NASA Engineers Were Disturbed by What Happened When They Tested Starliner’s Thrusters

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Danzig

Later this week, Boeing's plagued Starliner is set to attempt its return journey from the International Space Station.

But instead of ferrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to the ground, it'll be undocking and reentering without any crew on board — after a software update, that is, because it was originally unable to fly without astronauts inside it.

Even before the ill-fated capsule launched in early June, engineers noticed several helium leaks. During Starliner's docking procedures, the leaks quickly turned into a real problem. The spacecraft missed its first attempt to dock with the space station.

Ever since, Boeing and NASA engineers have been struggling to identify the root cause of the problem.

At first, NASA remained adamant that it was simply a matter of routine procedure to investigate the mishap before imminently returning Wilmore and Williams on board Starliner. The agency repeatedly fought off reports that the two astronauts were "stranded" in space, arguing that engineers just needed a little more time to figure out the issue.

But it didn't take long for NASA to change its tune. While attempting to duplicate the issue at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, engineers eventually found what appeared to be the smoking gun, as SpaceNews' Jeff Foust details in a detailed new breakdown of the timeline.

A Teflon seal in a valve known as a "poppet" expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters, significantly constraining the flow of the oxidizer — a disturbing finding, because it greatly degraded the thrusters' performance.

Worse, without being able to perfectly replicate and analyze the issue in the near vacuum of space, engineers weren't entirely sure how the issue was actually playing out in orbit.

During a late August press conference announcing its decision to send Starliner back empty, NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich admitted that "there was just too much uncertainty in the prediction of the thrusters."

"People really want to understand the physics of what's going on relative to the physics of the Teflon, what's causing it to heat up and what's causing it to contract," he admitted. "That's really what the team is off trying to understand. I think the NASA community in general would like to understand a little bit more of the root cause."

While engineers found that the thrusters had returned to a more regular shape after being fired in space, they were worried that similar deformations might take place during prolonged de-orbit firings.

A lot was on the line. Without perfect control over the thrusters, NASA became worried that the spacecraft could careen out of control.

"For me, one of the really important factors is that we just don’t know how much we can use the thrusters on the way back home before we encounter a problem," NASA associate administrator for space operations Ken Bowersox said, as quoted by SpaceNews.

"If we had a way to accurately predict what the thrusters would do all the way through the deorbit burn and through the separation sequence, I think we would have taken a different course of action," Stich said during last month's teleconference. "But when we looked at the data and looked at the potential for thruster failures with a crew on board... it was just too much risk."

That's a polite way of saying that NASA had very serious concerns. According to Faust's reporting, the saga evolved into "NASA’s biggest human spaceflight safety crisis since the shuttle Columbia accident more than two decades ago."

Earlier this week, NASA announced that Starliner's uncrewed undocking will take place as soon as Friday evening.

Wilmore and Williams will stay behind, presumably watching as their ride to space departs without them.

The two astronauts will have to be patient as their ersatz shuttle, SpaceX's Crew-9 mission, won't arrive until no sooner than September 24. Even then, the pair will have to wait until the Crew Dragon spacecraft returns to Earth in February, extending what was supposed to be an eight-day mission into an eight-month affair.

More on Starliner: Astronauts Hear Strange Sounds Coming From Boeing's Cursed Starliner

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NASA Will Attempt to Launch Boeing’s Troubled Starliner Away From Space Station as Fast as Possible, Just in Case

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Danzig

NASA is looking to get Boeing's plagued Starliner away from the space station as fast as possible to ensure that it doesn't lose control.

Last month, NASA officially announced that Boeing's plagued Starliner is returning without a crew on board.

The decision, which came as a black eye to the embattled aerospace giant, means that stranded NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return to the surface on board SpaceX's Crew-9 mission in February instead.

Later this week, likely on Friday evening, the space agency will attempt to have the faulty spacecraft undock from the International Space Station autonomously and eventually reenter the atmosphere.

And it sounds like NASA will be playing it as safe as possible. With the helium leaks affecting Starliner's propulsion system, the agency is looking to get the capsule away from the space station as fast as possible to ensure that it doesn't careen out of control — or, in a worst case scenario hypothesized by experts, even crash into the station.

During a teleconference today, NASA officials laid out the plan. The agency has chosen to have Starliner perform a "breakout burn" which, according to NASA's Johnson Space Center lead flight director Anthony Vareha, is a "series of 12 burns, each not very large, about one Newton meter per second each."

