diffusivity, which tells us how much the hydrogen can spread throughout the material.
We can integrate the information from these atomic level simulations into less expensive simulations, which look at how the materials react at a larger scale. These larger-scale simulations are less expensive because they model the materials as a continuum instead of considering every single atom.
The atomic-scale simulations could take weeks to run on a supercomputer, while the continuum one will take only a few hours.
A graph showing simulations, with size on the x axis and time on the y. Atom simulations are in the bottom left, then continuum, then experiments.
In the multiscale modeling approach, researchers use atom-level simulations, then take the parameters they find and apply them to larger-scale simulations, and then compare their results with experimental results. If the results don’t match, they go back to the atomic scale to study missing mechanisms. Sophie Blondel/UT Knoxville, adapted from https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2011.37
all this modeling work happening on computers is then compared with experimental results obtained in laboratories.
For example, if one side of the material has hydrogen gas, we want to know how much hydrogen leaks to the other side of the material. If the model and the experimental results match, we can have confidence in the model and use it to predict the behavior of the same material under the conditions we would expect in a fusion device.
If they don’t match, we go back to the atomic-scale simulations to investigate what we missed.
Additionally, we can couple the larger-scale material model to plasma models. These models can tell us which parts of a fusion reactor will be the hottest or have the most particle bombardment. From there, we can evaluate more scenarios.
For instance, if too much hydrogen leaks through the material during the operation of the fusion reactor, we could recommend making the material thicker in certain places, or adding something to trap the hydrogen.
Designing new materials
As the quest for commercial fusion energy continues, scientists will need to engineer more resilient materials. The field of possibilities is daunting – engineers can manufacture multiple elements together in many ways.
You could combine two elements to create a new material, but how do you know what the right proportion is of each element? And what if you want to tRY mixing five or more elements together? It would take way too long to try to run our simulations for all of these possibilities.
Thankfully, artificial intelligence is here to assist. By combining experimental and simulation results, analytical AI can recommend combinations that are most likely to have the properties we’re looking for, such as heat and stress resistance.
The aim is to reduce the number of materials that an engineer would have to produce and test experimentally to save time and money.
Airbus US Space & Defense has successfully conducted the first demonstration of the Lakota UH-72 drone helicopter for the US Marine Corps. This milestone represents an important advance in the logistical support of the American armed forces. The Aerial Logistics Connector (ALC) system, a fundamental part of this operation, was designed to operate in challenging and dispersed environments, ensuring a continuous flow of supplies.
The ability to operate without a crew reduces long-term operating costs while increasing mission efficiency. Furthermore, the ALC is capable of following predefined routes and automatically adjusting the route, ensuring flexibility and adaptability in hostile environments.
With the next tests scheduled for 2024 and 2025, Airbus will continue to enhance the capabilities of the Lakota UH-72, ensuring it meets the constantly evolving needs of the military. Collecting data from these demonstrations will be essential to fine-tune the system and improve its performance on future missions. As logistical challenges continue to grow, the Lakota UH-72 will stand out as an essential solution to ensure military operations continue to run efficiently, even in complex combat scenarios.
Airbus is at the forefront of innovation in military logistics, and the success of the UH-72B demonstration solidifies its position as a leading provider of advanced logistics support solutions to the U.S. military.
Have you ever imagined that humanity would need an “army” of spaceships to protect Earth from threats from space? This is exactly the plan of NASA, the US aerospace agency. The idea is to set up a true planetary defense force with the aim of protecting Earth from asteroids that can cause mass destruction, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
NASA's plan is as ambitious as it sounds: build an army of a thousand spacecraft designed specifically to intercept and alter the trajectory of potentially dangerous asteroids. And don't think this is just science fiction!
In 2022, the agency has already successfully demonstrated the technique by carrying out the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which was capable of colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid, changing its orbit. This proved that we have the technology needed to defend the planet against space threats.
Based on this success, NASA wants to expand this defense, creating a permanent protection system. Bill Nelson, the agency's general administrator, said: “We are committed to protecting the Earth from potentially harmful asteroids and comets. Planetary defense benefits all humanity.” In other words, the objective is to ensure that, in the event of a real threat, the planet is prepared.
Even though there are no immediate threats, NASA is preparing for future scenarios. The main concern is large asteroids, like the one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. An impact like this could cause devastation on a global scale, and the difference now is that we have enough technology to prevent such a natural disaster.
NASA's strategy is clear: mount a solid planetary defense, both on a national and international scale. One of the main defense methods is the use of spacecraft to deflect asteroids that pose a real threat to Earth. These ships, part of the agency's “army”, will be designed to collide with space objects, altering their orbits and thus avoiding a catastrophic collision with our planet.
However, if a more extreme situation arises, NASA has an even bolder plan B: the use of controlled nuclear explosions to deflect asteroids that are on an imminent collision course with Earth. While this scenario is a last resort, it is part of the agency's defense planning.
NASA is intensifying its efforts over the next ten years. Lindley Johnson highlighted that this strategy will ensure that the agency collaborates with other countries to mount a robust planetary defense. This is fundamental, as threats like asteroids do not just affect one nation, but all of humanity.
With this, NASA's work goes beyond creating new technologies. The agency is also working with international partners to ensure that in the event of a threat, everyone is prepared to act together. After all, protecting the planet is a global mission.
An important milestone in this ambitious project was the DART mission, which proved that spacecraft can, in fact, deflect asteroids. In 2022, NASA sent a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid Dimorphos, and the impact was enough to alter its trajectory. This success was a major advance for planetary defense and gave the agency the confidence necessary to move forward with the plan to create an army of ships.
An important detail in NASA's plan is international collaboration. Defense against asteroids is not something that can be done by a single country, which is why the agency is joining forces with other nations and scientific institutions around the world. Planetary defense is a global cause, and developing new technologies to protect the Earth must be a joint effort.
The idea is that, when a real threat arises, everyone is prepared to act in a coordinated manner, using the best technologies available. NASA's plan is an example of how science and international cooperation can work together to ensure the safety of the planet.
OpenAI’s Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil has sparked a profound discussion about AI’s transformative impact on professional services, particularly in the legal sector. His ‘Ray Summit 2024‘ revelation about their o1 model’s capability to produce legal briefs traditionally handled by high-billing associates highlights a dramatic shift in the economics of professional services.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform various industries, including law, finance, healthcare, and education. AI can automate tasks, provide insights, and offer expert advice, making it an attractive solution for businesses and individuals. However, the value proposition of AI-powered services is not just about cost savings; it's also about the quality of advice and assistance provided.
The pricing dilemma arises because traditional pricing models, which are often based on time and expertise, may not be sufficient to capture the value created by AI-powered services. For example, a $1,000-per-hour associate's time may be replaced by a $3 API credit for a similar task. This significant reduction in cost creates a pricing conundrum.
To monetize AI innovations, companies must find ways to capture value without pricing out users. This can be achieved through various strategies, such as:
Tiered pricing: Offering different levels of service at varying price points, with premium services providing more comprehensive support.
Subscription-based models: Providing access to AI-powered services for a recurring fee, similar to software-as-a-service (SaaS) models.
Value-based pricing: Charging users based on the value generated by the AI-powered service, rather than just the cost savings.
Partnerships and collaborations: Partnering with other companies to offer bundled services or sharing revenue streams.
Accessibility and sustainability are crucial considerations in the development of AI-powered services. To ensure accessibility, companies must consider factors such as:
Affordability: Pricing models that are fair and affordable for users across different economic circumstances.
User experience: Designing interfaces and user experiences that are intuitive and easy to use, reducing the need for extensive training or expertise.
Global reach: Offering services that are accessible to users worldwide, regardless of their location or language proficiency.
The future of professional services will depend on finding a balance between the competing interests of value, pricing, and accessibility. As AI continues to transform industries, companies must adapt their pricing models and business strategies to ensure that they remain relevant and sustainable.
In conclusion, the transformation of professional services through AI raises fundamental questions about pricing models, accessibility, and value. As we move forward, it is essential that we prioritize finding a balance between these competing interests and ensure that the benefits of AI are shared equitably among all stakeholders.
The popularization and advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are requiring big tech to focus more on data centers and, to a certain extent, on nuclear energy. This is because there is a growing need to reduce emissions, and this energy source is considered an important option in this regard.
In the US, power demand for data centers is projected to triple by 2030, reaching 80 Gigawatts. Companies like Oracle, Google, Amazon and Microsoft are investing in nuclear energy, particularly small modular reactors (SMRs).
Oracle, Google and Amazon, for example, are betting on SMRs to power their data centers. Microsoft's highlight is an agreement with Constellation Energy to reopen the Three Mile Island plant in the US state of Pennsylvania. This plant was made famous by the worst nuclear accident in US history, which occurred in 1979. But Constellation Energy says most of its components are ready to work again and that the plant is in extraordinary condition.
Nuclear energy already provides 20% of electricity in the US, and its capacity is expected to triple by 2050. With government support, this energy source is being seen as crucial to achieving net-zero emissions goals in the country. States that previously restricted reactor construction, such as Wisconsin and West Virginia, are lifting moratoriums, allowing new development.
As a result, the coffers of nuclear technology and uranium mining companies end up getting fuller. Rising demand for uranium has driven prices close to a 15-year high, benefiting companies like Cameco and NexGen. NuScale Power, which makes SMRs, is also on the rise, with strong growth expectations.
China's passenger vehicle sales rose 4.3% in September from a year earlier, snapping five months of decline with a boost from a government subsidy to encourage trade-ins as part of a broader stimulus package.
All the gains came from battery-powered vehicles, whose buyers and manufacturers have benefited since July from a doubling of subsidies to consumers, while sales of gasoline cars in China, a market foreign brands once dominated, continue to shrink.
Sales in the world's biggest auto market hit 2.13 million vehicles in September, up from 2.04 million a year earlier. For the first nine months, sales were up 1.9% from 2023 levels, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil says their o1 model can now write legal briefs that previously were the domain of $1000/hour associates: "what does it mean when you can suddenly do $8000 of work in 5 minutes for $3 of API credits?"
Victor Ambros: Professor of Molecular Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School
The 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine goes to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, tiny biological molecules that tell the cells in your body what kind of cell to be by turning on and off certain genes.
How did you start thinking about this fundamental question at the heart of the discovery of microRNA, about how cells get the instructions to do what they do?
The paper that described this discovery was published in 1993. In the late 1980s, we were working in the field of developmental biology, studying C. elegans as a model organism for animal development. We were using genetic approaches, where mutations that caused developmental abnormalities were then followed up to try to understand what the gene was that was mutated and what the gene product was.
It was well understood that proteins could mediate changes in gene expression as cells differentiate, divide.
We were not looking for the involvement of any sort of unexpected kind of molecular mechanisms. The fact that the microRNA was the product of this gene that was regulating this other gene in this context was a complete surprise.
There was no reason to postulate that there should be such regulators of gene expression. This is one of those examples where the expectations are that you’re going to find out about more complexity and nuance about mechanisms that we already know about.
But sometimes surprises emerge, and in fact, surprises emerge perhaps surprisingly often.
These C. elegans worms, nematodes, is there something about them that allows you to work with their genetic material more easily? Why are they so key to this type of science?
C. elegans was developed as an experimental organism that people could use easily to, first, identify mutants and then study the development.
It only has about a thousand cells, and all those cells can be seen easily through a microscope in the living animal. But still it has all the various parts that are important to all animals: intestine, skin, muscles, a brain, sensory systems and complex behavior. So it’s quite an amazing system to study developmental processes and mechanisms really on the level of individual cells and what those cells do as they divide and differentiate during development.
You were looking at this lin-4 gene. What was your surprising discovery that led to this Nobel Prize?
In our lab, Rosalind Lee and Rhonda Feinbaum were working on this project for several years. This is a very labor intensive process, trying to track down a gene.
And all we had to go by was a mutation to guide us as we gradually homed in on the DNA sequence that contained the gene. The surprises started to emerge when we found that the pieces of DNA that were sufficient to confer the function of this gene and rescue a mutant were really small, only 800 base pairs.
And so that suggested, well, the gene is small, so the product of this gene is going to be pretty small. And then Rosalind worked to pare down the sequence more and to mutate potential protein coding sequences in that little piece of DNA. By a process of elimination, she finally showed that there was no protein that could be expressed from this gene.
And at the same time, we identified this very, very small transcript of only 22 nucleotides. So I would say there was probably a period of a week or two there where these realizations came to the fore and we knew we had something new.
Yes, every Nobel Prize has this obvious limitation of the number of people that they give it to. But, of course, behind that are the folks who worked in the lab – the teams that are actually behind the discoveries are surprisingly large sometimes. In this case, two people in my lab and several people in Gary Ruvkun’s lab.
In a way they’re really the heroes behind this. Our job – mine and Gary’s – is to stand in as representatives of this whole enterprise of science, which is so, so dependent upon teams, collaborations, brainstorming amongst multiple people, communications of ideas and crucial data, you know, all this is part of the process that underlies successful science.
That first week of the discoveries, did you anticipate at that point that this could be such a huge step for our understanding of genes?
Until other examples are found of something new, it’s very hard to know how peculiar that particular phenomenon might be.
We’re always mindful that evolution is amazingly innovative. And so it could have been that this particular small RNA base-pairing to this mRNA of lin-14 gene and turning off production of the protein from lin-14 messenger RNA, that could be a peculiar evolutionary innovation.
The second microRNA was identified in Gary Ruvkun’s lab in 1999, so it was a good six years before the second one was found, also in C. elegans. Really, the watershed discovery was when Ruvkun showed that let-7, the other microRNA, was actually conserved perfectly in sequence amongst all the bilaterian animals. So that meant that let-7 microRNA had been around for, what, 500 million years?
And so it was immediately obvious to the field that there had to be other microRNAs – this was not just a C. elegans thing. There must be others, and that quickly emerged to be the case.
You and Gary Ruvkun had been postdoctoral fellows at the same time at MIT, but by the time you made your respective discoveries, you’d both set up your own labs. Would you call them rival labs, in the same town?
No, I would certainly not call it rival labs. We were working together as postdocs basically on this problem of developmental timing in Bob Horvitz’s lab.
We just basically informally divided up the work. The understanding was, OK, Ambros lab will focus on lin-4 gene, and Ruvkun lab will focus on lin-14, and we anticipated that there would be a point that we would get together and share information about what we’ve learned and see if we could come to a synthesis.
That was the informal plan. It was not really a collaboration. It was certainly not a rivalry. The expectation was that we would divide up the work and then communicate when the time came. There was an expectation in this community of C. elegans researchers that you should share data freely.
Your lab still works on microRNA. What are you investigating? What questions do you still have?
One I find very interesting is a project where we collaborated with a clinician, a geneticist who studies intellectual disability. She had discovered that her patients, children with intellectual disabilities, in certain families carried a mutation that neither of their parents had – a spontaneous mutation – in the protein that is associated with microRNAs in humans called the Argonaute protein.
Each of our genomes contains four genes for Argonautes that are the partners of microRNAs. In fact, this is the effector protein that is guided by the microRNA to its target messenger RNAs. This Argonaute is what carries out the regulatory processes that happen once it finds its target.
These so-called Argonaute syndromes were discovered, where there are mutations in Argonautes, point mutations where only one amino acid changes to another amino acid. They have this very profound and extensive effect on the development of the individual.
And so working with these geneticists, our lab and other labs took those mutations, that were essentially gifted to us by the patient. And then we put those mutations into our system, in our case into C. elegans‘ Argonaute.
I’m excited by the very organized, active partnership between the Argonaute Alliance of families with Argonaute syndromes and the basic scientists studying Argonaute.
How does this collaboration potentially help those patients?
What we’ve learned is that the mutant protein is sort of a rogue Argonaute. It’s basically screwing up the normal process that these four Argonautes usually do in the body. And so this rogue Argonaute, in principle, could be removed from the system by trying to employ some of the technology that folks are developing for gene knockout or RNA interference of genes.
This is promising, and I’m hopeful that the payoff for the patients will come in the years ahead.
I don't particularly have a problem with Netflix . But the fact that this fight is on netflix without an intermediate organization ( like UFC or PFL) involved feels like the rules could be bent a bit . Just my personal opinion .
The day u had to bury ur father. That's when it hits u! You've lost the one man who genuienly wants u to be better than him! It's when u realize how much of ur strength came from knowing he was there.
Hola me presento jaja soy maxiza y soy nuevo en esto. Me veran publicando cualquier cosa que se me ocurre y me gusta jugar, dibujar y ver anime espero llevarme bien
Trying to do this will only make the garbage spam even worse, lol. We need more people. I literally only see like 20-30 of the same people posting, and that is checking the Latest tab, not For You.
It is simple. The elite need the poor. Human history has shown this. Crypto can change this. That is why they are all so afraid. Or want to take it over to keep the norm
At worst, they take away what little income entry-level, disabled, or elderly employees had, while making tech companies rich that can provide cheaper automated solutions.
@pepetoken just sent you a DIY token as a little appreciation for your comment dear @pele23!
Feel free to multiply it by sending someone else !DIY in a comment :) You can do that x times a day depending on your balance so:
City life and village life both have advantages and disadvantages at the same time and based on perspective some of us love to live in a city and some in the village.
Music is actually a universal language cuz you don't have to understand whatever you're hearing in every song to feel , vibe and rock with it . Do you agree on that?
#askonleo #musicvibes #vyb #waiv
Good morning. It's a nice day and I hope it will be a productive day for me. The start of the morning can't be said as good because one action of my little sister made me angry. So, it's not a good start to the day.
