This Week In Science & Technology


Bobby Bones Sheep GIF by National Geographic Channel
 

After the Indians and Japanese, the American (private sector) is back on the moon.
"It's on the shortlist of locations where Nasa is considering sending astronauts later this decade as part of its Artemis programme.

There are some deep craters in this region that never see any sunlight - they're permanently in shadow - and scientists think frozen water could be inside them.

'We could use that ice to convert it to water - drinkable drinking water - and we can extract oxygen and hydrogen for fuel and for breathing for the astronauts. So it really helps us in human exploration.'"

You could sell it on Earth! Moon water!
 

"At London-based digital design agency Driftime, adopting AI technology has been crucial to enable the business to operate a flexible four-day work week. 'By handing over simple tasks to AI tools, we gain invaluable time previously lost to slow aspects of the process,' says co-founder Abb-d Taiyo. 'With tools like Modyfi, the graphics are all live and modifiable, making it so much easier and quicker for our designers to create concepts and ideas.'"

Worker 1: Do f*ck all for 4 days, and use generative AI to actually do the real advertising design on Friday.

Worker 2: Do your work for 4 days, and let AI loose on Friday to muck everything up so you can come back on Monday and fix everything. Job security for life!
 

"They have undergone rigorous training for 13 months in Russia and are now carrying on with their gruelling schedule back home. A video screened at the event showed them working out in the gym, swimming and doing yoga."

Russian cosmonauts do yoga?
 

"Strikingly for a ship that's 78m (255ft) in length there are only 16 people on board. A traditional ship carrying out the same kind of work would need a crew of 40 or 50. OI believes it can reduce the numbers still further."

I hope Starlink means it will continue working.

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Are the rest of the 15 crew members looking like this?
 

"But unlike these drone-like passenger aircrafts, AirCar does not take off and land vertically, and requires a runway."

As a kid this was always a neat idea. But given how people's ability to drive seems to have degraded in the 21st century I'm not sure the vast majority of drivers can handle an additional dimension.
 

Let me guess.. cheaper labour.

“Our scientists used it as an incentive to develop their own technology. All the equipment they needed was manufactured indigenously - and the salaries and cost of labour were decidedly less here than in the US or Europe.”
 

"If successful, the glasses would provide drivers with turn-by-turn navigation on a small embedded screen, along their routes and at each stop, according to the people, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because the project is not public.

Such directions could shave valuable seconds off each delivery by providing left or right directions off elevators and around obstacles such as gates or aggressive dogs.

With millions of packages delivered daily, seconds add up. The glasses would also free drivers from using handheld Global Positioning System devices, allowing them to carry more packages."

What if I already have spectacles? Who keeps the aggressive dog database?
 

“soulless” and “devoid of any actual creativity.”

As someone who has been on Discord recently I can attest to being spammed by bots coming on using AI to chat with you. The word salad they use makes Kamala Harris sound succinct and precise. I don't know if they use the thesaurus too much or they want to sound inoffensive but it's like the Friends episode where Joey uses a thesaurus for every word when writing his recommendation for Monica and Chandler.
 

"Scientists say that if we are able to see what happens on the Sun and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time and watch its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off power grids and satellites and keep them out of harm’s way."

You can switch a satellite off? I don't think Starlink's constellation would survive 100% intact.
 

“'We’re feeling good, working out, eating right,' she said. 'We have a lot of fun up here, too. So, you know, people are worried about us. Really, don’t worry about us.'"

For a 59 year old who was flying basically as a test pilot for a commercial spacecraft that was supposed to dock for a week at the space station, I'm sure the 6 months in space was an unexpected treat.

Probably sucks if she had any long term appointments lined up on Earth though.
 

"’Basically, these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and, like, scream at them and curse,’ Zuckerberg told podcast host and comedian Joe Rogan. ‘It just got to this point where we were like, 'No, we're not gonna, we're not gonna take down things that are true. That's ridiculous.'"

The Biden administration is rude and ridiculous. So says Zuckerberg.
 

"Ms Patel says that future resource-extracting machines on the moon could derive iron, titanium or lithium from regolith, for example. These materials might help lunar-dwelling astronauts make 3D-printed spare parts for their moon base or replacement components for damaged spacecraft."

Regolith also makes oxygen. Now all it needs to do is build everything autonomously so the astronauts just show up.
 

“It is powered by the open-source DeepSeek-V3 model, which its researchers claim was developed for less than $6m - significantly less than the billions spent by rivals.

He reportedly built up a store of Nvida A100 chips, now banned from export to China. Experts believe this collection - which some estimates put at 50,000 - led him to launch DeepSeek, by pairing these chips with cheaper, lower-end ones that are still available to import.”


It doesn’t require billions, uses regular chips and was just sitting around in App Store all this time? Does it make behind the scenes calls to existing LLM models?
 

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