"It's a quicker way away from Station, way less stress on the thrusters," added NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich.

The original plan involved having the spacecraft perform a "dress rehearsal" for a "fly-around inspection" of the space station. That's something NASA is requiring both Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon to be able to perform before being certified, as part of its Commercial Crew program.

"The reason we chose doing this breakout burn is simply it gets the vehicle away from Station faster and, without the crew on board, able to take manual control if needed," Vareha explained. "There's just a lot less variables we need to account for when we do the breakout burn and allows us to get the vehicle on its trajectory home that much sooner."

During testing at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico earlier this summer, engineers discovered that a Teflon seal in a valve known as a "poppet" had expanded as it was being heated by the nearby thrusters. The seal was found to significantly constrain the flow of the oxidizer, greatly cutting into the thrusters' performance.

As a result, NASA is trying to be extremely light on the trigger button during its upcoming attempt to return Starliner.

When asked how confident he was in Starliner's ability to one day return to space, Stich appeared optimistic.

"We know that the thrusters work well when we don't command them in a manner that overheats them and gets the poppet to swell on the oxide," he explained. "We know that the thruster is a viable thruster, it's a good component," but the goal is to "not overheat it."

In other words, the space agency is far from giving up on Starliner, despite an extremely messy and potentially disastrous first crewed test flight.

NASA has openly discussed what it has learned from previous spaceflight disasters. During NASA's announcement that Starliner would come back empty last month, NASA’s chief of safety and mission assurance Russ DeLoach went as far as to invoke the agency's fatal Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003 respectively.

In short, Starliner's return to the ISS still appears to be on the table, no matter how far off such a mission may be at this point. That of course also depends on how successful NASA is in getting Starliner back on the ground.

The agency will be looking to "fill in some of the gaps we had in qualification," Stich said, adding that teams are already looking for ways to get Starliner "fully qualified in the future."

More on Starliner: NASA Engineers Were Disturbed by What Happened When They Tested Starliner's Thrusters

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NASA Will Attempt to Launch Boeing's Troubled Starliner Away From Space Station as Fast as Possible, Just in Case

Suspected Russian Spy Whale Was Reportedly Shot Multiple Times

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Danzig

Whale of Bullets

Over the weekend, news emerged that believed "Russian spy" beluga whale Hvalidmir had died.

But perhaps fittingly — considering his mysterious past as a possible foreign agent — the circumstances surrounding his death sound increasingly bizarre.

Regina Haug, the founder of animal rights group One Whale, is saying the beluga died a violent death, and is suggesting foul play.

"He had multiple bullet wounds around his body," Haug claimed in an Instagram post.

The post was appended with photographs of what appear to be bullet wounds dotting Hvaldimir's corpse.

"The injuries on the whale are alarming and of a nature that cannot rule out a criminal act — it is shocking," said animal rights group Noah director Siri Martinsen in a statement. "Given the suspicion of a criminal act, it is crucial that the police are involved quickly."

Das Shoot

A separate organization called Marine Mind, which was tracking Hvaldimir's movements, took a different tack.

"There was nothing to immediately reveal the cause of death," director Sebastian Strand told Agence France-Presse. "We saw markings but it’s too early to say what they were."

Strand suggested that the markings may have been the result of marine birds.

The beluga whale was estimated to be only around 14 to 15 years old, roughly half of the average lifespan of its species.

The Norwegian Veterinary Institute is now conducting an autopsy and will publicize its results in a matter of weeks.

Meanwhile, Noah and One Whale are adamant that Hvaldimir was shot and are "filing a police report to the Sandnes Police District and the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime," according to One Whale's Instagram post.

"I have been with Hvaldimir for the past five years and know him very well," said Haug in a statement. "When I saw his body, I immediately knew he had been killed by gunshots. I even saw a bullet lodged in his body."

"This kind, gentle animal was senselessly murdered," she added. "We will pursue justice for Hvaldimir and hope that someone comes forward with information about his killing."

More on the incident: Suspected Russian Spy Whale Found Dead Under Mysterious Circumstances

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The World Health Organization Just Declared a New Global Emergency

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

For the second time in just over two years, the WHO has declared an outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, a global emergency.

For the second time in just over two years, the World Health Organization has declared an outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, a global emergency.

As the New York Times and other outlets report, this second outbreak has already resulted in 14,000 cases and 524 deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone.