I'm technically 6a, but I honestly plant everything like I am zone 4 because our microclimate is harsh! You should be completely fine to plant garlic still, I've planted mine as late as the last week of October and it produced just dandy!
Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 10/20/24. We aim to educate people about this crucial area along with providing information of what is taking place.
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
Amazon unveils new Kindle lineup, including a first in colour
For all the Kindle lovers out there, Amazon has some good news – the e-commerce behemoth has now expanded its Kindle lineup with four new devices, including one that finally gets colour display.
“There’s never been a better time to pick up a Kindle. Amazon is introducing an entirely new lineup of Kindle devices, including the first-ever color Kindle, a reimagined Kindle Scribe, the fastest Kindle Paperwhite ever, and a new entry Kindle in a fun, new Matcha color,” the company noted in an official statement. The launch comes on the same day when Apple announced a fresh iteration of its iPad mini line-up.
For users who are unwilling to empty their pockets, Amazon offers an entry-level device, which sports “premium Kindle features.” These include a front light that is now 25% brighter, improved page-turn speeds, 16GB storage, a higher contrast display, and improved page-turn speeds. There is also a new colour option – Matcha Green – and is priced at $109.99.
Known as the Kindle ColorSoft Signature Edition, Amazon’s offering into the color e-reader market provides richer visuals, high contrast, faster page turns, as well as two modes — standard and vibrant color. These modes allow users to highlight text in various colors instead of the typical grayscale. The Kindle also comes with wireless charging and is waterproof. Interested users can get their hands on it from October 30 (pre-orders begin today) and the device is priced at $279.99.
“Everything about Kindle Colorsoft was meticulously designed to deliver rich, paper-like color. It uses an oxide backplane with custom waveforms for fast performance and a higher contrast on both color and black-and-white content. Its custom Colorsoft display includes a new light-guide with nitride LEDs that, when combined with our custom algorithms, enhances color and increases brightness, all without washing out details. You can zoom in on images without worrying about pixelation, and you can choose between standard or vibrant color styles,” Amazon noted.
Next comes the Kindle Scribe, which sports a 300 ppi screen. Among the new devices, this one offers a realistic writing experience. The device also comes with the Premium Pen (which feels like you are using an actual pen to jot down notes directly on book pages or use a side panel, which they can hide or display at their discretion. One of the more interesting features of Kindle Scribe is the new Active Canvas, which lets readers annotate pages without disrupting the text flow itself. To add to this, Amazon also brings AI into the Scribe’s notebook feature, which can summarize pages of handwritten notes into concise bullet points. The device will be priced at $399.99, and pre-orders are available now. Users will have to wait for a while to get their hands on it, though, since shipping starts from December 4.
Next comes the Kindle Paperwhite, which Amazon describes as the “fastest Kindle ever.” Coming with a larger display – 7 inches – the Kindle Paperwhite comes with an improved battery lifetime (lasting up to three months on a single charge) as well as 16 GB of storage. the device will come in a thinner design and Raspberry, Jade, and Black colors, while its improved internals promise 25% faster page-turn speeds. This version starts at $159.99, while the Signature version is priced at $199.99. The pricier model offers 32GB of storage, amongst other features.
SpaceX catches Starship booster mid-air in historic feat
SpaceX has now achieved a historic new milestone – this time, the space company successfully captured the Super Heavy booster from its Starship rocket as it descended back to the launchpad in southern Texas. This development comes a few months after the space company achieved its first successful splashdown with its Starship vehicle, and marks the fifth test flight of the Starship rocket.
The mission commenced at 7:25 AM local time from the Boca Chica starbase, with the Starship rocket lifting off under clear skies. The rocket stands 397 feet (121 meters) tall once it is fully assembled. During the launch, the Super Heavy booster separated from the upper stage at an altitude of 40 miles (65 kilometers). The upper stage then proceeded to reach an altitude of nearly 90 miles, completing a fast-paced orbit around the Earth at approximately 17,000 mph. Once the objectives were achieved, the upper stage successfully splashed down in the Indian Ocean.
As the Super Heavy booster re-entered the atmosphere, it ignited three of its Raptor engines to decelerate, thus aligning itself for a landing at the launchpad. This recovery process involved the use of the “Mechazilla,” large mechanical arms on the pad gantry that have been designed to catch the descending booster and hold it securely at the launch pad. This is a big step – it marks the first time SpaceX has executed such a maneuver and achieved success, and if this success continues, then it will massively increase the reusability of rocket components. It also allows rockets to return directly to the launch site instead of landing on distant platforms or in the ocean, and cuts down on the time required to refurbish and prepare the rockets for future launches.
“Folks, this is a day for the engineering history books,” a spokesperson for SpaceX. “The tower has caught the rocket!!” Elon Musk, SpaceX founder, posted on social media platform X. The company went on to reveal that its engineers have “spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success.”
This comes after the upper stage faced challenges during the re-entry – the separation from the booster was followed by the Starship utilizing its improved heat-shielding tiles to protect against the extreme temperatures generated during re-entry. The vehicle eventually successfully landed in the Indian Ocean, but managed to tip over and explode upon hitting the water. It is unknown whether the explosion was a controlled detonation or not, but Musk said the ship landed “precisely on target!”
SpaceX
How SpaceX's rocket return to base could make space flights cheaper
The most recent flight of Starship, the most powerful spacecraft in the world, may have been a step towards reducing the interval between space flights and thus making them cheaper. In an unprecedented feat, SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, managed to bring the first stage of the ship, the Super Heavy rocket — the most powerful in history — back to the launch pad.
#newsonleo #technology #space #spacex
Measuring 70 meters high and 9 meters in diameter, he was captured while still in the air, using the mechanical arms of the structure known as Mechazilla.
Musk hopes that, in the future, the ship itself can also be fully recovered (it separates from the rocket after a few minutes and continues its course alone into space, until it returns to the Earth's atmosphere). On Sunday, the capsule (without a crew) landed in the Gulf of Mexico, but exploded shortly after.
The ultimate goal is that this set (rocket and ship) can be put back into flight almost immediately after completing a trip. “This is the fork in the road of destiny that will allow humanity to become a multi-planetary civilization,” Musk said.
“Total and immediate reuse with low-cost propellant [fuel] will mean a marginal cost per ton approximately 100 times better than that of the Falcon [another smaller rocket from SpaceX], which is already 10 times better than that of the Shuttle [the space shuttles, from NASA]”, he stated.
Cost reduction mainly involves the factors below.
– Less costly manufacturing: achieved by simplifying rocket components;
– Savings on transportation: when the rocket lands directly at the launch base, the company reduces costs and time to bring the vehicle back compared to landing at sea, for example. “There is a cost to going there to get it. If the rocket returns alone, it is much cheaper”, explains Annibal Hetem, professor of space propulsion on the aerospace engineering course at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC);
In the mission on the 13th, the Super Heavy undocked from Starship minutes after takeoff, after reaching an altitude of around 70 km. The capsule continued flying through space until it landed in the Indian Ocean, about an hour after launch.
After separating from the spacecraft, the rocket began the movement that would take it back to the ground. As the launch is shaped like an arc, the Super Heavy rose another 26 km, practically horizontally, until it began its descent, where it reached almost 4,400 km/h.
When approaching Mechazilla (the system that will grab it at the launch base), with a speed of around 200 km/h, the rocket turned on its main and side engines, to have more control of the descent.
The landing ended 7 minutes after launch, with the platform's mechanical arms “embracing” the vehicle. “There is no reverse gear on a rocket, what SpaceX did was balance the weight. What makes it descend is the weight, the gravity, in a controlled way”, says Hetem.
“The main difficulty with this type of thing is knowing the dynamics of the vehicle in advance. What was done was simulated thousands of times, everything is pre-calculated”, adds Dourado.
NVidia
Adeus, ChatGPT da OpenAI? Nvidia lança novo modelo de Inteligência Artificial que detona a concorrência
A Nvidia fez um movimento importante no campo da inteligência artificial ao lançar um novo modelo de IA que superou as ofertas das principais empresas do setor, como a OpenAI e Anthropic. Embora o lançamento tenha sido feito de maneira discreta, os resultados falam por si, posicionando a Nvidia como uma potência não apenas em hardware, mas também em software de IA.
#newsonleo #technology #nvidia #ai #hivebr #pt
Essa conquista representa um marco importante para a Nvidia, uma empresa tradicionalmente conhecida por suas GPUs (unidades de processamento gráfico), essenciais para o treinamento de grandes modelos de IA. Entretanto, ao lançar seu próprio modelo de linguagem, a empresa mostra sua capacidade de competir diretamente com as gigantes de software.
A Nvidia utilizou o modelo Llama 3.1 de código aberto da Meta como base para o desenvolvimento do Nemotron. O processo incluiu técnicas avançadas de treinamento, como o Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), que permite à IA ajustar suas respostas de acordo com as preferências humanas.
Isso significa que o modelo pode oferecer respostas mais naturais e contextualizadas, o que é um grande diferencial em comparação aos modelos concorrentes.
O conceito de “alinhamento” é uma das principais vantagens do novo modelo da Nvidia.
Esse termo refere-se à capacidade da IA de gerar respostas que correspondem às necessidades e preferências de seus usuários.
Na prática, isso significa menos erros e uma maior satisfação do cliente, algo crucial para empresas que dependem da IA para aprimorar o atendimento ao cliente e automatizar processos.
Para as empresas que buscam soluções de IA, o Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct oferece uma alternativa robusta e acessível.
A Nvidia disponibiliza o modelo gratuitamente para inferências por meio de sua plataforma build.nvidia.com, facilitando o acesso de empresas de todos os portes a uma IA de ponta.
À medida que o Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct é testado e utilizado em diversas indústrias, espera-se que novas aplicações surjam. Empresas de setores como saúde, educação e finanças já estão explorando como o modelo pode ser integrado em seus sistemas para automatizar processos e melhorar a eficiência.
Se a Nvidia conseguir continuar inovando e expandindo suas ofertas de IA, é provável que veremos uma reconfiguração do setor nos próximos anos. A empresa já demonstrou que tem a capacidade de competir com gigantes como a OpenAI, mas a verdadeira prova será a adoção em larga escala de suas soluções.
Meta must face lawsuits from US States over teen social media addiction
Meta is being sued by U.S. states for allegedly causing teen addiction and mental health issues through social media platforms.
#newsonleo #meta #lawsuit #socialmedia
A federal judge in California has ruled that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, must face lawsuits from U.S. states (reported by Reuters). These states accuse Meta of causing mental health issues among teenagers by making its platforms addictive. The judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, decided that the lawsuits can continue, although she noted some limits on the claims. She agreed with Meta that a federal law called Section 230 provides some protection to online platforms, but she found enough evidence in the states’ arguments to allow most of the case to proceed.
The lawsuits involve more than 30 states, including California and New York, as well as a separate one from Florida. The ruling also affects personal injury lawsuits filed by individuals against Meta and other social media companies like TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat. These companies sought to dismiss the personal injury cases, but the judge denied their requests, allowing these cases to move forward as well.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated that Meta should be held responsible for the harm it has caused to children across the country. Lawyers representing the young people involved in the lawsuits called the judge’s decision a significant win for those negatively affected by social media addiction.
Meta responded by saying they disagreed with the ruling but highlighted their efforts to create tools that help parents and teens, such as new “Teen Accounts” on Instagram with extra protections. A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, called the allegations against them untrue and stated that providing a safer experience for young users is a priority.
The lawsuits are seeking court orders to stop Meta’s alleged harmful business practices and are asking for unspecified monetary damages.
Many lawsuits have been filed against various social media companies, claiming that their addictive algorithms contribute to issues like anxiety, depression, and body image problems among teenagers, and that they fail to warn users about these risks.
Article
Down with Meta, and other corrupt centralised corporations.
Up with well Decentralised DAO's.
That is hard since I dont think humanity is ready for that.
Well yeah, or it would have happened already. But the snowball effect could make it happen sooner than we expect.
Posted via D.Buzz
DJI sues Department of Defense over listing as a Chinese military company
Drone-maker DJI filed a lawsuit Friday against the US Department of Defense over its inclusion on a DoD list of “Chinese military companies.”
A DJI spokesperson said the company filed the suit after “attempting to engage with the DoD for more than sixteen months” and deciding “it had no alternative other than to seek relief in federal court.”
#dji #newsonleo #technology #defense
“DJI is not owned or controlled by the Chinese military, and the DoD itself acknowledges that DJI makes consumer and commercial drones, not military drones,” the spokesperson said.
The Chinese company was added to the DoD’s list in 2022, following similar actions from other government agencies — in 2020, DJI was placed on Department of Commerce’s Entity List that essentially blocked US companies from selling to it, and it was placed on the Treasury Department’s investment blocklist the following year, due to DJI’s alleged involvement in the surveillance of Uyghur Muslims. (The company said it had “nothing to do with treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.”)
Article
Four takeaways from Pony AI's IPO filing
Toyota-backed autonomous vehicle company Pony AI has joined the list of Chinese firms going public on the U.S. stock market after a multi-year ban
Toyota-backed autonomous vehicle company Pony AI has joined the list of Chinese firms going public on the U.S. stock market after a multi-year ban from Beijing on offshore capital raising.
#ipo #newsonleo #market #ponyai #technology
Pony.ai's IPO Filing Reveals Challenges and Ambitions in Autonomous vehicle Market
Chinese autonomous vehicle (AV) startup Pony.ai has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York ⇪ Exchange×, offering a glimpse into the company's operations, financials, and future prospects. The filing comes at a time when Chinese tech companies are facing increased scrutiny in the U.S. markets, and the AV industry continues to grapple with technological and regulatory challenges.
Valuation and Funding Targets Adjusted
Pony.ai, previously valued at $8.5 billion in a 2022 funding round, has significantly lowered its expectations for the IPO. The company's board of directors has reduced the minimum valuation target to $4 billion, less than half of its previous valuation. Additionally, Pony.ai has cut its minimum fundraising goal from $425 million to $200 million, indicating a more conservative approach in the current market climate.
Operations and Fleet Size
The company's operations are primarily focused in China, with a modest fleet of 190 "robotrucks" operating in Beijing and Guangzhou, and over 250 robotaxis across Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. Pony.ai has achieved fully driverless operations in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and can charge for robotaxi fares in three of these cities.
Pony.ai reports an average of 15 daily orders per robotaxi from its 220,000 registered users on the PonyPilot app. The company has accumulated over 20 million autonomous driving miles, though only 2.4 million of these were fully driverless.
Financial Performance
While Pony.ai has seen revenue growth, with $24.7 million in the first half of 2024 (nearly double the same period last year), the company continues to operate at a loss. In 2022 and 2023, Pony.ai reported gross profits but net losses exceeding $270 million, primarily due to high R&D expenses.
The company's workforce of about 1,300 employees is heavily skewed towards R&D (44%), with operations accounting for only 28.5% of staff. This allocation reflects the company's continued focus on technology development over immediate profitability.
Risk Factors
Pony.ai's IPO filing includes an extensive 60-page section detailing potential risks. Key concerns include:
Future Outlook
Despite the challenges, Pony.ai paints an optimistic picture of its technology and future potential. The company projects increased revenues, particularly from robotaxi fares, though it acknowledges that costs are likely to remain high in the near term.
Pony.ai's IPO filing provides valuable insights into the state of the AV industry and the specific challenges faced by Chinese tech companies entering U.S. markets. As the company moves forward with its public offering, investors and industry observers will be watching closely to see how Pony.ai navigates the complex landscape of autonomous vehicle development and commercialization.
Article
What Happens When we Merge with AI?
#ai #technology #futurism
70% Of Employers To Crack Down On Remote Work In 2025
Seven out of 10 employers are set to crack down on remote work and double down on RTO policies in 2025. What are the long-term implications?
#remotework #technology #business #newsonleo
The Struggle to Enforce RTO Policies
The article begins by highlighting the challenges faced by employers in enforcing their return-to-office (RTO) policies. Despite the growing trend of remote work, many companies are struggling to implement and enforce their RTO mandates. This is largely due to the fact that many employees are refusing to comply with these policies, either by working from home or finding alternative arrangements that allow them to avoid the office.
The Reasons Behind Employee Resistance
So, why are employees resisting the return to office? There are several reasons, including:
The Risks of Micromanaging
The article also highlights the risks of micromanaging, which is a common approach employed by some employers to enforce RTO policies. Micromanaging involves tracking every aspect of an employee's work, from their hours worked to their activities online. This approach can lead to a toxic culture of mistrust and fear, where employees feel like they are being watched and judged all the time.
The Impact on Company Culture
The article suggests that the return to office can actually weaken company culture and team morale. When employees are forced to work in an office, they may feel like they are just going through the motions, rather than being part of a team that is working together towards a common goal. This can lead to a culture of transactional relationships, where employees are seen as mere commodities rather than valued members of the team.
The Broader Job Market Shift
The article highlights the broader job market shift that is taking place, with 57% of workers expecting increased flexibility and 42% stating that location flexibility is a prerequisite before applying for a job. This shift is driven by the pandemic, which has forced many companies to adopt remote work arrangements. However, it also reflects a broader cultural shift, where workers are demanding more flexibility and autonomy in their careers.
The Freelance Economy
The article also mentions the rise of the freelance economy, which is driven by workers who are seeking more flexibility and autonomy in their careers. Freelancing offers workers the opportunity to work on a project-by-project basis, choose their own clients and projects, and work from anywhere. This approach can be attractive to workers who value flexibility and autonomy, but it also poses challenges for employers, who may struggle to attract and retain top talent.
