This Week In Science & Technology

I hope they eat tinned tuna and not sashimi grade tuna.

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Coffee Meets Bagel: Dating app users rue missed connections amid outage

Those looking for love online express frustration as the popular app suffers days-long outage.
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"This is affecting many people's ability to connect with people they've begun to develop relationships with,"

"RIP to the poor souls who scheduled dates yesterday and couldn't coordinate, who had meaningful conversations going and lost them."

My God...I can't communicate with my soulmate because the app is down. God forbid I have to go to a cafe, bar or a church and meet real human beings. The horror, the horror.
 
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Metaverse: What happened to Mark Zuckerberg's next big thing?

Two years ago, the metaverse was billed as the next big thing - but many in the tech world have already moved on.
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"To put it bluntly, VR is still fringe. It's not the way most people play games, and it definitely isn't how most people choose to spend their time. Real life is stubbornly appealing."

Reaffirmed my thinking about it.
 
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Amazon Kuiper: Jeff Bezos set to join satellite internet race

Two Amazon satellites are due to launch to test the tech for a global broadband system in the sky.
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"Mr Bezos is planning to put up more than 3,200 spacecraft in the next few years to deliver internet connections to anywhere on the globe. Elon Musk's SpaceX company is the leader in the field and already has more than 4,800 working spacecraft in orbit. UK-based Eutelsat-OneWeb has also built out a network of 620 satellites[.]"

space debris GIF by PBS Digital Studios
 
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Cruise driverless cars suspended after accident

The car company Cruise is pausing it taxi operations in San Francisco after being cited for safety.
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"'During the course of performing the hard-braking manoeuvre, the AV collided with and ran over the pedestrian', the agency said. 'After coming to a complete stop, the AV vehicle subsequently attempted to perform a pullover manoeuvre while the pedestrian was underneath the vehicle.'"

I can see human drivers in my city do this too, but strangely they still have their licences.
 
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Elon Musk tells Rishi Sunak AI will put an end to work

The prime minister and the tech billionaire sat down together to talk tech, education - and killer robots.
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"'We are seeing the most disruptive force in history here,' Mr Musk said, before speculating: 'There will come a point where no job is needed - you can have a job if you want one for personal satisfaction but AI will do everything. 'It's both good and bad - one of the challenges in the future will be how do we find meaning in life.'"

You mean my job won't be my source of personal satisfaction anymore? Don't do that to me AI!
 
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U.S. and India strengthen cooperation around space exploration

The U.S. and India will jointly launch a new Earth observation satellite in the first quarter of 2024, and NASA will train an Indian astronaut for an upcoming mission to the International Space Station.
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"The talks further cemented India as a prime spacefaring nation, coming as the country looks to ramp up activities in low-Earth orbit, on the moon and beyond."

Also..they're cheap.
 
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Blood test shows if organs are ageing fast or slowly

Proteins in blood reflect how well the brain, heart and other major organs are faring, say scientists.
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"If we can reproduce this finding in 50,000 or 100,000 individuals it will mean that by monitoring the health of individual organs in apparently healthy people, we might be able to find organs that are undergoing accelerated ageing in people's bodies, and we might be able to treat people before they get sick."

I want all my organs fixed - back to their 18 year old original selves.
 
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Sports Illustrated publisher fires CEO in latest round of exec terminations following AI scandal

The Arena Group announced Monday that CEO Ross Levinsohn has been terminated and Manoj Bhargava will replace him as interim top boss.
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"Sports Illustrated fell into hot water in November after an article on science and tech news site Futurism accused the former sports news giant of using AI-generated content and author headshots without disclosing it to their readers."

Behold the future of journalism.
 
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Nasa beams cat video from deep space with laser

The ultra HD footage of Taters the cat was sent as the agency tries to improve space communications.
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"Nasa hopes the laser tech it was testing will eventually improve communications with more remote parts of the solar system."

Just imagine how much Ultra 4K Netflix we can stream to alien beings..
 
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World's tallest wooden wind turbine starts turning

Wood and glue is better for the environment than steel, says manufacturer, and could see taller turbines.
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"That's because the trees take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere when they are alive and, when they are chopped down, the carbon is stored in the wood. As long as the wood doesn't end up rotting or being burned, the carbon is not released."