Compared to the 100,000 people worldwide who contracted mpox and roughly 200 who died from it in 2022, this year's strain of the virus — which like its predecessor can cause lymph swelling, fever, respiratory symptoms, muscle aches, and rashes — is significantly more virulent.

Both in 2022 and this year, Congo's specific strains of mpox have been more severe, the NYT notes. In that country, however, this year's outbreak seems to be even worse, with a death rate of roughly three percent compared to the 0.2 percent death rate back in 2022.

Thus far, mpox has spread to 13 countries on the African continent, though as the Associated Press notes in its reporting, 96 percent of them are in the DRC.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a media briefing that the rapidity of spread this time around is concerning, especially because women and girls are now the most at-risk groups for contracting the primarily sex-spread disease that previously was mostly contained to gay and bisexual men.

"The detection and rapid spread of a new clade of mpox in eastern DRC, its detection in neighboring countries that had not previously reported mpox, and the potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying," Ghebreyesus.

The current strain of mpox was detected for the first time last year, the NYT notes, and was found to be equally occurrent in both men and women for the first time. It seems to have mutated, per genetic analyses, sometime in September to become more easily spread, and has done so in part due to heterosexual sex work.

Thus far, this strain has not yet been detected outside of Africa, and with the DRC approving two new mpox vaccines geared towards this outbreak earlier in the summer, epidemiologists are hoping it'll stay that way.

"This outbreak has been smoldering for quite a long time, and we continually have missed opportunities to shut it down," Nicole Lurie, the executive director of the vaccine-financing nonprofit Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, explained in an interview with the NYT. "I’m really glad that everybody is now paying attention and focusing their efforts on this."

Indeed, given that the virus continued to spread to the point that it mutated to become more virulent and deadly, it seems clear that some opportunities to contain it must have been missed.

More on virulence: Deranged Politicians Are Trying to Ban Wearing Masks

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The World Health Organization Just Declared a New Global Emergency

SpaceX Violated Environmental Rules by Dumping Toxic Wastewater, Regulators Find

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

A Texas agency has spanked Elon Musk's SpaceX for dumping toxic pollution into the water around its sprawling Starbase launch site in Texas.

Dumping Sludge

A Texas agency has given Elon Musk's SpaceX a slap on the wrist for spewing toxic wastewater into the fragile ecosystem around its sprawling Starbase launch site, according to CNBC.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) accused SpaceX of "discharging deluge water" without their approval in early August, adding to a total of 14 complaints against the aerospace company for polluting the surrounding environment.

The notice could potentially delay SpaceX's ambitions of launching more than two dozen rockets annually at its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, in addition to any plans for space missions at Cape Canaveral, Florida (where SpaceX has also received environmental complaints).

SpaceX responded to the Texas notice and CNBC report in a lengthy post on the social media platform X-formerly-Twitter, saying that the company has been careful about any "excess water" not coming into contact with "local groundwater." This all comes amid the fact that SpaceX has actually been working alongside the TCEQ and the US Environmental Protection Agency on the subject of the violation notice, its water deluge system, which uses water to cool "the heat and vibration from the rocket engines firing."

"Throughout our ongoing coordination with both TCEQ and the EPA, we have explicitly asked if operation of the deluge system needed to stop and we were informed that operations could continue," SpaceX tweeted.

CNBC’s story on Starship’s launch operations in South Texas is factually inaccurate.
Starship’s water-cooled flame deflector system is critical equipment for SpaceX’s launch operations. It ensures flight safety and protects the launch site and surrounding area.
Also known as…
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 12, 2024

Captain Planet

Besides this latest violation, residents and environmentalists have already complained about the impact of rockets launched at the Boca Chica site, which is situated next to a beach where endangered sea turtles breed and a critical migratory bird habitat.

Rocket launches at the site have scorched the lands, blasted apart the nests of migratory birds, and rained rocket debris on fragile flora, but Musk, SpaceX CEO, has been able to successfully yield his influence within the Federal Aviation Administration while running roughshod over upset officials at the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service, according to a July report in The New York Times.

In Florida, Musk and SpaceX are already facing complaints about how the company may potentially launch more than 70 rockets at Cape Canaveral, with a whole array of disparate stakeholders — residents to commercial fishermen — upset at the impact of that unprecedented, high number of rocket launches in a single year.

Any complaint taken far enough could, theoretically, forestall these rocket launches. Though — given the sheer tonnage of financially and politically incentivized parties lined up behind Musk and SpaceX — it would likely take an advocacy effort as ahistorical as Musk's ambitions to slow them, if there's even one to be had.