The Importance of Remote Work
Finally, the article emphasizes the importance of remote work in the modern workplace. Remote work offers workers the flexibility and autonomy they need to be productive and focused, while also allowing companies to access a global talent pool and reduce costs. However, it also requires companies to rethink their approach to work and management, and to prioritize a culture of trust and collaboration.
Overall, the article suggests that the return to office is a short-sighted approach that may damage company culture and employee morale in the long term. Instead, companies should prioritize a balanced and flexible approach to remote work, one that values the needs and contributions of all employees.
Article
Harvard scientists unveil a new AI model for cancer diagnosis, 96% accuracy!
A new AI model developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School is making waves in cancer diagnosis and treatment.
A new AI model developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School is making waves in cancer diagnosis and treatment. This AI model can perform a variety of tasks for 19 different types of cancer. It goes beyond many current AI systems that are usually limited to one specific job, like just detecting cancer or predicting a tumor’s genetic makeup.
#ai #cancer #healthcare #newsonleo
The AI, named CHIEF (Clinical Histopathology Imaging Evaluation Foundation), analyzes digital images of tumor tissues. It detects cancer cells, predicts the tumor’s molecular profile, and even forecasts patient survival rates. Researchers found that CHIEF is more accurate than most current AI methods, achieving nearly 94% accuracy in detecting cancer.
The researchers believe CHIEF could help identify patients who might benefit from experimental treatments that target specific genetic variations. This capability is especially valuable in areas with limited access to advanced testing.
Aticle
Nearly real look at Samsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra camera ring design
Get an exclusive first look at Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra! Discover sleek design, innovative features, and what makes it a must-have in 2025.
The tech world is buzzing with excitement as leaks and rumors about Samsung’s upcoming flagship, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, continue to circulate. A recent render has emerged, providing us with a tantalizing glimpse of what we can expect from this highly anticipated device.
#samsung #technology #newsonleo
One of the standout features showcased in the render is the rear camera rings design. Inspired by the Galaxy Z Fold 6, this unique arrangement adds a touch of sophistication to the device’s aesthetics. The camera sensor layout appears similar to that of the S24 Ultra, suggesting we can expect comparable camera capabilities.
Perhaps most notably, the render confirms the inclusion of the S Pen. This beloved stylus has become a staple of the Galaxy S Ultra series, offering users a versatile tool for note-taking, drawing, and more. The S Pen slot is likely housed within the device’s bottom edge, maintaining the familiar design we’ve come to expect.
Article
Google Chrome killing uBlock Origin ad blocker: When it's happening?
Google is removing uBlock Origin from Chrome, pushing users to adopt Manifest V3 and limiting ad-blocking options.
Google is removing the popular ad-blocking extension uBlock Origin from the Chrome Web Store. This change is part of a bigger shift towards using a new system called Manifest V3, which has been in development since 2018. Google claims that this new system improves security, but it also makes it harder for extensions like uBlock Origin to work effectively.
#newsonleo #google #chrome #ublock #technology
Currently, if you search for uBlock Origin in the Chrome Web Store, you might find it unavailable because it no longer meets Google’s new rules for extensions. However, some users still have access to it, particularly in the EU. For those who already use uBlock Origin, Google has started showing warnings that the extension will soon be outdated.
Under Manifest V3, extensions have limited access to the browser and the web. This is a big issue for ad blockers and security tools because they rely on being able to access data to do their job.
As a result, many developers of popular extensions, including uBlock Origin, may have to stop supporting their products in Chrome. Users will then have fewer options, mainly switching to lighter versions or alternatives like uBlock Origin Lite or AdGuard.
Article
Google Pixel Watch October 2024 Feature Drop Brings One-Tap Contacts, Emoji Email Reactions
Discover the October 2024 Feature Drop for Pixel Watch, featuring quick contacts, emoji email reactions, and expanded safety features.
Google has just started rolling out the October 2024 Feature Drop update for its Pixel Watches, smartphones, and tablets. This update brings some exciting new features for Pixel Watch users. The update will be gradually available on your devices, so keep an eye out for it!
#newsonleo #google #pixel #watch #technology
One of the most useful new features is the individual contact tile. Now, you can easily reach your favorite contacts directly from your watch. You can choose which contact you want to see on your watch face and quickly call or message them with just one tap. This makes staying in touch with friends and family super simple!
Another fun addition is the ability to send emoji reactions to your emails. If you receive a Gmail notification, you can now respond with a thumbs up or a smiley face right from your Pixel Watch. This makes it easier to react to messages without needing to pull out your phone.
Article
Scammers swindle elderly California man out of $25K by using AI voice technology to claim his son was in 'horrible accident,' needed money for bail: 'Absolutely his voice'
“It was his voice. It was absolutely his voice. There was no doubt about it.”
#newsonleo #ai #technology #fraud
AI voice Scam costs California Senior $25,000 in Elaborate Bail fraud
In a disturbing case that highlights the growing sophistication of technology-enabled fraud, a California senior citizen fell victim to an elaborate scam involving artificial intelligence voice cloning. The incident, which resulted in the loss of $25,000, serves as a stark warning about the evolving tactics of modern fraudsters and the need for increased vigilance among vulnerable populations.
The Scam Unfolds
The victim, identified only as Anthony to protect his privacy, received a phone call that would set in motion a chain of events leading to significant financial loss and emotional distress. The voice on the other end of the line was unmistakably familiar - it was his son's voice, or so Anthony believed. "It was his voice. It was absolutely his voice," Anthony later recounted to ABC 7 news, emphasizing, "There was no doubt about it."
The caller, using an AI-generated voice that perfectly mimicked Anthony's son, spun a tale of urgent crisis. The impersonator claimed to have been involved in a "horrible accident" while driving, stating that he had struck a pregnant woman who was subsequently "rushed to the ICU." This shocking news immediately put Anthony on high alert, priming him for what was to come next.
The initial call was brief, but it set the stage for the more elaborate phases of the scam. Within minutes, Anthony received a second call, this time from a man identifying himself as Michael Roberts, purportedly his son's lawyer. Roberts wasted no time in pressing the urgency of the situation, telling Anthony, "You need to get $9,200 as fast as you can if you want your son out of jail. Otherwise, he's in for 45 days."
Anthony's Reaction and Initial Doubts
To his credit, Anthony's initial reaction was one of suspicion. The sudden demand for a large sum of money raised red flags, prompting him to attempt to verify the story directly with his son. He tried calling his son's number, but the call went straight to voicemail, further heightening his anxiety and lending credibility to the scammer's narrative.
This moment of doubt could have been the turning point that saved Anthony from falling victim to the fraud. However, the scammers had anticipated such a reaction and had already taken steps to isolate their target from potential sources of verification. The unanswered call to his son left Anthony with little choice but to take the scammer's claims at face value, especially given the perceived urgency of the situation.
The First Payment
Despite his misgivings, Anthony's paternal instincts and fear for his son's well-being ultimately overrode his caution. He made his way to the bank, where he withdrew $9,200. In a detail that underscores the complex psychology at play in such scams, Anthony told the bank teller that the money was for solar panel installation. This white lie was not just an attempt to avoid scrutiny; it also reveals Anthony's subconscious awareness that something about the situation might not be quite right.
Upon returning home, Anthony's daughter became involved, adding another layer of perceived legitimacy to the scam. She called the supposed lawyer back, and was informed that an Uber would soon arrive to collect the bail money. This use of a legitimate ride-sharing service as an unwitting accomplice is a clever tactic employed by modern scammers to distance themselves from the physical collection of funds.
Surveillance footage from Anthony's home captured the moment when his daughter handed over the money to the Uber driver, verifying the license plate number in the process. This attention to detail, ironically, served to further convince the victims of the scam's authenticity.
Escalation of the Scam
In a cruel twist that demonstrates the scammers' psychological acumen, they were not content with their initial success. Shortly after the first payment was collected, Anthony received yet another call. This time, the caller identified himself as Mark Cohen, claiming to be another lawyer working on his son's case. Cohen delivered devastating news: the pregnant woman allegedly struck by Anthony's son had died, and as a result, his son's bail had been increased significantly.
This escalation served multiple purposes for the scammers. First, it allowed them to extract even more money from their victim. Second, it reinforced the sense of urgency and crisis, preventing Anthony from taking a step back to rationally assess the situation. Finally, it played on the natural human tendency to commit to a course of action once invested, a psychological principle known as the sunk cost fallacy.
Under immense emotional strain, Anthony once again went to the bank, this time withdrawing between $15,800 and $25,000. The exact amount is unclear from the report, but it represents a substantial sum, especially for a senior citizen likely living on a fixed income. Once more, an Uber driver was dispatched to collect the funds, completing the second phase of the scam.
The Aftermath and Realization
It was only after the second payment had been made and the calls ceased that Anthony and his family began to suspect something was amiss. As they waited anxiously for news of his son's release, Anthony's daughter took the initiative to research the phone numbers and details provided by the scammers. Her online investigation led to a heartbreaking conclusion: "Dad, I hope I'm wrong. I think you've just been scammed out of $25,000."
Anthony's reaction to this revelation is telling. He admitted that the possibility of a scam had "never even crossed" his mind until that moment. This statement provides insight into the effectiveness of the scammers' tactics, which rely on creating a sense of crisis that overwhelms the victim's critical thinking abilities.
"I never had a chance to do a second call unless I were to say to them, 'Hold it. I'm stopping this whole thing for a minute. I want to talk to my son. I don't care if he's in jail or where he is, I want to talk to my son.' You don't think that way. You don't," Anthony explained, articulating the psychological trap in which he found himself.
The speed and intensity of the scam were key factors in its success. Anthony noted that everything happened so "fast" that he didn't have time to question the authenticity of the calls or the demands being made. This rapid pace is a deliberate tactic used by scammers to keep their victims off-balance and prevent them from seeking outside verification or advice.
Law Enforcement Response
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the incident, with detective Chelsea Saeger providing insights into the evolving nature of such scams. "They are using social media and technology to craft these very believable and convincing stories, and people really do believe they're talking to a grandchild or a government official," Saeger explained to ABC 7.
The detective's comments highlight a crucial aspect of modern scams: the integration of advanced technology with traditional social engineering tactics. The use of AI-generated voices, in particular, represents a significant escalation in the capabilities of fraudsters. This technology allows scammers to create highly convincing impersonations, bypassing one of the traditional defenses against phone scams - recognizing that the caller's voice doesn't match that of the person they claim to be.
Saeger also shed light on how scammers obtain the voice samples necessary for such impersonations. "They call, and when you answer, and it's a scammer, there's silence," she explained. "They want you to say 'hello' or 'is anybody there?' aLL they need is three seconds of your voice to input it into AI and to clone it." This revelation underscores the importance of being cautious even during seemingly innocuous phone calls.
Moreover, the detective pointed out that scammers often harvest voice samples from social media posts, particularly video content. This tactic allows them to clone voices without direct interaction with their intended victims, making the scam even more insidious.
The Role of Ride-Sharing Services
An interesting aspect of this case is the use of legitimate ride-sharing services like Uber to collect the fraudulently obtained funds. Detective Saeger noted that the drivers involved in such schemes are typically unaware that they are participating in a scam. They are simply completing a task assigned through the app, which adds another layer of complexity to investigating and prosecuting these crimes.
This use of ride-sharing services as unwitting accomplices serves several purposes for the scammers. It allows them to maintain physical distance from the crime, reducing their risk of apprehension. It also lends an air of legitimacy to the transaction, as victims may be less likely to suspect fraud when interacting with a recognized service. Finally, it complicates the money trail, making it more difficult for law enforcement to trace the funds back to the perpetrators.
The Psychological Impact
Beyond the significant financial loss, the emotional and psychological toll of such scams cannot be overstated. Anthony's statement, "I look like a fool. I feel like a fool, but I don't care," reveals the deep sense of shame and self-recrimination that victims often experience. This emotional aftermath can be as damaging as the financial loss, potentially leading to depression, anxiety, and a loss of trust in others.
However, Anthony's willingness to share his story publicly demonstrates remarkable courage and a desire to prevent others from falling victim to similar scams. By coming forward, he is contributing to public awareness and potentially saving others from the same fate.
Broader Implications and Prevention Strategies
This case is far from isolated. It represents a growing trend in technology-enabled fraud that targets vulnerable populations, particularly the elderly. The sophistication of these scams, combining social engineering with advanced technology like AI voice cloning, presents significant challenges for law enforcement and consumer protection agencies.
To combat such scams, experts recommend several strategies:
Skepticism: Be skeptical of urgent demands for money, especially when they come with pressure to act quickly.
Education: Stay informed about the latest scam tactics and share this information with vulnerable family members and friends.
Privacy: Be cautious about sharing personal information and voice recordings on social media platforms.
Reporting: Report suspected scams to local law enforcement and relevant consumer protection agencies.
Detective Saeger emphasized that legitimate government agencies and financial institutions will never call and demand immediate money transfers. She also warned about requests to deposit money into cryptocurrency ATMs or transfer funds to crypto accounts, which are common red flags in modern scams.
Conclusion
The case of Anthony and his $25,000 loss serves as a sobering reminder of the evolving nature of fraud in the digital age. As technology advances, so too do the methods employed by scammers, requiring constant vigilance and education on the part of potential victims and their families.
This incident also raises important questions about the regulation and ethical use of AI technology. As voice cloning becomes more accessible and convincing, there may be a need for new legal frameworks to address its potential for misuse.
Ultimately, while technology plays a significant role in these scams, the human element remains crucial. Fraudsters continue to exploit basic human emotions - fear, love for family, and the desire to help - to bypass our rational defenses. By sharing stories like Anthony's and fostering open discussions about fraud, we can build a more resilient society better equipped to recognize and resist these increasingly sophisticated scams.
As we move forward in an increasingly digital world, striking a balance between technological innovation and personal security will be an ongoing challenge. Cases like this underscore the importance of continued research, public education, and adaptive law enforcement strategies to stay ahead of those who would exploit technology for nefarious purposes.
Article
China races to unlock one of the biggest mysteries in particle physics
JUNO, the underground facility in Kaiping, will boot up in 2025.
China hopes a giant laboratory 2,300 feet underground is key to beating the US at discovering the secrets of the universe’s most mysterious particles–neutrinos.
#china #newsonleo #technology
Slated for completion next year, after over a decade of construction, the roughly $311 million Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) relies on a nearly 115-foot-wide stainless steel and acrylic spherical machine designed to help measure incomprehensibly small subatomic units that move almost at the speed of light. Despite blanketing the universe (100 trillion are believed to pass through your body every second), very little is known about neutrinos and their behavior due how difficult it is to detect them.
The "mass hierarchy" problem is a fundamental challenge in particle physics that refers to the lack of knowledge about the masses of neutrinos, subatomic particles that are thought to occupy one of three mass states. Neutrinos are created in the cores of stars and in nuclear reactors, and they interact with matter through the weak nuclear force. However, their masses are still unknown, and this lack of knowledge has significant implications for our understanding of the universe.
To understand the mass hierarchy problem, it's essential to understand the basics of neutrinos and their behavior. Neutrinos are created when certain types of atomic nuclei undergo radioactive decay. They are extremely light, with masses that are typically measured in electronvolts (eV). However, neutrinos can also oscillate between different mass states, which means that their mass is not fixed and can vary over time.
There are three known mass states for neutrinos, which are denoted by the letters "e," "μ," and "τ." The "e" state is associated with electrons, the "μ" state with muons, and the "τ" state with tau particles. The problem is that we don't know which state corresponds to which mass.
One way to understand the mass hierarchy problem is to consider the behavior of neutrinos in the universe. Neutrinos are created in the cores of stars and in nuclear reactors, and they interact with matter through the weak nuclear force. However, their masses are still unknown, and this lack of knowledge has significant implications for our understanding of the universe.
For example, neutrinos are thought to play a crucial role in the formation and evolution of stars. The masses of neutrinos determine how they interact with matter, which in turn affects the way that stars form and evolve. However, without a complete understanding of the masses of neutrinos, we can't fully appreciate their role in the universe.
The mass hierarchy problem also has significant implications for our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics. The masses of neutrinos are closely tied to the Higgs boson, a particle that is responsible for giving other particles mass. The Higgs boson is a key component of the Standard Model of particle physics, which is the most comprehensive theory of particle physics that we have today. However, the masses of neutrinos are still unknown, and this lack of knowledge has significant implications for our understanding of the Higgs boson and the fundamental laws of physics.
The JUNO experiment is a cutting-edge neutrino detector that is designed to solve the mass hierarchy problem. The detector is located deep beneath the Earth, where it can detect the faint signals produced by neutrinos that interact with matter. The JUNO experiment uses a innovative design to detect neutrinos, which involves using a large, spherical detector that is filled with liquid scintillator.
The liquid scintillator is a special type of material that is designed to detect the faint signals produced by neutrinos. The scintillator is filled with a cocktail of organic compounds that are designed to absorb the energy produced by neutrinos. When a neutrino interacts with the scintillator, it produces a signal that is measured by the detector. The signal is then used to calculate the properties of the neutrino, including its mass.
The JUNO experiment is expected to provide a wealth of new information about the masses of neutrinos. By detecting thousands of neutrino events per second, the detector is able to determine the properties of the neutrinos with high precision. The experiment is also designed to detect the faint signals produced by neutrinos that interact with matter, which provides a unique opportunity to study the properties of the neutrinos in great detail.