Good to know it won't survive a forest fire.
 
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Huge ring of galaxies challenges thinking on cosmos

Scientists discover a huge, ring-shaped structure in space which questions our ideas of the universe.
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"Both the Big Ring and the Giant Arc appear relatively close together, near the constellation of Bootes the Herdsman.

Professor Don Pollacco, of the department of physics at the University of Warwick, said the likelihood of this occurring is vanishingly small so the two objects might be related and form an even larger structure.

'So the question is how do you make such large structures? It's incredibly hard to conceive of any mechanism that could produce these structures so instead the authors speculate that we are seeing a relic from the early universe where waves of high and low density material are 'frozen' in to extragalactic medium.'"


You Crazy Reaction GIF by Mass Effect
 
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Peregrine lander: US Moon mission on course for fiery destruction

The hobbled Peregrine Moon lander will be forced to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
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"Nonetheless, payloads onboard were activated, proving their space-worthiness, and some were even able to gather data, such as on the nature of the radiation environment between Earth and the Moon."

Do the people who sent human remains and a bitcoin get a refund?
 
news.sky.com

DragonFire: UK fires high-power laser at aerial targets for first time - with 'intense beam of light' able to cut through drones

The Ministry of Defence has said the laser "boasts pinpoint accuracy" and can cause "structural damage or more impactful results if the warhead is targeted".
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"...costs less than £10 a shot. It is hoped the weapon could reduce the UK Armed Forces' reliance on high-cost ammunition, with the cost of firing the laser for 10 seconds equivalent to using a regular heater for an hour."

Does it also shoot down hypersonic weapons?
 
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Japan: Moon lander Slim comes back to life and resumes mission

The lander has begun sending photos, including that of a nearby rock nicknamed "toy poodle".
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It's alive!

"Jaxa could not immediately say until when Slim will operate on the Moon. It has previously said the lander was not designed to survive a lunar night. A lunar night, which is when the surface of the Moon is not exposed to the Sun, lasts about 14 days."

Ohh....
 
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Could AI 'trading bots' transform the world of investing?

Artificial intelligence is increasing being used to guide investments but risks remain.
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"'Amazon was one of the first companies to get caught out,' she says. 'What happened was that they developed this AI tool to recruit people.'

'So, they're getting thousands of CVs, and they thought we're just going to automate the whole process. And basically, the AI tool was reading the CVs for them and telling them who to hire. The problem was that the AI tool was trained on its employees, and its employees are mainly men, and so, as a result of that, basically what the algorithm was doing was filtering out all the women.'"

Shocking. It's almost as if I worked for the Camorra and it's full of men so if you told me to recruit I'd go recruit men.
 
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Disney’s streaming services have begun cracking down on password sharing

Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu have all updated user agreements to limit outside access to accounts.
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“'In calendar ’24, we’re going to get at this issue,' Iger said. 'We certainly have established this as a real priority. We actually think that there’s an opportunity here to help us grow our business.'"

Not making enough money off you is an issue.
 
news.sky.com

Facebook and Instagram to label all images on their platforms created by AI, Meta says

Meta has said the move comes during a year when a "number of important elections are taking place around the world" - with the use of AI images expected to become a more "adversarial space in the years ahead".
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"We're working hard to develop classifiers that can help us to automatically detect AI-generated content, even if the content lacks invisible markers. At the same time, we're looking for ways to make it more difficult to remove or alter invisible watermarks."

Labeling images and work created by AI. What about phony social media and celebrity influencers who have zero credibility?

 
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Nuclear fusion: new record brings dream of clean energy closer

Nuclear fusion still remains a long way off but brings the world one step closer to endless clean energy.
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"The experiments produced 69 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power). That is only enough energy for 4 - 5 hot baths - so not a lot. It is clear we are still a long way off from nuclear fusion power plants, but with every experiment it is bringing us one step closer."

Free energy - forever.
 
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Secrets of ancient Herculaneum scroll deciphered by AI

The Herculaneum papyri are a collection of around 800 scrolls that were carbonized during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, along with thousands of other relics.
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“The author — probably Epicurean philosopher Philodemus — writes here about music, food, and how to enjoy life’s pleasures,”

New sources for classicists.
 
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