More on SpaceX: Elon Musk Slammed for Filling Orbit With Space Junk

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Disney Says Wrongful Death Suit Should Be Dropped Because Plaintiff Was a Disney+ Subscriber

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Wrongful Handling

Despite being repeatedly assured her food contained no peanuts, an NYU doctor died at a Disney resort — and now, her widower's wrongful death lawsuit is being challenged on a seemingly bogus technicality.

As Law & Crime reports, the wrongful death suit filed earlier this year by widower Jeffrey Piccolo in the wake of his late wife Kanokporn "Amy" Tangsuan's death at a Disney resort last October has been the subject of a tense back-and-forth between the grieving plaintiff and the defendant.

In its most recent forte, Disney claimed that Piccolo forfeited his right to sue the entertainment conglomerate when signing up for a free Disney+ subscription trial in 2019 and when using the company's app at its theme park a month prior to his wife's death.

In other words, the media giant is arguing that because he didn't read the fine print on his free Disney+ trial, Piccolo and his late wife's estate forfeited the right to sue.

Taking Offense

As the widower's attorneys suggested in their suit filed in a Florida circuit court, that assertion is pretty darn offensive.

Instead of letting a jury decide whether or not Tangsuan's allergic reaction death should net Piccolo damages, Disney said that the widower is beholden, per the Disney+ trial contract, to solve the issue in arbitration.

Otherwise known as "forced arbitration," this type of clause has been the subject of multiple congressional outlawing efforts of varying levels of success. Companies prefer to compel customers into arbitration because it's cheaper for them and allows them to choose the person making the ultimate calls.

It's arguably a sick way to handle such an emotionally charged case, and Piccolo's lawyers are fighting back.

Alarming Assertion

In this latest counter-filing, Piccolo and his attorneys are calling BS on the entire premise of Disney's argument.

"There is simply no reading of the Disney+ Subscriber Agreement, the only Agreement Mr. Piccolo allegedly assented to in creating his Disney+ account, which would support the notion that he was agreeing on behalf of his wife or her estate, to arbitrate injuries sustained by his wife," the suit posits. "Frankly, any such suggestion borders on the absurd."

It's worth noting that in its bid to get the suit thrown out, Disney's lawyers have contested the facts of the widower's lawsuit that was, as the New York Post notes, only seeking $50,000 in damages for his late wife's death.

That's a paltry sum to a megalith like Disney — but when it comes to controlling the narrative and arena, it seems like even this small fight is worth sending in its battleships.

More on curious lawsuits: Elon Musk's X Fighting Not to Give Up Information in Epstein Victim Case

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Cybertruck Tailgates Are Deforming After Doing Regular Truck Stuff

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Cybertruck owners, beware of treating your Tesla truck like a truck. You might just bend the tailgate out of shape.

Truck Bed Elephant

The evidence keeps mounting that Tesla's plagued Cybertruck isn't very good at being a truck and doing average truck things.

As spotted by Jalopnik, a Cybertruck owner took to the Cybertruck Owners Club forum on Friday to lament that his vehicle's stainless steel tailgate was deformed. Why? Because he tried to use the tailgate to haul stuff. You know, run-of-the-mill truck activities.

"Warning to everyone about hauling items," read xhawk101's cautionary message. "I made sure that the weight limit was not exceeded, however, since the load shifted, it obviously put too much weight on the tailgate and now the tailgate is warped."

The Tesla owner added that the tailgate "fortunately still shuts," however the incident "clearly bent the stainless steel and it now has a gap."

The owner was hauling a load of 12-foot composite decking boards. On its website, Tesla brags that its vehicle can hold a payload of 2,500 pounds — or, as the webpage also notes "equivalent of an average African elephant" — and that its "ultra-hard stainless-steel exoskeleton helps to reduce dents, damage and long-term corrosion."

And yet, according to the owner, the truck was allegedly neither durable nor ultra-hard enough to withstand... a load of decking wood, highlighting once again that Tesla has been majorly overselling the brawniness of its unorthodox and highly unreliable pickup.

Bent Out of Shape

Instead of pointing the finger at Tesla's infamously shoddy workmanship, the owner is blaming himself.

"Perhaps I should have known," they wrote, "but alas I was unaware of the potential."

In a later comment, the Tesla owner conceded that boards "were as far in bed as possible until the truck accelerated" due to Tesla's traffic-aware cruise control.

"I'm pretty sure when it lurched forward it shifted the load," they confessed.