The JUNO experiment is a significant step forward in the study of neutrinos and their properties. By solving the mass hierarchy problem, the experiment is expected to provide new insights into the fundamental laws of physics and the behavior of neutrinos in the universe. The results of the JUNO experiment are expected to be published in the coming years, and they are expected to have a significant impact on the field of particle physics.
In summary, the mass hierarchy problem is a fundamental challenge in particle physics that refers to the lack of knowledge about the masses of neutrinos. The JUNO experiment is a cutting-edge neutrino detector that is designed to solve the mass hierarchy problem. The detector uses a innovative design to detect neutrinos, which involves using a large, spherical detector that is filled with liquid scintillator. The experiment is expected to provide a wealth of new information about the masses of neutrinos and is a significant step forward in the study of neutrinos and their properties.
Here are some key points to consider:
Article
The OpenAI Team Just Revealed Whats Coming Next...
#openai #technology #newsonleo
OpenAi has released a fascinating webinar in which they talk about the future of their new AI models, the 01 series. This webinar is fascinating because it allows us to look at where the new series of models is headed, as OpenAI has recently released the 01 model and in doing so they've created a separate model series in relation to the GPT Series. So nOW we have two separate model series, the 01 series and the GPT series, and both models over the coming years will be increasingly more intelligent.
One of the interesting things that OpenAI mentioned in the webinar is that they are planning to make several updates to these models over the coming months, including adding web browsing, file and image uploading, and other features to make them more useful in use cases in Chat GPT. Additionally, OpenAI plans to continue developing and releasing models in the new OpenAI 1 series as well as their GPT Series.
Another interesting thing that OpenAI mentioned is that they are working on making these models more autonomous. For example, OpenAI is working on enabling chat GPT to automatically choose the right model for your given prompt, so that you don't have to switch between models yourself. Additionally, OpenAI is working on adding more agentic capabilities to these models, so that they can be used for more complex tasks.
Finally, OpenAI mentioned that they are working on making these models more powerful. For example, OpenAI is working on making the 01 model even better at coding and math. Additionally, OpenAI is working on making these models more accessible, by making them available to more customers.
Overall, it is clear that OpenAI is committed to developing these models into powerful and useful tools. It is also clear that OpenAI is committed to making these models accessible to everyone. I am excited to see what the future holds for these models.
Drones are playing a critical role in Milton and Helene recovery
The aircraft are being used to find missing persons, assess damage, and airdrop supplies.
#newsonleo #militon #helene #drones #technology
Drones Revolutionize Hurricane Response: From Delivery Lifelines to Damage Assessment
In the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton's devastating impact on the Southeastern United States, a new hero has emerged in disaster response efforts: drones. These unmanned aerial vehicles are proving to be invaluable assets in various aspects of hurricane relief, from delivering critical supplies to assessing damage and aiding in search and rescue operations.
Walmart and Wing's Lifesaving Partnership
One of the most striking examples of drone utilization comes from Marion, North Carolina, where Walmart has partnered with drone company Wing to provide a crucial lifeline to a senior center cut off from essential resources. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted special approval for Wing's drones to operate beyond visual line of sight, allowing them to deliver prescription medications, baby formula, and other vital supplies from a nearby Walmart supercenter to the shelter.
This operation demonstrates the potential for drones to overcome logistical challenges in disaster-stricken areas, providing rapid and targeted assistance where traditional methods may fall short.
Drones in First Response and Damage Assessment
The article highlights several ways in which drones are being employed by first responders and government agencies:
Search and rescue: Local officials partnered with drone maker Skydio to assist in locating survivors. Many drones are equipped with thermal imaging cameras, allowing rescue teams to detect heat signatures of missing persons obscured by debris.
Damage assessment: High-resolution cameras on drones captured real-time footage of infrastructure damage, helping officials prioritize aid efforts and restore essential services.
Emergency response: In Asheville, North Carolina, the startup Paladin used drones to respond to 911 calls and deliver emergency supplies, helping to clear false alarms and improve overall emergency response efficiency.
Civilian Contributions and Volunteer Efforts
The increasing affordability and accessibility of consumer drones have led to a surge in civilian involvement in disaster response:
Challenges and Concerns
The rapid increase in drone activity during disaster response has not been without its challenges:
Future Implications and Ongoing Research
The article concludes by highlighting the potential long-term impacts of drone technology in disaster response:
As drone technology continues to advance and regulatory frameworks evolve, these unmanned aerial vehicles are poised to play an increasingly crucial role in mitigating the impact of natural disasters and saving lives in the process.
Article
ISS astronauts to test trash compactor that’s basically WALL-E
Sierra Space’s machine can also recycle water from the garbage.
NASA will test a state-of-the-art trash compactor aboard the International Space Station—and yes, it resembles a certain Pixar character tasked with the same job responsibilities. If all goes well, Sierra Space’s Trash Compaction and Processing System (TCPS) will be operational for ISS astronauts to use by the end of 2026.
#technology #newsonleo #iss #trash
Overview of the TCPS System
The TCPS system is a waste management system designed for use in space, with the goal of efficiently converting solid waste into a usable form. The system consists of a compact, off-white receptacle cube with multiple blue hose nozzles, which serves as the input point for waste. The system then uses a combination of heating, sterilization, and compression to convert the waste into a usable form.
Catalytic Oxidizer (CatOx) Component
The CatOx component is a critical component of the TCPS system. It is a catalyst that helps to break down the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other byproducts generated by waste. The CatOx is designed to be more energy efficient and safer than other VOC removal methods, such as thermal incineration.
The CatOx works by reacting with the VOCs and other byproducts to break them down into simpler compounds. This process is facilitated by a controlled atmosphere, where the temperature and pressure are adjusted to optimize the reaction. The resulting reaction produces a gas that can be collected and processed.
Heating and Sterilization Process
The TCPS system uses a combination of heating and sterilization to convert the waste into a usable form. The waste is first heated to a high temperature, typically around 1000°C, to kill any bacteria or other microorganisms. This process is followed by a period of sterilization, where the waste is exposed to a controlled atmosphere that is free from oxygen.
The heating and sterilization process has several benefits. It reduces the volume of waste, making it easier to store and transport. It also reduces the weight of the waste, which is critical in space where resources are limited. Finally, it produces a sterile product that can be used for a variety of purposes, including radiation shielding.
Compression and Tile Formation
After the heating and sterilization process, the waste is compressed into small, flat tiles. These tiles are made up of the converted waste, which has been transformed into a usable form. The tiles are typically around 1-2 cm in size and can be stacked and stored easily.
The compression process uses a combination of heat and pressure to compact the waste into the desired shape. The resulting tiles are strong, lightweight, and can be used for a variety of purposes, including radiation shielding.
Water Recovery and Gas Processing
One of the key benefits of the TCPS system is its ability to recover water from the waste stream. The system uses a combination of filtration and condensation to recover up to 98% of the water from the waste. This water can then be reused for a variety of purposes, including life support systems and propulsion.
The system also processes the gas produced during the heating and sterilization process. The gas is collected and processed to remove any contaminants or byproducts. This process produces a clean gas that can be reused for a variety of purposes, including life support systems and propulsion.
TCPS Ground Unity and Flight Unit
Sierra Space has completed its system design and review, which was presented to NASA for additional analysis. The company is currently finalizing a TCPS Ground Unity for further testing in the coming months, followed by the construction of a Flight Unit destined for the ISS.
The TCPS Ground Unity will undergo a series of tests to validate the system's performance and functionality. These tests will include simulations, experiments, and performance assessments to ensure that the system meets the required specifications.
The Flight Unit will then be constructed and transported to the ISS, where it will undergo a series of tests and evaluations. The system will be integrated with the existing waste management infrastructure on the ISS and will undergo a series of performance tests to validate its functionality.
Potential Applications
The TCPS system has a wide range of potential applications beyond space exploration. It could be used in a variety of industries, including:
These are just a few examples of the potential applications of the TCPS system. As the technology continues to develop, it is likely that we will see a wide range of new and innovative applications for this revolutionary waste management system.
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US Army inches closer to 3D-printing spare parts under fire
An Army unit recently demonstrated 3D-printing a repair part at the tactical edge during a major training rotation, but more work is needed.
Army officials are pushing to add new 3D models to a repository of data files that troops can one day use to print spare parts close to the front line, according to a senior service official.
#usarmy #3dprinting #army #parts #technology #newsonleo
The US Army's efforts to expand its 3D printing capabilities at the tactical edge are a significant development in the field of additive manufacturing. Here's a more detailed look at the initiatives and technologies involved:
Establishing a Centralized Hub of 3D Printing Data
The Army's goal is to establish a centralized hub of 3D printing data, which will enable units at the tactical level to access and utilize the information they need to produce parts on demand. This hub, currently featuring around 1,000 parts mapped and loaded, is expected to grow as more data is added.
The hub is expected to be a critical component of the Army's 3D printing strategy, providing a single point of access for units to retrieve and use 3D printing data. This will enable the army to leverage the power of additive manufacturing to enhance its operations, while also reducing reliance on traditional supply chains.
Part Mapping and Loading
The Army is working to map and load a wide range of parts into the centralized hub, including those that are no longer under contract or which the original contractor no longer stocks. This process involves identifying the technical data package (TDP) for each part, which includes detailed information about the part's design, materials, and manufacturing process.
Once the TDP is identified, it is loaded into the hub, where it can be accessed and used by units at the tactical level. The Army is also working to integrate data from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), which will enable the service to tap into a vast repository of 3D printing data.
Reverse Engineering and First Article Testing
When a unit requests a 3D printed part, the Army must first determine whether it has the necessary technical data package (TDP) to produce the part. If the TDP is available, the part can be loaded into the hub and produced using 3D printing technology.
However, if the TDP is not available, the Army must use reverse engineering techniques to recreate the part. This involves analyzing the part's design and materials to identify the necessary data for 3D printing.
Once the data is obtained, it is loaded into the hub and used to produce the first article of the part. The first article is a prototype or a production part that is used to test the part's performance and quality.
Exponential Growth of Requirements
The Army's 3D printing efforts are driven in part by the exponential growth of requirements coming from units in Europe. As the service expands its operations in Europe, it has encountered a significant increase in requests for 3D printed parts.
To address this growth, the Army has been working to develop a more robust 3D printing capability, which will enable it to produce parts more quickly and efficiently. This includes the use of advanced manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing and advanced manufacturing techniques to improve the production of forgings and castings.
Tactical Edge 3D Printing
The Army's 3D printing efforts are focused on the tactical edge, which refers to the units closest to combat. These units are the most likely to require 3D printed parts, and the Army is working to develop a capability that can support their needs.
The Army's tactical edge 3D printing capability is still in its early stages of development, but it is expected to play a critical role in enhancing the service's ability to respond to emerging threats and adapt to changing circumstances on the battlefield.
Control Measures
One of the key challenges facing the Army's 3D printing efforts is the need to establish control measures to ensure that complex parts are produced safely and reliably. To address this challenge, the Army is working to develop a set of guidelines and protocols that will govern the use of 3D printing technology in its operations.
These guidelines and protocols will focus on ensuring that 3D printed parts meet or exceed the performance and quality standards of traditional parts. They will also include measures to prevent the use of 3D printing technology for malicious purposes, such as the production of counterfeit parts.
Training and Education
The Army is also working to enhance training and education for soldiers who will be responsible for advanced manufacturing at the tactical level. This includes the development of new curricula and training programs that will focus on the use of 3D printing technology and other advanced manufacturing techniques.
The Army's goal is to ensure that soldiers have the skills and knowledge they need to operate effectively in a 3D printing-enabled environment. This includes the ability to design and manufacture parts using 3D printing technology, as well as the ability to troubleshoot and repair 3D printed parts.
Particular Challenges and Considerations
There are several particular challenges and considerations that the Army must address as it expands its 3D printing capabilities. These include:
Conclusion
The US Army's efforts to expand its 3D printing capabilities at the tactical edge are a significant development in the field of additive manufacturing. The Army's goal is to establish a centralized hub of 3D printing data, which will enable units at the tactical level to access and utilize the information they need to produce parts on demand.
The Army is also working to develop a robust 3D printing capability, which will enable it to produce parts more quickly and efficiently. This includes the use of advanced manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing and advanced manufacturing techniques to improve the production of forgings and castings.
While there are several particular challenges and considerations that the Army must address as it expands its 3D printing capabilities, the potential benefits of additive manufacturing are clear. The Army's efforts to develop a 3D printing capability that can support its operations are likely to have a significant impact on the future of military manufacturing.
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Threadcasts can achieve what Hive wanted....to become subreddits.
"If you can simulate it, you can solve it!" ― Why everyone underestimates Singularity and LEV
#technology #longevity
Exponential Growth and the Promise of the Singularity
In a recent video, David Shapiro discusses the concept of the singularity, a hypothetical future point in time when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible. Shapiro argues that the exponential growth of computing power, as exemplified by Moore's Law, will lead to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) that surpasses human intelligence in every way.
Shapiro believes that the Singularity will occur around 2045, when computers will be able to perform more calculations than aLL of humanity combined. He argues that this will enable AI to solve complex problems such as aging and disease, as well as develop new materials and technologies.
Shapiro's argument is based on the idea that if a problem can be simulated on a computer, it can be solved. He points to the success of AlphaFold, a deep learning system that can predict the 3D structure of proteins, as evidence that this approach is feasible.
However, Shapiro also acknowledges that there are challenges to be overcome, such as the need to develop new algorithms and hardware to enable AI to simulate complex systems. He also warns that the Singularity could have negative consequences, such as job displacement and social unrest.
Despite these challenges, Shapiro remains optimistic about the future. He believes that the Singularity is an inevitable consequence of technological progress, and that it will ultimately benefit humanity.
Key points from the video:
Additional thoughts:
The term "singularity" is often applied to technology, such as when people like Ray Kurzweil mention. This is a derivative from physics where the term is used to describe a black hole phenomenon.
Another layer off this is the economic singularity. That is where the growth rate of economic output is an order of magnitude greater than what is presently enjoyed. Much of this growth comes from technological advancements.
#singularity #economicsingularity #technology
Wearable sensors monitor factory worker fatigue in real time
Researchers hope predictive machine learning can help prevent injuries on the job.
Manufacturing jobs have some of the highest injury rates of any industry, often due to workers’ high levels of physical and mental fatigue. In an attempt to improve job sites, researchers have designed a system of wearable sensors that rely on machine learning to monitor workers for signs of physical strain and tiredness. In doing so, they hope their new devices will help prevent accidents and injuries.
#wearable #technology #fatigue #factories
The design is detailed in a study published by a team at Northwestern University in the October issue of PNAS Nexus. To measure fatigue and physical health, researchers developed an interconnected array of six wearable sensors placed across a wearer’s torso and arms. These were coupled with two depth cameras to measure joint movements and an HD webcam to analyze movement intensity, repetition, and diminished strength over time.
Once enabled, these devices continuously monitored heart rate, skin temperature, and locomotion patterns. But given that there are no widely accepted, universal biomarker metrics for fatigue, researchers relied on the wearer’s self-reported perceived exertion levels on a 0-10 scale that they then entered into a machine learning model. Once trained, this model was then used to predict a user’s fatigue levels in real-time to provide a “more nuanced understanding of the subject’s physical state” than past studies, according to researchers.
“The adoption of new technologies for real-time fatigue prediction holds the potential to revolutionize manufacturing by optimizing work schedules and implementing adaptive work/rest cycles, [while also] addressing the issue of a lack of deterministic biomarkers,” the team wrote in their paper.
Casio thinks an AI-powered furball can replace your pet
Moflin the wiggling robot is ‘always by your side in your heart.’
Casio, perhaps best known for watches and calculators, is expanding its product line to include hypoallergenic, robotic pets. Say hello to “Moflin,” a “soothing” and “adorable” AI-powered fur ball that “becomes attached to its owner,” according to the company’s October 10 announcement in Japanese. While currently only accepting pre-orders in Japan ahead of a November 7 release, the hamster-like device is described to be based on the concept of “Always by your side in your heart.”
#technology #ai #pets #newsonleo #casio
A promotional video showcases a day in the life of a Moflin owner. Available in either gold or silver fur, the palm-sized companion sort of resembles a rabbit without ears, or even a Star Trek tribble. An owner is shown turning to her Moflin in times of stress or relaxation, cuddling with her pet, and even taking it out with her on a picnic. It doesn’t seem to be able to really walk, and instead wriggles in place depending on the interaction. Still, the movements admittedly appear far less robotic than mechanical animal stand-ins of the past, even when it’s hard to not focus on its dull, beady eyes.
The earliest hints at our impending Moflin Moment first arrived in 2021 through a Kickstarter from the company Vanguard Industries. Since then, it appears the (fully funded) endeavor caught Casio’s eye, who is now hyping the 59,400 yen (roughly $400) device. Each Moflin also includes an official “MofLife” dedicated app, as well as an additional paid subscription service offering discounted “hospitalization” and “fur care” fees.
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Farms to fame: How China’s rural influencers are redefining country life
China’s countryside is emerging as an unlikely epicenter of viral content.
In the quiet backwaters of Yunnan, Dong Meihua – though her followers know her by the public alias Dianxi Xiaoge – has done something remarkable: She’s taken the pastoral simplicity of rural China and made it irresistible to millions. In her hands, a village kitchen becomes a stage, and the rhythms of farm life become a story as compelling as any novel. She is one of many rural influencers returning to their roots.
#china #farming #newsonleo #technology
The Rise of Rural Influencers: Redefining China's Countryside
In an unexpected turn of events, China's countryside has become the epicenter of a digital revolution, challenging long-held perceptions and narratives. This transformation is led by a new breed of social media influencers who are reshaping the image of rural China from a land of poverty and stagnation to one of bucolic bliss and cultural richness.
Historical Context: From Hardship to Revival
To understand the significance of this shift, it's crucial to examine China's rural history:
The Great Leap Forward (late 1950s-early 1960s): Mao Zedong's disastrous attempt at rapid industrialization led to widespread famine and millions of deaths in rural areas.
The Cultural Revolution: Further disrupted rural life as educated youth were sent to the countryside for "reeducation."
The Hukou System: Implemented in the late 1950s, this system tied social benefits to birthplace, creating a stark urban-rural divide.
Reform Era (post-1978): While cities boomed under Deng Xiaoping's reforms, rural areas lagged behind, leading to mass migration to urban centers.
Recent Developments: The abolition of agricultural taxes in 2006 and Xi Jinping's "rural revitalization" strategy have aimed to bridge the urban-rural gap.
Despite these efforts, a significant income disparity persists, with rural households earning only about 40% of their urban counterparts.
The 'New Farmer' Phenomenon
The term "new farmer" encapsulates the rise of rural social media celebrities who are using platforms like Douyin and Weibo to document and commercialize their way of life. Notable figures include:
These influencers tap into urban dwellers' nostalgia and desire for authenticity, offering a glimpse into a life many thought lost to China's rapid development.
Impact and Implications
The rise of rural influencers has had far-reaching effects:
Economic Boost: tourism in once-forgotten villages is booming, and traditional crafts are finding new markets. In 2020, Taobao Villages reported sales of 1.2 trillion yuan (around $169.36 billion).
Government Support: The Chinese government has embraced this trend, seeing it as an opportunity to promote rural revitalization and polish its image as a champion of traditional values.
Cultural Bridge: These viral videos are narrowing the cultural disconnect between China's rural and urban populations, fostering understanding in ways that government programs couldn't.
Economic Necessity: The post-COVID-19 economic downturn, marked by high youth unemployment in cities, has driven some to seek livelihoods in the countryside.
Challenges and Concerns
While the "new farmer" movement offers many benefits, it also raises questions:
Authenticity vs. Performance: As rural influencers gain popularity, there's increasing pressure to perform "authenticity," blurring the line between genuine representation and curated fantasy.
Beneficiaries: It's unclear whether this trend truly empowers rural communities or simply commodifies rural life for urban consumption.
Government Involvement: Local governments offering subsidies to rural content creators have led to skepticism about the grassroots nature of this content.
Conclusion
The rise of rural influencers in China represents a significant shift in the country's cultural and economic landscape. While challenges and questions remain, this digital revolution offers an opportunity to challenge urban-centric narratives and rethink the value of traditional rural ways of life. As this trend continues to evolve, it may play a crucial role in bridging China's long-standing urban-rural divide and shaping the country's future development path.
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Bitcoin bro searched ‘how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI’ before FBI arrest
Eric Council, Jr., allegedly used a SIM swap to help access the SEC’s X account in January.
An Alabama man has been arrested by the FBI for allegedly hacking the Securities and Exchange Commission’s social media account on X in a bid to juice Bitcoin’s worth.
#bitcoin #fbi #crypto #newsonleo
While the exact evidence that led the Feds to his door isn’t clear, it’s possible Eric Council, Jr., suspected their eventual arrival—prior to his capture, the 25-year-old reportedly searched the internet on his personal computer for phrases including “SECGOV hack,” “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI,” and “what are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
On January 9, 2024, the SEC’s official X account tweeted “Today the SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.” A landmark ruling on whether or not the cryptocurrency could serve as an exchange-traded fund (ETF) had been anticipated for months, the results of which would likely boost or sink at least some of Bitcoin’s value.
In the hours following the apparent approval, the crypto’s net worth rose roughly $1,000 per coin. But there was a problem: the SEC actually hadn’t granted a decision yet, and the tweet claiming otherwise came from someone who apparently gained access to the Commission’s social media account.
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This is why we can forecast, with a bit of accuracy, where things are going. It is best to look at the data.
With the advancement of the compute rate of AI, this could be accelerating a bit.
#technology #mooreslaw #compute
https://inleo.io/threads/view/guurry123/re-leothreads-rkl6p87f?referral=guurry123
#innovative #newsonleo #thread2earn
No pilots, all cargo: Airbus tests loading of autonomous helicopter
The nose of this autonomous variant of the UH-72 Lakota will open up, allowing weapons or larger pieces of cargo to be front-loaded into the helicopter.
Airbus U.S. Space and Defense has conducted its first demonstration as part of a program to build an autonomous, uncrewed version of the UH-72 Lakota transportation helicopter for the U.S. Marine Corps.
#newsonleo #technology #automation #helicoptor #military #airbus
The UH-72 Logistics Connector, also known as the Lakota variant, is a modified version of the UH-72 helicopter designed to meet the needs of the US Marine Corps' Aerial Logistics Connector (ALC) program. Here are some key details about the project:
Background
The ALC program is a Defense Department initiative aimed at improving logistical support for troops in distributed environments during high-intensity conflicts. The program seeks to develop a versatile, autonomous, and adaptable aircraft that can transport cargo and supplies to remote areas, reducing the need for manned transport aircraft.
Design and Features
The UH-72 Logistics Connector is a modified internal chassis of the UH-72 helicopter, with aLL crew stations removed to make room for cargo throughout the body. The helicopter's nose may open up like a clamshell or swing open to one side on a hinge, providing additional cargo storage space. This configuration allows for the front-loading of larger containers or equipment that would not fit in the standard Lakota's side doors.
The UH-72 Logistics Connector features a unique design that enables the integration of autonomous technology, including:
Demonstration and Testing
Airbus conducted a demonstration of the UH-72 Logistics Connector at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina, showcasing the helicopter's ability to carry standard Marine cargo containers and specialized cargo without the need for a cockpit. The test also highlighted the potential for the UH-72 Logistics Connector to be adapted for autonomous flight, should the Marine Corps or another customer decide to pursue strike capability in the future.
Collaboration and Partnerships
Airbus is working closely with the Marine Corps, Leonardo, and Honeywell to develop the necessary technology for the UH-72 Logistics Connector. The partnership brings together expertise in autonomous systems, logistics, and transportation to create a cutting-edge solution for the US military.
Timeline and Milestones
The UH-72 Logistics Connector is currently in the design phase, with the aim of delivering a flying prototype by 2028 or 2029. The Marine Corps aims to make a production decision by the end of 2029, with the ALC program set to conclude in late 2025.
Cost and Applicability
While details on the cost of the UH-72 Logistics Connector remain unclear, Forsling stated that the helicopter would be applicable across the joint environment and with allies. The Marine Corps aims to use the UH-72 Logistics Connector for a variety of missions, including:
Overall, the UH-72 Logistics Connector represents a significant step forward in the development of autonomous logistics aircraft, with the potential to transform the way the US military delivers logistical support to troops in distributed environments.
Article
The Marine Corps briefing slides showed at the Modern Day Marine conference note this Aerial Logistics Connector will be the aviation contribution to a larger contested logistics effort. Service leaders signed an acquisition decision memorandum in March to begin this prototyping phase, and the slides show four companies will be awarded contracts to build prototypes.
NAVAIR spokeswoman Megan Wasel told Defense News only one contract, the Airbus agreement, has been awarded to date.
In April, Carl Forsling, Airbus’ senior manager of business development and strategy for Marine Corps programs, told Defense News the company had already been developing its UH-72 Unmanned Logistics Connector using internal company funds.
Forsling said the Marines are looking at light and medium unmanned aerial systems to resupply squads and other small units operating away from ships and logistics hubs. This effort aims to create a large platform that can resupply larger units, such as the Marine littoral regiments the Corps is establishing in the Pacific to conduct expeditionary advanced base operations.
Article
Europa Clipper is one of two missions on their way to see if Jupiter’s moons could support life
Mike Sori :Assistant Professor of Planetary Science, Purdue University
Jupiter’s moons hide giant subsurface oceans.
On Oct. 14, 2024, NASA launched a robotic spacecraft named Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s moons. Clipper will reach the ice-covered Jovian moon Europa in 2030 and spend several years collecting and sending valuable data on the moon’s potential habitability back to Earth.
#space #jupiter #technology
On Oct. 14, 2024, NASA launched a robotic spacecraft named Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s moons. Clipper will reach the ice-covered Jovian moon Europa in 2030 and spend several years collecting and sending valuable data on the moon’s potential habitability back to Earth.
Clipper isn’t the only mission highlighting researchers’ interest in Jupiter and its moons.
On April 13, 2023, the European space Agency launched a rocket carrying a spacecraft destined for Jupiter. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – or JUICE – will spend at least three years on Jupiter’s moons after it arrives in 2031.
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There are many reasons my colleagues and I are looking forward to getting the data that Europa Clipper and JUICE will hopefully be sending back to Earth in the 2030s. But perhaps the most exciting information will have to do with water. Three of Jupiter’s moons – Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – are home to large, underground oceans of liquid water that could support life.
Four moons next to a large red spot on the surface of Jupiter.
This composite image shows, from tOP to bottom, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto next to Jupiter. NASA, CC BY-ND
Meet Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto
Jupiter has dozens of moons. Four of them in particular are of interest to planetary scientists.
Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are, like Earth’s Moon, relatively large, spherical complex worlds. Two previous NASA missions have sent spacecraft to orbit the Jupiter system and collected data on these moons. The Galileo mission orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003 and led to geological discoveries on aLL four large moons. The Juno mission is still orbiting Jupiter today and has provided scientists with an unprecedented view into Jupiter’s composition, structure and space environment.
These missions and other observations revealed that Io, the closest of the four to its host planet, is abuzz with geological activity, including lava lakes, volcanic eruptions and tectonically formed mountains. But it is not home to large amounts of water.
Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, in contrast, have icy landscapes. Europa’s surface is a frozen wonderland with a young but complex history, possibly including icy analogs of plate tectonics and volcanoes. Ganymede, the largest moon in the entire solar system, is bigger than Mercury and has its own magnetic field generated internally from a liquid metal core. Callisto appears somewhat inert compared to the others, but serves as a valuable time capsule of an ancient past that is no longer accessible on the youthful surfaces of Europa and Io.
Most exciting of all: Europa, Ganymede and Callisto all almost certainly possess underground oceans of liquid water.
A diagram showing a cutaway of Europa.
Warmth from Europa’s interior and tidal energy from Jupiter likely maintain a massive liquid ocean beneath the moon’s icy surface. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Carroll
Ocean worlds
Europa, Ganymede and Callisto have chilly surfaces that are hundreds of degrees below zero. At these temperatures, ice behaves like solid rock.
But just like Earth, the deeper underground you go on these moons, the hotter it gets. Go down far enough and you eventually reach the temperature where ice melts into water. Exactly how far down this transition occurs on each of the moons is a subject of debate that scientists hope to resolve with JUICE and Europa Clipper. While the exact depths are still uncertain, scientists are confident that these oceans exist.
The best evidence of these oceans comes from Jupiter’s magnetic field. Saltwater is electrically conductive. So as these moons travel through Jupiter’s magnetic field, they generate a secondary, smaller magnetic field that signals to researchers the presence of an underground ocean. Using this technique, planetary scientists have been able to show that the three moons contain underground oceans. And these oceans are not small – Europa’s ocean alone might have more than double the water of all of Earth’s oceans combined.
An obvious and tantalizing next question is whether these oceans can support extraterrestrial life. Liquid water is an important piece of what makes for a habitable world, but far from the only requirement for life. Life also needs energy and certain chemical compounds in addition to water to flourish. Because these oceans are hidden beneath miles of solid ice, sunlight and photosynthesis are out. But it’s possible other sources could provide the needed ingredients.
On Europa, for example, the liquid water ocean overlays a Rocky interior. That rocky seafloor could provide energy and chemicals through underwater volcanoes that could make Europa’s ocean habitable. But it is also possible that Europa’s ocean is a sterile, inhospitable place – scientists need more data to answer these questions.
Artist's impression of the JUICE spacecraft approaching Jupiter and the jovian moons.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer spacecraft will travel for eight years before reaching Jupiter. ESA/ATG medialab/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/J. Nichols
Upcoming missions from ESA and NASA
Europa Clipper and JUICE are set up to give scientists game-changing information about the potential habitability of Jupiter’s moons. While both missions will gather data on multiple moons, JUICE will spend time orbiting and focusing on Ganymede, and Europa Clipper will make dozens of close flybys of Europa.
Both of the spacecraft will carry a suite of scientific instruments built specifically to investigate the oceans. Onboard radar will allow Europa Clipper and JUICE to probe into the moons’ outer layers of solid ice. Radar could reveal any small pockets of liquid water in the ice, or, in the case of Europa, which has a thinner outer ice layer than Ganymede and Callisto, hopefully detect the larger ocean.
Magnetometers will also be on both missions. These tools will give scientists the opportunity to study the secondary magnetic fields produced by the interaction of conductive oceans with Jupiter’s field in great detail and will hopefully give researchers clues to salinity and volumes of the oceans.
Scientists will also observe small variations in the moons’ gravitational pulls by tracking subtle movements in both spacecrafts’ orbits, which could help determine if Europa’s seafloor has volcanoes that provide the needed energy and chemistry for the ocean to support life.
Finally, both craft will carry a host of cameras and light sensors that will provide unprecedented images of the geology and composition of the moons’ icy surfaces.
Maybe one day, a spacecraft will be able to drill through the miles of solid ice on Europa, Ganymede or Callisto and explore oceans directly. Until then, observations from spacecraft like Europa Clipper and JUICE are scientists’ best bet for learning about these ocean worlds.
When Galileo discovered these moons in 1609, they were the first objects known to directly orbit another planet. Their discovery was the final nail in the coffin of the theory that Earth – and humanity – resides at the center of the universe. Maybe these worlds have another humbling surprise in store.
Published under Creative Commons License
Article
What moons in other solar systems reveal about planets like Neptune and Jupiter
Bradley Hansen: Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles
What is the difference between a planet-satellite system as we have with the Earth and moon, versus a binary planet – two planets orbiting each other in a cosmic do-si-do?
I am an astronomer interested in planets orbiting nearby stars, and gas giants – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in our solar system – are the largest and easiest planets to detect. The crushing pressure within their gassy atmosphere means they are unlikely to be hospitable to life. But the rocky moons orbiting such planets could have conditions that are more welcoming. Last year, astronomers discovered a planet-sized exomoon orbiting another gas giant planet outside our solar system.
In a new paper, I argue that this exomoon is really what is called a captured planet.
Is the first detected ‘exomoon’ really a moon?
True Earth analogues, that orbit Sun-like stars, are very hard to detect, even with the large Keck telescopes. The task is easier if the host star is less massive. But then the planet has to be closer to the star to be warm enough, and the star’s gravitational tides may trap the planet in a state with a permanent hot side and a permanent cold side. This makes such planets less attractive as a potential location that could harbor life. When gas giants orbiting Sun-like stars have rocky moons, these may be more likely places to find life.
In 2018, two astronomers from Columbia University reported the first tentative observation of an exomoon – a satellite orbiting a planet that itself orbits another star. One curious feature was that this exomoon Kepler-1625b-i was much more massive than any moon found in our solar system. It has a mass similar to Neptune and orbits a planet similar in size to Jupiter.
Astronomers expect moons of planets like Jupiter and Saturn to have masses only a few percent of Earth. But this new exomoon was almost a thousand times larger than the corresponding bodies of our solar system – moons like Ganymede and Titan which orbit Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. It is very difficult to explain the formation of such a large satellite using current models of moon formation.
In a new model I developed, I discuss how such a massive exomoon forms through a different process, wherein it is really a captured planet.
ALL planets, large and small, start by gathering together asteroid-sized bodies to make a rocky core. At this early stage in the evolution of a planetary system, the rocky cores are still surrounded by a gaseous disk left over from the formation of the parent star. If a core can grow fast enough to reach a mass equivalent to 10 Earths, then it will have the gravitational strength to pull gas in from the surrounding space and grow to the massive size of Jupiter and Saturn. However, this gaseous accumulation is short-lived, as the star is draining away most of the gas in the disk, the dust and gas surrounding a newly formed star.
If there are two cores growing in close proximity, then they compete to capture rock and gas. If one core gets slightly larger, it gains an advantage and can capture the bulk of the gas in the neighborhood for itself. This leaves the second body without any further gas to capture. The increased gravitational pull of its neighbor drags the smaller body into the role of a satellite, albeit a very large one. The former planet is left as a super-sized moon, orbiting the planet that beat it out in the race to capture gas.
A remnant core as a look back into history
Viewed in this context, the captured planet is unlikely to be habitable. Growing planetary cores have gaseous envelopes, which make them more like Uranus and Neptune – a mix of rocks, ice and gas that would have become a Jupiter if it had not been so rudely cut off by its larger neighbor.
However, there are other implications that are almost as interesting. Studying the cores of giant planets is very difficult, because they are buried under several hundred Earth masses of hydrogen and helium. Currently, the JUNO mission is attempting to do this for Jupiter. However, studying the properties of this exomoon may enable astronomers to see the naked core of a giant gaseous planet when it is stripped of its gaseous envelope. This can provide a snapshot of what Jupiter may have looked like before it grew to its current enormous size.
This exomoon system Kepler-1625b-i is right at the edge of what is detectable with current technology. There may be many more objects like this that could be uncovered with future improvements in telescope capabilities. As astronomers’ census of exoplanets continues to grow, systems like the exomoon and its host highlight an issue that will become more important as we go forward. This exomoon reveals that the properties of a planet are not solely a consequence of its mass and position, but can depend on its history and the environment in which it formed.
Building blocks of life on Earth originate from a relatively small amount of source material
'It would be very inconvenient for us if we were being repeatedly blasted by supernovae.'
One of the key components for the evolution of life as we know it is the presence of “volatiles”: elements and compounds that can be vaporized easily at relatively low temperatures. This means that understanding where these volatiles came from, and whether Earth is unusually rich in them, is critical to understanding what makes life possible—and a new study, published October 11 in Science Advances, suggests that most originate in a relatively small proportion of the material from which the planet formed.
#science #technology #life
Planets form from the gradual accretion of smaller pieces of material, referred to as planetesimals. There are two basic categories of planetesimal: differentiated and undifferentiated. Both start off as what Rayssa Martins, the study’s first author, describes as “big lumps of dust and other small rocky bits (often loosely) stuck together.” Undifferentiated planetesimals basically remain this way; differentiated planetesimals, by contrast, are characterized by having been subjected to enough heat to melt all their component parts together.
This melting is caused by the radioactive decay of aluminum-26 (Al-26), an unstable isotope of aluminum. As it decays, Al-26 generates so much heat that it essentially melts the material around it. “In this process,” explains Martins, “a lot of volatiles are degassed.” Once vaporized, the volatiles simply drift away into space: “[They are] lost due to the low gravity of these small bodies.”
Thankfully for us, all the Al-26 in our solar system decayed away very early on, leaving enough undifferentiated material to supply the Earth with the volatile compounds it needed to evolve life. And once Al-26 is gone, it’s gone. The isotope is formed in the heart of stars that have burned through all their hydrogen and are hurtling toward their explosive final moments.
Article
What are planetsimals?
Let's dive deeper into the world of planetesimals.
Formation of Planetesimals
The formation of planetesimals is a complex process that involves the interaction of small particles in a solar nebula. A solar nebula is a cloud of gas and dust that surrounds a young star, and it's the raw material from which planets are formed.
There are several mechanisms that can lead to the formation of planetesimals:
Types of Planetesimal Formation
There are several types of planetesimal formation, including:
Characteristics of Planetesimals
Planetesimals have several key characteristics that distinguish them from other types of particles:
Properties of Planetesimals
Planetesimals have several properties that are of interest to scientists:
Detection and Study of Planetesimals
Detecting and studying planetesimals can be challenging due to their small size and the fact that they often reside in the outer reaches of the solar system. However, several techniques have been developed to study planetesimals, including:
Planetary Core Formation
The formation of planetary cores is a critical process in the formation of planets. Planetesimals can accrete to form cores, which are then surrounded by a mantle of rock and metal.
Core Accretion Model
The core accretion model is the most widely accepted model of planetary core formation. It involves the accretion of small particles to form a solid core, which is then surrounded by a mantle of rock and metal.
Core Differentiation
Core differentiation is the process by which a planetesimal differentiates into its component parts, such as a core, mantle, and crust.
Gravitational Collapse
Gravitational collapse is the process by which a large particle in the solar nebula collapses under its own gravity, forming a planetesimal.
Fragmentation
Fragmentation is the process by which a large particle in the solar nebula breaks apart into smaller pieces, which can then grow into planetesimals.
Consequences of Planetesimal Formation
The formation of planetesimals has several consequences for the formation of planets:
Challenges in Studying Planetesimals
Studying planetesimals can be challenging due to their small size and the fact that they often reside in the outer reaches of the solar system. However, several techniques have been developed to study planetesimals, including:
Future Research Directions
Future research directions in the field of planetesimal science include:
In conclusion, planetesimals are small, solid particles that played a crucial role in the formation and evolution of planetary systems, including our own. By studying planetesimals, we can gain insights into the early history of the solar system and the formation of our planet, Earth.
This AI Tool Helped Convict People of Murder. Then Someone Took a Closer Look
Global Intelligence claims its Cybercheck technology can help cops find key evidence to nail a case. But a WIRED investigation reveals the smoking gun often appears far less solid.
#ai #crime #technology #Murder #newsonleo
Just after 9 pm on an August night in 2020, Kimberly Thompson and Brian James pulled the car into a driveway in Akron, Ohio, and stepped out into a barrage of gunfire. They were shot in the legs, rushed to a hospital, and survived. But Thompson’s 20-month-old grandson, Tyree Halsell, who was still sitting in the car, was shot in the head and mortally wounded.
In the aftermath, Akron police collected video footage from the neighborhood and asked for the public’s help with identifying two men who’d been seen approaching the victims, firing, then fleeing in a truck. Within months, detectives narrowed in on a suspect, Phillip Mendoza, and obtained a search warrant for his cell phone location data from Sprint, according to court records. They also served a geofence warrant on Google, seeking information on devices whose GPS, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth records placed them near the scene of the shooting. Neither warrant turned up any evidence locating Mendoza or his devices on the 1200 block of Fifth Avenue, where the shooting occurred, that night.
Article
How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL
Even the makers of the Guardian Cap admit it looks silly. But for a sport facing an existential brain-injury crisis, once unthinkable solutions have now become almost normal.
Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged forward, and lowered his body to brace for contact. The side of his helmet smacked the face mask of linebacker Quay Walker, and the back of it whacked the ground as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his feet after the 9-yard gain, Granson tossed the football to an official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the next snap.
#cte #nfl #sports #technology
Aside from it being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this otherwise ordinary play was only noteworthy because of what Granson was wearing at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protective helmet covering called a Guardian Cap.
Already mandatory for most positions at all NFL preseason practices, as well as regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these soft shells received another vote of confidence this year when the league greenlit them for optional game use, citing a roughly 50 percent drop in training camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. Through six weeks of action this fall, only 10 NFL players had actually taken the field with one on, according to a league spokesperson. But the decision was easy for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself covered by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts logo to simulate the design of the helmet underneath—in preseason games before committing to wear it for real.
Article
What is CTE?
The Hidden Danger of Contact Sports: Understanding Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease that has gained significant attention in recent years due to its alarming connection to contact sports, particularly American football. CTE is a silent killer, often masquerading as other conditions, and its devastating consequences have left countless families shattered. In this article, we will delve into the world of CTE, exploring its causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and the dangers associated with this insidious disease.
What is CTE?
CTE is a progressive brain disease caused by repetitive head trauma, leading to the buildup of abnormal tau protein in the brain. This protein accumulation triggers a cascade of events that ultimately result in brain cell death and tissue damage. CTE was first identified in 2002 by Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist, in the brain of former Pittsburgh Steelers player Mike Webster.
Causes and risk Factors
CTE is primarily associated with contact sports, including:
American Football: The repeated blows to the head sustained by players, especially linemen and linebackers, increase the risk of developing CTE.
Ice Hockey: checks to the head and body can lead to concussions and subconcussive hits.
Soccer: Heading the ball can cause repeated head trauma.
Rugby: Full-contact tackles and collisions increase the risk.
Boxing and Mixed martial arts (MMA): Repeated blows to the head are inherent to these sports.
Other risk factors include:
Concussions: A single severe Concussion or multiple mild concussions can contribute to CTE.
Subconcussive hits: Repeated blows that don't cause immediate symptoms can still lead to CTE.
Genetic predisposition: Some individuals may be more susceptible to CTE due to genetic factors.
Age: CTE can affect individuals of aLL ages, but symptoms often manifest later in life.
Symptoms
CTE symptoms can vary in severity and may not appear until years or even decades after the initial head trauma. Common symptoms include:
Memory loss: Difficulty recalling recent events or learning new information.
Mood changes: depression, anxiety, irritability, and mood swings.
Personality changes: Impulsivity, emotional instability, and erratic behavior.
executive function decline: Difficulty with decision-making, planning, and organization.
Motor function impairment: Tremors, difficulty with balance and coordination.
Sleep disturbances: Insomnia or excessive sleepiness.
Suicidal thoughts: CTE has been linked to an increased risk of suicidal behavior.
Diagnosis
Diagnosing CTE is challenging, as symptoms can mimic other conditions, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Currently, CTE can only be definitively diagnosed after death, through an autopsy and brain tissue analysis.
Researchers are working to develop biomarkers and imaging tests to diagnose CTE in living individuals. These include:
Tau protein imaging: PET scans to detect abnormal tau protein in the brain.
MRI and DTI: Magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging to assess brain damage.
Biomarkers: Blood and cerebrospinal fluid tests to identify CTE-specific proteins.
Dangers and Consequences
CTE poses significant dangers to athletes, their families, and society as a whole:
Loss of identity: CTE can erase an individual's sense of self and personality.
Strained relationships: Families struggle to cope with the emotional and behavioral changes.
Financial burden: Medical expenses, lost income, and potential long-term care costs.
Increased risk of dementia: CTE increases the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
Suicide risk: CTE has been linked to an increased risk of suicidal behavior.
Prevention and Mitigation
While CTE cannot be completely prevented, steps can be taken to reduce the risk:
Concussion protocols: Implementing and enforcing strict concussion protocols in sports.
Helmet safety: Improving helmet design and safety standards.
Reducing contact: Limiting full-contact practices and games.
education and awareness: Informing athletes, coaches, and parents about CTE risks.
Research and funding: Supporting research into CTE causes, diagnosis, and treatment.
Conclusion
CTE is a devastating disease that has shaken the foundations of contact sports. As our understanding of CTE grows, it is essential to acknowledge the risks and take proactive measures to protect athletes. By promoting education, awareness, and research, we can work towards preventing CTE and ensuring the long-term health and well-being of athletes.
Researchers looked at the brains of deceased individuals under age 30 who had played contact sports. Of 152 former athletes with a history of repetitive head injuries, 63 had CTE. Those with CTE were disproportionately former U.S. football players and were significantly more likely to have played professional football. However, it’s important to note that several well-done, long-term epidemiologic studies have found no difference in neurodegenerative diseases in high school football players compared to those who did not play football.
Parents may look at collision or contact sports like football, ice hockey, rugby and soccer and decide the risk of a concussion or CTE is too great. However, to properly weigh the pros and cons, one must consider the negative impacts of taking children and adolescents out of positive social, physical and emotional activities such as team sports.
Millions of People Are Using Abusive AI ‘Nudify’ Bots on Telegram
Bots that “remove clothes” from images have run rampant on the messaging app, allowing people to create nonconsensual deepfake images even as lawmakers and tech companies try to crack down.
In early 2020, deepfake expert Henry Ajder uncovered one of the first Telegram bots built to “undress” photos of women using artificial intelligence. At the time, Ajder recalls, the bot had been used to generate more than 100,000 explicit photos—including those of children—and its development marked a “watershed” moment for the horrors deepfakes could create. Since then, deepfakes have become more prevalent, more damaging, and easier to produce.
#ai #technology #telegram
Telegram: why the app is allowed when other social media is censored in Russia
Olga Logunova: Research Associate, King’s Russia Institute, King's College London
Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov has confirmed that the messaging app, which is widely used in Russia, has made several changes related to user privacy.
#telegram #russia #socialmedia #technology #newsonleo
Durov, who was arrested in France in August in connection with a range of crimes as well as refusal to communicate information or documents, has made some alterations that address user safety and user privacy.
Telegram says the changes are expected to also reduce criminal activity on the app. But users are concerned that the changes make the app more compliant with legal requests from authorities.
While Durov’s political and legal tussle continues in the EU, at home in Russia Telegram remains one of the most influential media platforms. It is one of the only places where both opposition and official voices coexist.
It is particularly popular with Russians between the ages of 12 and 24, with around 85% of them using Telegram. Around 25 of its 30 most popular channels are news and politics related. Telegram is also popular for calls and messaging.
The platform is a vital space for the independent journalism and activism that survives in Russia. Independent media outlets and commentators covering Russian affairs and using Telegram include Meduza (1.3 million subscribers), TV Rain (500,000 subscribers) and Mediazona. aLL are using Telegram to reach the public but are operating from outside Russia’s borders.
Pro-government channels also attract big audiences on Telegram, often with even larger followings than the independent outlets mentioned above. The most popular Telegram channels are Ria Novosti with 3.3 million subscribers, Readovka with 2.6 million subscribers, and Solovyov Live (1.3 million subscribers), along with several others promoting pro-government lines and supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Additionally, alternative voices such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch and prominent Kremlin critic, and Ekaterina Shulman, a respected political scientist and commentator, are steadily gaining audiences. Both have been labelled as foreign agents or extremists in Russia.
Where do Russians get news?
In the past decade, Russia’s media landscape has undergone significant censorship due to increasing state control. radio stations have closed down and many journalists have left the country to be able to report.
Russian media usage
Percentage of Russians using different media
MediaScope, author provided (no reuse)
Traditional media sources, such as television, continue to have a massive audience. Television has a monthly reach of 98%, while radio has a monthly reach of 79%. (Reach is the total number of different people or households exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period).
Both remain significant in today’s Russia. While television remains a primary news source for many Russians, the Internet is used by 84% of people daily.
Since 2012, the state has progressively tightened control over political information. People and organisations will self-censor, and there is legislation penalising social media reposts and other forms of dissent. These laws claim to be addressing users who “discredit the armed forces” or “spread fake news”, but are actually aimed at cracking down on dissent.
Most viewed Telegram channels in Russia during July 2024
Most popular Telegram channels, July 2024
data from BrandAnalytics, Author provided (no reuse)
As of 2024, over 2,000 administrative cases and more than 273 criminal cases have been initiated under these laws. Individuals and organisations critical of the official Kremlin narrative have been fined, had their assets confiscated and been imprisoned.
Another government method used to control online discussion includes slowing down or blocking social media platforms. The state blocked major western platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in March 2022, leading millions of Russian users to migrate to Telegram.
Content creators followed en masse, transforming Telegram into a vital hub for news and political debate. Alternatives to Telegram in Russia include state-controlled domestic networks like VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki, which have strong ties to figures close to the Kremlin.
Why is Telegram allowed?
The use of Telegram for propaganda, influencing public opinion, and promoting the positions of the state and Putin could be one of the reasons why Telegram has not faced the same restrictions as other platforms.
Another reason for its popularity is the platform’s ease of use as a messaging app, including for state organisations. This makes it less of a direct threat to state control over public opinion, while still serving as a crucial tool for those seeking alternative sources of information.
Its appeal to the Russian government is strengthened by the fact that Telegram is not owned by global (western) companies such as Meta, which owns WhatsApp (also popular in Russia). Additionally, issues surrounding legally questionable content, such as the near-official tolerance of digital piracy, have long been controversial in Russia.
Telegram’s moderation policies have often been associated with a less regulated approach to content, which has contributed to its popularity in Russia. These new changes may make ordinary Russians worry more about whether what they say on the app is safe from the state’s prying eyes.
The platform’s prominence in Russian public life is undeniable, but so too are the challenges it faces. How Telegram and its leadership navigate the coming years will have profound implications, not just for the platform, but for broader public debate in Russia.
Durov’s arrest underscores the growing pressure on Telegram, from some quarters, and reflects a critical juncture for platform leaders navigating state intervention. But for Russian people looking for a space where they can exchange news and views, it remains one of most free platforms they can still access.
Article posted under Creative Commons license.
AI marketing is a con - especially when it comes to CPUs
Artificial intelligence is increasingly making its presence felt in more areas of our lives, certainly since the launch of ChatGPT. Depending on your view, it’s that big bad bogeyman that’s taking jobs and causing widespread copyright infringement, or a gift with the potential to catapult humanity into a new age of enlightenment.
#ai #technology #marketing
What many have achieved with the new tech, from Midjourney and LLMs to smart algorithms and data analysis, is beyond radical. It’s a technology that, like most of the silicon-based breakthroughs that came before it, has a lot of potency behind it. It can do a lot of good, but also, many fear, a lot of bad. And those outcomes are entirely dependent on how it’s manipulated, managed, and regulated.
It’s not surprising then, given how rapidly AI has forced its way into the zeitgeist, that tech companies and their sales teams are equally leaning into the technology, stuffing its various iterations into their latest products, all in the aim of encouraging us to buy their hardware.
Check out this new AI powered laptop, that motherboard that utilizes AI to overclock your CPU to the limit, those new webcams featuring AI deep-learning tech. You get the point. You just know that from Silicon Valley to Shanghai, share-holders and company execs are asking their marketing teams “How can we get AI into our products?" in time for the next CES or the next Computex, no matter how modest the value will actually be for us consumers.
Article
I created an AI clone of myself and the result was unintentionally hilarious
We’re all familiar with chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot: they’re great for drafting emails, rewriting your text or generating images of your ideas, but they don’t have much of a personality behind them. They’re a bit like a blank slate – reflecting the world around them, rather than defining it. There is one chatbot however that has more than enough personality to make up for the rest of them put together, and that’s Character.ai.
#newsonleo #technology #chatbot
Character AI is a place where you can have a chatbot conversation with Mick Jagger, Steve Jobs and J.R.R. Tolkien at the click of a button. Of course, these are the chatbot versions of famous musicians, tech visionaries and authors, not the real people, and they all come with the disclaimer, "Remember: everything characters say is made up!"
There is one use of Character.ai that most haven’t considered though, and that's creating a chatbot of yourself.
Why, you might ask, would you want to do that? Well, firstly, who wouldn’t want to ask an AI version of themselves a thing or two for free? But secondly, and most importantly, your friends will have a great time making fun of you, or rather, what the AI 'you' is saying, which is often unintentionally hilarious.
Article
Samsung XR headset reportedly delayed again – I’m starting to worry it’ll never come
Will we ever see the Samsung XR headset? That’s the question I’m left asking after yet another report that the rumored XR hardware collaboration Samsung and Google have been working on is delayed – this time saying it won’t arrive until 2025 or perhaps even 2026.
#newsonleo #samsung #mixedreality #technology
Samsung Is Reportedly Delaying Its Android XR Headset Even Further
Previous reports paint Samsung's headset as an Apple Vision Pro competitor, and Daily Korea reports that Samsung no longer feels an urgency to release it soon given LG withdrawing from its plan to release a high-end Meta Horizon OS headset in 2025 and Apple reportedly suspending work on Vision Pro 2 to focus on a cheaper headset first.
Daily Korea's report comes two months after Business Insider's Hugh Langley, who previously revealed the existence of the Android XR operating system before it was publicly known, reported that the headset had been delayed to March 2025, with developer kit distribution planned for October. Daily Korea references this early reporting and suggests the headset is now delayed even further.
Meta CTO Shares Photo Holding Wide Field Of View Prototype Headset
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth shared images from a recent visit to the company's research labs.
In one of the six images that were shared to Instagram and Threads, Bosworth is seen holding a tethered headset that appears to have canted lenses and a wide curved body extending beyond the strap arms horizontally, suggesting a wide field of view.
#meta #mixedreality #headset #technology
The other five images show a Ray-Ban Meta glasses prototype, Project Aria research glasses attached to a Quest 3, a silhouette appearing to be him wearing a headset, and two shots of him sitting with Meta's Chief Scientist Michael Abrash, who leads Reality Labs Research.
"Visiting our research labs is always a highlight. They’re making incredible progress on hard technological problems and I can’t wait to share more", Bosworth wrote on Threads.
To make nuclear fusion a reliable energy source one day, scientists will first need to design heat- and radiation-resilient materials
Sophie Blondel: Research Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering, University of Tennessee
Fusion energy has the potential to be an effective clean energy source, as its reactions generate incredibly large amounts of energy. Fusion reactors aim to reproduce on Earth what happens in the core of the sun, where very light elements merge and release energy in the process.
Engineers can harness this energy to heat water and generate electricity through a steam turbine, but the path to fusion isn’t completely straightforward.
Controlled nuclear fusion has several advantages over other power sources for generating electricity. For one, the fusion reaction itself doesn’t produce any carbon dioxide. There is no risk of meltdown, and the reaction doesn’t generate any long-lived radioactive waste.
I’m a nuclear engineer who studies materials that scientists could use in fusion reactors. Fusion takes place at incredibly high temperatures. So to one day make fusion a feasible energy source, reactors will need to be built with materials that can survive the heat and irradiation generated by fusion reactions.
Fusion material challenges
Several types of elements can merge during a fusion reaction. The one most scientists prefer is deuterium plus tritium. These two elements have the highest likelihood of fusing at temperatures that a reactor can maintain. This reaction generates a helium aTOM and a neutron, which carries most of the energy from the reaction.
Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week
In the D-T fusion reaction, two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, fuse and produce a helium atom and a high-energy neutron. Sophie Blondel/UT Knoxville
Humans have successfully generated fusion reactions on Earth since 1952 – some even in their garage. But the trick nOW is to make it worth it. You need to get more energy out of the process than you put in to initiate the reaction.
Fusion reactions happen in a very hot plasma, which is a state of matter similar to gas but made of charged particles. The plasma needs to stay extremely hot – over 100 million degrees Celsius – and condensed for the duration of the reaction.
To keep the plasma hot and condensed and create a reaction that can keep going, you need special materials making up the reactor walls. You also need a cheap and reliable source of fuel.
While deuterium is very common and obtained from water, tritium is very rare. A 1-gigawatt fusion reactor is expected to burn 56 kilograms of tritium annually. But the world has only about 25 kilograms of tritium commercially available.
Researchers need to find alternative sources for tritium before fusion energy can get off the ground. One option is to have each reactor generating its own tritium through a system called the breeding blanket.
The breeding blanket makes up the first layer of the plasma chamber walls and contains lithium that reacts with the neutrons generated in the fusion reaction to produce tritium. The blanket also converts the energy carried by these neutrons to heat.
The fusion reaction chamber at ITER will electrify the plasma.
Fusion devices also need a divertor, which extracts the heat and ash produced in the reaction. The divertor helps keep the reactions going for longer.
These materials will be exposed to unprecedented levels of heat and particle bombardment. And there aren’t currently any experimental facilities to reproduce these conditions and test materials in a real-world scenario. So, the focus of my research is to bridge this gap using models and computer simulations.
From the atom to full device
My colleagues and I work on producing tools that can predict how the materials in a fusion reactor erode, and how their properties change when they are exposed to extreme heat and lots of particle radiation.
As they get irradiated, defects can form and grow in these materials, which affect how well they react to heat and stress. In the future, we hope that government agencies and private companies can use these tools to design fusion power plants.
Our approach, called multiscale modeling, consists of looking at the physics in these materials over different time and length scales with a range of computational models.
We first study the phenomena happening in these materials at the atomic scale through accurate but expensive simulations. For instance, one simulation might examine how hydrogen moves within a material during irradiation.
From these simulations, we look at properties such as diffusivity, which tells us how much the hydrogen can spread throughout the material.
We can integrate the information from these atomic level simulations into less expensive simulations, which look at how the materials react at a larger scale. These larger-scale simulations are less expensive because they model the materials as a continuum instead of considering every single atom.
The atomic-scale simulations could take weeks to run on a supercomputer, while the continuum one will take only a few hours.
A graph showing simulations, with size on the x axis and time on the y. Atom simulations are in the bottom left, then continuum, then experiments.
In the multiscale modeling approach, researchers use atom-level simulations, then take the parameters they find and apply them to larger-scale simulations, and then compare their results with experimental results. If the results don’t match, they go back to the atomic scale to study missing mechanisms. Sophie Blondel/UT Knoxville, adapted from https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2011.37
all this modeling work happening on computers is then compared with experimental results obtained in laboratories.
For example, if one side of the material has hydrogen gas, we want to know how much hydrogen leaks to the other side of the material. If the model and the experimental results match, we can have confidence in the model and use it to predict the behavior of the same material under the conditions we would expect in a fusion device.
If they don’t match, we go back to the atomic-scale simulations to investigate what we missed.
Additionally, we can couple the larger-scale material model to plasma models. These models can tell us which parts of a fusion reactor will be the hottest or have the most particle bombardment. From there, we can evaluate more scenarios.
For instance, if too much hydrogen leaks through the material during the operation of the fusion reactor, we could recommend making the material thicker in certain places, or adding something to trap the hydrogen.
Designing new materials
As the quest for commercial fusion energy continues, scientists will need to engineer more resilient materials. The field of possibilities is daunting – engineers can manufacture multiple elements together in many ways.
You could combine two elements to create a new material, but how do you know what the right proportion is of each element? And what if you want to tRY mixing five or more elements together? It would take way too long to try to run our simulations for all of these possibilities.
Thankfully, artificial intelligence is here to assist. By combining experimental and simulation results, analytical AI can recommend combinations that are most likely to have the properties we’re looking for, such as heat and stress resistance.
The aim is to reduce the number of materials that an engineer would have to produce and test experimentally to save time and money.
Posted under Creative Commons license.
Military
US Navy revolutionizes military logistics with Lakota UH-72 drone: an evolution that expands the capabilities of the armed forces with autonomous technology and operational flexibility
Airbus US Space & Defense has successfully conducted the first demonstration of the Lakota UH-72 drone helicopter for the US Marine Corps. This milestone represents an important advance in the logistical support of the American armed forces. The Aerial Logistics Connector (ALC) system, a fundamental part of this operation, was designed to operate in challenging and dispersed environments, ensuring a continuous flow of supplies.
#newsonleo #technology #military
The ability to operate without a crew reduces long-term operating costs while increasing mission efficiency. Furthermore, the ALC is capable of following predefined routes and automatically adjusting the route, ensuring flexibility and adaptability in hostile environments.
With the next tests scheduled for 2024 and 2025, Airbus will continue to enhance the capabilities of the Lakota UH-72, ensuring it meets the constantly evolving needs of the military. Collecting data from these demonstrations will be essential to fine-tune the system and improve its performance on future missions. As logistical challenges continue to grow, the Lakota UH-72 will stand out as an essential solution to ensure military operations continue to run efficiently, even in complex combat scenarios.
Airbus is at the forefront of innovation in military logistics, and the success of the UH-72B demonstration solidifies its position as a leading provider of advanced logistics support solutions to the U.S. military.
NASA
NASA announces incredible plan to protect Earth from asteroids and shocks the world: create a true 'army' of 1,000 spacecraft designed to deflect celestial bodies!
Have you ever imagined that humanity would need an “army” of spaceships to protect Earth from threats from space? This is exactly the plan of NASA, the US aerospace agency. The idea is to set up a true planetary defense force with the aim of protecting Earth from asteroids that can cause mass destruction, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
#newsonleo #technology #nasa #space
NASA's plan is as ambitious as it sounds: build an army of a thousand spacecraft designed specifically to intercept and alter the trajectory of potentially dangerous asteroids. And don't think this is just science fiction!
In 2022, the agency has already successfully demonstrated the technique by carrying out the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which was capable of colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid, changing its orbit. This proved that we have the technology needed to defend the planet against space threats.
Based on this success, NASA wants to expand this defense, creating a permanent protection system. Bill Nelson, the agency's general administrator, said: “We are committed to protecting the Earth from potentially harmful asteroids and comets. Planetary defense benefits all humanity.” In other words, the objective is to ensure that, in the event of a real threat, the planet is prepared.
Even though there are no immediate threats, NASA is preparing for future scenarios. The main concern is large asteroids, like the one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. An impact like this could cause devastation on a global scale, and the difference now is that we have enough technology to prevent such a natural disaster.
NASA's strategy is clear: mount a solid planetary defense, both on a national and international scale. One of the main defense methods is the use of spacecraft to deflect asteroids that pose a real threat to Earth. These ships, part of the agency's “army”, will be designed to collide with space objects, altering their orbits and thus avoiding a catastrophic collision with our planet.
However, if a more extreme situation arises, NASA has an even bolder plan B: the use of controlled nuclear explosions to deflect asteroids that are on an imminent collision course with Earth. While this scenario is a last resort, it is part of the agency's defense planning.
NASA is intensifying its efforts over the next ten years. Lindley Johnson highlighted that this strategy will ensure that the agency collaborates with other countries to mount a robust planetary defense. This is fundamental, as threats like asteroids do not just affect one nation, but all of humanity.
With this, NASA's work goes beyond creating new technologies. The agency is also working with international partners to ensure that in the event of a threat, everyone is prepared to act together. After all, protecting the planet is a global mission.
An important milestone in this ambitious project was the DART mission, which proved that spacecraft can, in fact, deflect asteroids. In 2022, NASA sent a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid Dimorphos, and the impact was enough to alter its trajectory. This success was a major advance for planetary defense and gave the agency the confidence necessary to move forward with the plan to create an army of ships.
An important detail in NASA's plan is international collaboration. Defense against asteroids is not something that can be done by a single country, which is why the agency is joining forces with other nations and scientific institutions around the world. Planetary defense is a global cause, and developing new technologies to protect the Earth must be a joint effort.
The idea is that, when a real threat arises, everyone is prepared to act in a coordinated manner, using the best technologies available. NASA's plan is an example of how science and international cooperation can work together to ensure the safety of the planet.
From $8,000 to $3: OpenAI’s Revolutionary Impact on Legal Work
OpenAI’s Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil has sparked a profound discussion about AI’s transformative impact on professional services, particularly in the legal sector. His ‘Ray Summit 2024‘ revelation about their o1 model’s capability to produce legal briefs traditionally handled by high-billing associates highlights a dramatic shift in the economics of professional services.
#openai #ai #legal #costsavings
The Value Proposition
Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform various industries, including law, finance, healthcare, and education. AI can automate tasks, provide insights, and offer expert advice, making it an attractive solution for businesses and individuals. However, the value proposition of AI-powered services is not just about cost savings; it's also about the quality of advice and assistance provided.
The Pricing Dilemma
The pricing dilemma arises because traditional pricing models, which are often based on time and expertise, may not be sufficient to capture the value created by AI-powered services. For example, a $1,000-per-hour associate's time may be replaced by a $3 API credit for a similar task. This significant reduction in cost creates a pricing conundrum.
Monetizing AI Innovations
To monetize AI innovations, companies must find ways to capture value without pricing out users. This can be achieved through various strategies, such as:
Accessibility and Sustainability
Accessibility and sustainability are crucial considerations in the development of AI-powered services. To ensure accessibility, companies must consider factors such as:
To ensure sustainability, companies must consider factors such as:
The Future of Professional Services
The future of professional services will depend on finding a balance between the competing interests of value, pricing, and accessibility. As AI continues to transform industries, companies must adapt their pricing models and business strategies to ensure that they remain relevant and sustainable.
Some potential future scenarios include:
In conclusion, the transformation of professional services through AI raises fundamental questions about pricing models, accessibility, and value. As we move forward, it is essential that we prioritize finding a balance between these competing interests and ensure that the benefits of AI are shared equitably among all stakeholders.
Article
AI
Boosting AI makes big techs see nuclear energy with different eyes
The popularization and advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are requiring big tech to focus more on data centers and, to a certain extent, on nuclear energy. This is because there is a growing need to reduce emissions, and this energy source is considered an important option in this regard.
#newsonleo #technology #ai #energy
In the US, power demand for data centers is projected to triple by 2030, reaching 80 Gigawatts. Companies like Oracle, Google, Amazon and Microsoft are investing in nuclear energy, particularly small modular reactors (SMRs).
Oracle, Google and Amazon, for example, are betting on SMRs to power their data centers. Microsoft's highlight is an agreement with Constellation Energy to reopen the Three Mile Island plant in the US state of Pennsylvania. This plant was made famous by the worst nuclear accident in US history, which occurred in 1979. But Constellation Energy says most of its components are ready to work again and that the plant is in extraordinary condition.
Nuclear energy already provides 20% of electricity in the US, and its capacity is expected to triple by 2050. With government support, this energy source is being seen as crucial to achieving net-zero emissions goals in the country. States that previously restricted reactor construction, such as Wisconsin and West Virginia, are lifting moratoriums, allowing new development.
As a result, the coffers of nuclear technology and uranium mining companies end up getting fuller. Rising demand for uranium has driven prices close to a 15-year high, benefiting companies like Cameco and NexGen. NuScale Power, which makes SMRs, is also on the rise, with strong growth expectations.
China's car sales snap five-month decline on subsidy boost
#china #technology #ev #automotive
China's passenger vehicle sales rose 4.3% in September from a year earlier, snapping five months of decline with a boost from a government subsidy to encourage trade-ins as part of a broader stimulus package.
All the gains came from battery-powered vehicles, whose buyers and manufacturers have benefited since July from a doubling of subsidies to consumers, while sales of gasoline cars in China, a market foreign brands once dominated, continue to shrink.
Sales in the world's biggest auto market hit 2.13 million vehicles in September, up from 2.04 million a year earlier. For the first nine months, sales were up 1.9% from 2023 levels, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
China auto sales: EVs dominating.
Here is the video:
MicroRNA − a new Nobel laureate describes the scientific process of discovering these tiny molecules that turn genes on and off
Victor Ambros: Professor of Molecular Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School
The 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine goes to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, tiny biological molecules that tell the cells in your body what kind of cell to be by turning on and off certain genes.
#technology #genetics #newsonleo
How did you start thinking about this fundamental question at the heart of the discovery of microRNA, about how cells get the instructions to do what they do?
The paper that described this discovery was published in 1993. In the late 1980s, we were working in the field of developmental biology, studying C. elegans as a model organism for animal development. We were using genetic approaches, where mutations that caused developmental abnormalities were then followed up to try to understand what the gene was that was mutated and what the gene product was.
It was well understood that proteins could mediate changes in gene expression as cells differentiate, divide.
We were not looking for the involvement of any sort of unexpected kind of molecular mechanisms. The fact that the microRNA was the product of this gene that was regulating this other gene in this context was a complete surprise.
There was no reason to postulate that there should be such regulators of gene expression. This is one of those examples where the expectations are that you’re going to find out about more complexity and nuance about mechanisms that we already know about.
But sometimes surprises emerge, and in fact, surprises emerge perhaps surprisingly often.
These C. elegans worms, nematodes, is there something about them that allows you to work with their genetic material more easily? Why are they so key to this type of science?
C. elegans was developed as an experimental organism that people could use easily to, first, identify mutants and then study the development.
It only has about a thousand cells, and all those cells can be seen easily through a microscope in the living animal. But still it has all the various parts that are important to all animals: intestine, skin, muscles, a brain, sensory systems and complex behavior. So it’s quite an amazing system to study developmental processes and mechanisms really on the level of individual cells and what those cells do as they divide and differentiate during development.
You were looking at this lin-4 gene. What was your surprising discovery that led to this Nobel Prize?
In our lab, Rosalind Lee and Rhonda Feinbaum were working on this project for several years. This is a very labor intensive process, trying to track down a gene.
And all we had to go by was a mutation to guide us as we gradually homed in on the DNA sequence that contained the gene. The surprises started to emerge when we found that the pieces of DNA that were sufficient to confer the function of this gene and rescue a mutant were really small, only 800 base pairs.
And so that suggested, well, the gene is small, so the product of this gene is going to be pretty small. And then Rosalind worked to pare down the sequence more and to mutate potential protein coding sequences in that little piece of DNA. By a process of elimination, she finally showed that there was no protein that could be expressed from this gene.
And at the same time, we identified this very, very small transcript of only 22 nucleotides. So I would say there was probably a period of a week or two there where these realizations came to the fore and we knew we had something new.
You mentioned Rosalind, she’s your wife.
Yeah, we’ve been together since 1976. And we started to work together in the mid-’80s. And so we’re still working together today.
And she was the first author on that paper.
That’s right. It’s hard to express how wonderful it is to receive such validation of this work that we did together. That is just priceless.
Like it’s a Nobel Prize for her too?
Yes, every Nobel Prize has this obvious limitation of the number of people that they give it to. But, of course, behind that are the folks who worked in the lab – the teams that are actually behind the discoveries are surprisingly large sometimes. In this case, two people in my lab and several people in Gary Ruvkun’s lab.
In a way they’re really the heroes behind this. Our job – mine and Gary’s – is to stand in as representatives of this whole enterprise of science, which is so, so dependent upon teams, collaborations, brainstorming amongst multiple people, communications of ideas and crucial data, you know, all this is part of the process that underlies successful science.
That first week of the discoveries, did you anticipate at that point that this could be such a huge step for our understanding of genes?
Until other examples are found of something new, it’s very hard to know how peculiar that particular phenomenon might be.
We’re always mindful that evolution is amazingly innovative. And so it could have been that this particular small RNA base-pairing to this mRNA of lin-14 gene and turning off production of the protein from lin-14 messenger RNA, that could be a peculiar evolutionary innovation.
The second microRNA was identified in Gary Ruvkun’s lab in 1999, so it was a good six years before the second one was found, also in C. elegans. Really, the watershed discovery was when Ruvkun showed that let-7, the other microRNA, was actually conserved perfectly in sequence amongst all the bilaterian animals. So that meant that let-7 microRNA had been around for, what, 500 million years?
And so it was immediately obvious to the field that there had to be other microRNAs – this was not just a C. elegans thing. There must be others, and that quickly emerged to be the case.
You and Gary Ruvkun had been postdoctoral fellows at the same time at MIT, but by the time you made your respective discoveries, you’d both set up your own labs. Would you call them rival labs, in the same town?
No, I would certainly not call it rival labs. We were working together as postdocs basically on this problem of developmental timing in Bob Horvitz’s lab.
We just basically informally divided up the work. The understanding was, OK, Ambros lab will focus on lin-4 gene, and Ruvkun lab will focus on lin-14, and we anticipated that there would be a point that we would get together and share information about what we’ve learned and see if we could come to a synthesis.
That was the informal plan. It was not really a collaboration. It was certainly not a rivalry. The expectation was that we would divide up the work and then communicate when the time came. There was an expectation in this community of C. elegans researchers that you should share data freely.
Your lab still works on microRNA. What are you investigating? What questions do you still have?
One I find very interesting is a project where we collaborated with a clinician, a geneticist who studies intellectual disability. She had discovered that her patients, children with intellectual disabilities, in certain families carried a mutation that neither of their parents had – a spontaneous mutation – in the protein that is associated with microRNAs in humans called the Argonaute protein.
Each of our genomes contains four genes for Argonautes that are the partners of microRNAs. In fact, this is the effector protein that is guided by the microRNA to its target messenger RNAs. This Argonaute is what carries out the regulatory processes that happen once it finds its target.
These so-called Argonaute syndromes were discovered, where there are mutations in Argonautes, point mutations where only one amino acid changes to another amino acid. They have this very profound and extensive effect on the development of the individual.
And so working with these geneticists, our lab and other labs took those mutations, that were essentially gifted to us by the patient. And then we put those mutations into our system, in our case into C. elegans‘ Argonaute.
I’m excited by the very organized, active partnership between the Argonaute Alliance of families with Argonaute syndromes and the basic scientists studying Argonaute.
How does this collaboration potentially help those patients?
What we’ve learned is that the mutant protein is sort of a rogue Argonaute. It’s basically screwing up the normal process that these four Argonautes usually do in the body. And so this rogue Argonaute, in principle, could be removed from the system by trying to employ some of the technology that folks are developing for gene knockout or RNA interference of genes.
This is promising, and I’m hopeful that the payoff for the patients will come in the years ahead.
First 1000 Clicks are done!
No referral yet.
...Interestingly most of the Clicks came from Ukraine, and Russia had some too. #advertising #leoads #freecompliments #bbh
https://inleo.io/threads/view/ahmadmanga/re-leothreads-2ivumxkjv?referral=ahmadmanga
I have done something similar but not to this exposure scale!
INLEO now has enough features, (and bug-free enough,) that I could comfortably promote it on other websites.
Though, I think promoting on PTC sites wasn't a good idea after all...
10000000000000000000000000000% agree!
Thanks for intervening!
Fracking day... with my back pain... slowly getting better but most of the day was ruined!
Cold showers, hot stuff, antioxidant stuff... whatever would track speed it up. Now getting to the point where I can manage! 😏
Or at least where painkillers work...
It sounds like a rough day. Back pain can really throw everything of.
#freecompliments #gf
It did #atx
How's your / the $1 looking?
This is what $1 in Venezuelan bolívars looks like.
This is why we need #bitcoin.
#bbh #freecompliments #cent #dailydook #crypto
Verdaderamente así es.
Bitcoin and medium of exchange have nothing to do with each other.
Nope, but some think so. :/
that’s so crazy! Here is a $1 upvote!
It really is! Thank you! #freecompliments
Let's hope the dollar doesn't go I to hyperinflation too!
I was actually hyped about this fight . But this being on Netflix is making me feel like it could be staged .! ? 😶
#miketyson #jakepaul #fight #cent
What's your issue with Netflix?
I don't particularly have a problem with Netflix . But the fact that this fight is on netflix without an intermediate organization ( like UFC or PFL) involved feels like the rules could be bent a bit . Just my personal opinion .
It's my birthday 🎂 🎂 🎂 🎂 🎂
Happy Birthday!
happy born day
Greetings.
bOOm !
Thanks sir, I appreciate
Happy birthday!
Thanks 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏
You're welcome
happy birthday!! 🎉
Thanks boss
The day u had to bury ur father. That's when it hits u! You've lost the one man who genuienly wants u to be better than him! It's when u realize how much of ur strength came from knowing he was there.
~Vikings
#quotes #freecompliments
ARK Invest says Ethereum staking is now a key benchmark for the crypto economy! Like the U.S. federal funds rate, Ethereum's APR (currently 3.3%) is becoming crucial in crypto. #cent #eth #dailydook #freecompliments #crypto #inleo #onlysab
Algún día vamos entender que la educación financiera vale mas que un titulo universitario. #finances #spanish
Hola me presento jaja soy maxiza y soy nuevo en esto. Me veran publicando cualquier cosa que se me ocurre y me gusta jugar, dibujar y ver anime espero llevarme bien
Hola! Genial! Claro que sí, cualquier contenido es bienvenido! Usa #spanish para que sea fácil para la comunidad hispana encontrarte!
Oooh entiendo. Muchas gracias
Actualizando mis gráficas para Hive y Leo
Finished work (feel free to use it)
😂😅😥👌
I am so sorry... 😀
#memes
😂 ☠️
I could just rethread my insomnia thread from 24 hours ago I am not able to sleep past 4 am #gmfrens
Good morning
Gm Ben! You are up early too. Or maybe you are just in a different timezone.
I’ve been sleeping late these days too…. Trying to get used to 2 am now 🤣 that feels healthy
Y'all need to try out this from goldbelly. It was amazing
Seems this early in the morning actvity is low. We need to have a thread every 5-10 seconds so it looks like something is happening here.
In that case it will be hard to see all the threads😅
I want to deal with that problem when it occurs.
Trying to do this will only make the garbage spam even worse, lol. We need more people. I literally only see like 20-30 of the same people posting, and that is checking the Latest tab, not For You.
Making some spiced apple cider slushies
how was the taste like?? Lovely I guess
We’re both a little upset that one of our flock members is missing as of today
Hopefully she’ll come back home!
Oh, I hope she come back too.
#freecompliments
she'll come back bringing something
Paciencia y aceptación, paciencia y aceptación <33
Good Morning
Local Time- 06:11 AM
#freecompliments
Good morning, @milaan
Have a great day!
!BBH !ALIVE !DOOK !INDEED
Good Morning Sir.
Hve a wonderful day
@milaan! @beststart likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @beststart. (1/100)
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Minimum wage laws are incredibly cruel.
They basically ban the most vulnerable and unskilled from being able to make money at the rate the market will pay them.
At best, they drive up prices so that everyone else is worse off.
It is simple. The elite need the poor. Human history has shown this. Crypto can change this. That is why they are all so afraid. Or want to take it over to keep the norm
Crypto also provides a great opportunity to earn.
Imagine being a forum/Discord/Telegram mod for $5/hr. on the weekends.
If you moderate 6 different ones simultaneously, that's $30/hr. But it would be illegal.
Well ya. Same here on InLeo ;)
Well not the same as on InLeo but you get the idea ;)
Yep!
Imagine the case in countries where %50+ people live on minimum wage...
Yeah. You plunge them into subsistence farming and other abject poverty.
At worst, they take away what little income entry-level, disabled, or elderly employees had, while making tech companies rich that can provide cheaper automated solutions.
The value of human labor is declining.
Few seem to have a problem with spreadsheets like Excel even though they disrupted the bookkeeping industry.
Standards of living keep increasing yet people choose not to see it.
True.
Evening grace
This is beautiful click
#freecompliments #gf
Pretty cool photos of Tsuchinshin A3 ATLAS
Ominous looking moon or what?
Got these amazing shots of a comet with the blood moon
BTW. Took these photos with my iphone 16 pro.
#gmfrens
It's Sunday, 20th October 2024
Today's #lbi Asset backed value per token is:
1 LBI = $0.109 USD = 0.538 HIVE = 4.202 LEO
Tiered rainfall. One cloud, raining on top of another.
Me and my daughter enjoying the beauty of the Costa Brava in Cadaques! #photography #photographers #photocast #leotravel
Looks beautiful, thanks for sharing. !BBH !DIY !DOOK #freecompliments #cent
@pele23! @pepetoken likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @pepetoken. (22/100)
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You can query your personal balance by
!DIYSTATSNostalgic train
#train #cent #bbh #linkincomments
https://ecency.com/hive-163772/@chaosmagic23/hiking-around-oberzissen-and-a?referral=chaosmagic23
https://inleo.io/threads/view/investments/re-leothreads-3apxwqbfm
Olbrück castle ruin
#cent #castle #ruin #linkincomments
https://ecency.com/hive-163772/@chaosmagic23/hiking-around-oberzissen-and-a?referral=chaosmagic23
#crypto #meme #lolz #dailydook #freecompliments #cent #bbh
There is no enough! 😁
!DOOK !BBH
No body have enough in my opinion.
@bitcoinordinal! @chaosmagic23 likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @chaosmagic23. (3/50)
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1/🧵
#outreach #threadstorm
City life and village life both have advantages and disadvantages at the same time and based on perspective some of us love to live in a city and some in the village.
2/🧵
Where do you live now? Why? Which one you prefer most? What is the thing you consider most of the time? Do you want to know my opinion?
3/🧵
#gosh
I have written a post about it and I hope you will enjoy reading it. I am inviting you to read the post.
https://inleo.io/@intishar/just-one-more-facility-76k
Music is actually a universal language cuz you don't have to understand whatever you're hearing in every song to feel , vibe and rock with it . Do you agree on that?
#askonleo #musicvibes #vyb #waiv
I must agree with this. I never appreciate music but recently, I feel that I am loving it!
Mi meta no está lejos, ha sido una larga tarea de ser constante para lograrlo. Pronto compartiré la loca personalización de mi avatar. #risingstargame
#hivenftgamelatino #spanish #gf #bbh #cent #dailydook
The official #dash account has followed me.
I have to buy more!
#crypto
Discord announcement from 3Speak.
link
#cent #bbh #3speak
This bull run has to be over when you see stupid shit like this start happening.
Degens gonna degen
This isn't like the Let's Go Brandon or $FJB, tokens is it?
Tatiana Blayde is always my go-to when facing range unit battles. What is your favorite unit in these battles? #splinterlands
#hivenftgamelatino
Good morning. It's a nice day and I hope it will be a productive day for me. The start of the morning can't be said as good because one action of my little sister made me angry. So, it's not a good start to the day.
#morning #day #cent #freecompliments
Make her pay - in $BTC
She has no knowledge about crypto😅.
Time to do something about that. But I can assume that she is not old enough for that topic.
It'll be okay, shake it off and don't let it ruin your day.
Just planted, fertilized, mulched, and fenced 1000 cloves of garlic. This creature supervised the job:
#freecompliments #bbh #photography
Wow! 1000 cloves! That's a great job. Your Cat looks cute.
Thanks 😊 It was a job, but I’m so happy to have it done, even if I was judged by that cute Kitty while I did it lol
!PIZZA
Just a casual day on the homestead, eh, @generikat?
!BBH !ALIVE !DOOK !INDEED
Oh very casual, my friend, I’m going to go take a supremely casual nap now lol!
!BBH !PIZZA
Good for you, Kat.
Naps are awesome.
!BBH !ALIVE !DOOK !INDEED
@generikat! @beststart likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @beststart. (8/100)
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@beststart! @generikat likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @generikat. (4/5)
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A good supervisor 👌. What zone are you in??? Wo during if in my zone 5 it's too late to plant garlic.
I'm technically 6a, but I honestly plant everything like I am zone 4 because our microclimate is harsh! You should be completely fine to plant garlic still, I've planted mine as late as the last week of October and it produced just dandy!
!PIZZA
Thanks for the PIZZA by the way. And thank you for the garlic tip. I'll definitely plant some this week now!
@generikat! @beststart likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @beststart. (6/100)
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On paracetamol and brufene... and lying down. Hurted my back somehow and I dont even remember how.
That's too bad buddy, I hope you recover as soon as possible.
Horrible day... hopefully tomorrow a better one.
I would recommend an analgesic.
Or, a muscle relaxant would be fine as well.
Ibuprofen is not bad, paracetamol alone if you have a fever.
Its gone by now... so whatever was, was quicker than I thought. Still going slow... just in case!
We've reached Gold II! Without renting, using my own cards. It feels great to get this far with your own effort! #splinterlands
#hivenftgamelatino
1/3🧵On my return from my vacation I found my cactus very nice and I also received a surprise.
#hivegarden #outreach #threadstorm
2/3🧵I got a nice watermelon peperomia plant as a gift.
3/3🧵I leave you the link of inleo where you will see the pictures and read my experience in a hive community dedicated to gardening.
https://inleo.io/@actioncats/the-office-cactus-and-my-new-watermelon-peperomia-7yl?referral=actioncats
#outreach #threadstorm
1/5 🧵
Los dos mejores equipos de la campaña cerca del exito soñado
2/5 🧵
Esta temporada fue una de las mas cerradas en los ultimos años y llena de emociones
3/5 🧵
Dodgers y Yankees tienen las mejores nominas y seria una final soñada
4/5 🧵
Los Angeles y New York son ciudades ideales para una Serie Mundial, alli todos ganarian
#hive #inleo
5/5 🧵
Aqui les dejo el enlace de la publicacion subida a @fulldeportes usando @inleo
https://inleo.io/@karlex77/espeng-los-mejores-cerca-de-la-meta-opinin-4xe?referral=karlex77
Good night Threads....Did a quick $LEO buy before bed!
See you guys in the AM!
It's still theft !LOLZ
#9QxaSzsGJ4SGJiybCSyZFDPEXgwH3CMRo5QESv3fNoSUmGCjvYux2Abn88auEVBYSaLN19HExqz4YkZ5vGBAHGfLrKENtAjx96ST6YPZCmgmp1jz5KaEMQEN3k9akfto5jEYcaYRtAoiF1ZoH1MDXhvfHx9QECrWPoeDYYYXVvC8ZZKTbvGgXX5oBqfUSo9MniSHChM78KV87zXbL43UFUMkwtkSaVwKCuqifv6yGgSJw2RKeqgAfifULKx3AHSDncGEVyw4s38ciDLTBv96nnGai27JeTKty8zsRz3EVgrZrwNPjRNZc7ZPJUDP9rgtV4q6ZK67YpNpvosHwpdD3fT4UVKZC
How fast is the camera to capture the water this clear? 😍
I think it was a shutter of 1/1600 but I would have to check the raw image. And I think that is long gone...
Mi último explorador está a punto de alcanzar el nivel 6, ahora sólo necesito completar la cantidad de $neon necesaria para la fusión. #neonstrike
#hivenftgamelatino #spanish #bbh #hueso
Gospel vibes with dani-asidani-asi
#happysunday #wordswordsoffaith #wisdom #inleo #hive #freecompliments #aliveandthriving #lifefacts #motivation #inspiration #success #gmfrens