Still, we can't stress enough: these were composite decking boards, and these stainless steel monstrosities are supposed to be carrying around literal elephants.

Besides, there are plenty of situations in which a driver might need to manually speed up or slow down, and sometimes abruptly.

In short, it's reasonable to expect that a truck that can cost north of $100,000 and is allegedly "built for any planet" won't get deformed by some 12-foot deck planks and a slight shift in speed.

More on the Cybertruck: Tesla Fan Climbs on Cybertruck to Show How Tough It Is, Accidentally Cracks Windshield

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Former CEO Blames Working From Home for Google’s AI Struggles, Regrets It Immediately

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Billionaire ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt is walking back his questionable claim that remote work is to blame for Google's AI failures.

Eyes Will Roll

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt is walking back his questionable claim that remote work is to blame for Google slipping behind OpenAI in Silicon Valley's ongoing AI race.

On Tuesday, Stanford University published a YouTube video of a recent talk that Schmidt gave at the university's School of Engineering. During that talk, when asked why Google was falling behind other AI firms, Schmidt declared that Google's AI failures stem from its decision to let its staffers enjoy remote work and, with it, a bit of "work-life balance."

"Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning," the ex-Googler told the classroom. "And the reason startups work is because people work like hell."

The comment understandably sparked criticism. After all, work-life balance is important, and Google isn't a startup.

And it didn't take long for Schmidt to eat his words.

"I misspoke about Google and their work hours," Schmidt told The Wall Street Journal in an emailed statement. "I regret my error."

In a Stanford talk posted today, Eric Schmidt says the reason why Google is losing to @OpenAI and other startups is because Google only has people coming in 1 day per week pic.twitter.com/XPxr3kdNaC
— Alex Kehr (@alexkehr) August 13, 2024

Ctrl Alt Delete

In the year 2024, Google is one of the most influential tech giants on the planet, and a federal judge in Washington DC ruled just last week that Google has monopoly power over the online search market. Its pockets are insanely deep, meaning that it can compete in the industry talent war and devote a ridiculous amount of resources to its AI efforts.

What it didn't do, though, was publicly release a chatbot before OpenAI did. OpenAI, which arguably isn't exactly a startup anymore either, was the first to wrench open that Pandora's box — and Google has been playing catch-up ever since.

So in other words, not sleeping on the floors of Google's lavish facilities isn't exactly the problem here.

In a Wednesday statement on X-formerly-Twitter, the Alphabet Workers Union declared in response to Schmidt's comments that "flexible work arrangements don't slow down our work."

"Understaffing, shifting priorities, constant layoffs, stagnant wages and lack of follow-through from management on projects," the statement continued, "these factors slow Google workers down every day."

Later on Wednesday, as reported by The Verge, Stanford removed the video of Schmidt's talk from YouTube upon the billionaire's request.

More on Google AI: Google's Demo of Its Latest AI Tech Was an Absolute Train Wreck

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A "Jaw-Dropping" Study Just Revealed the True Origin of a Stonehenge Megalith

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Rolling Stone

An altar stone that lies within the heart of Stonehenge in Southern England has turned out to be from the faraway hinterlands of Scotland, a surprising find that suggests it's far older than any other rock at the prehistoric complex.

That also means the architects behind Stonehenge somehow transported this gigantic six-ton stone at a distance of more than 400 miles, an astonishing feat, according to researchers who published their findings in the journal Nature.

With Stonehenge's other rocks being locally sourced or from relatively nearby Wales, the Scottish origin of the altar stone casts a new light on the Neolithic society responsible for Stonehenge, which dates back to 3000 BCE.

"It completely rewrites the relationships between the Neolithic populations of the whole of the British Isles," University College London honorary senior research fellow and study co-author Rob Ixer told The Guardian. "The science is beautiful and it’s remarkable, and it’s going to be discussed for decades to come... It is jaw-dropping."

Shore to Sea

By analyzing its composition and age, the researchers discovered that the slab of sandstone came from the far north of Scotland, even as far as the Orkney Islands.

Which leaves the question: how did the altar stone get to Stonehenge?

"The difficulty of long-distance overland transport of such massive cargo from Scotland, navigating topographic barriers, suggests that it was transported by sea," reads the paper. "Such routing demonstrates a high level of societal organization with intra-Britain transport during the Neolithic period."

"We seriously underestimate their abilities and technologies," University of York field archaeologist Jim Leary, who was not involved in the research, told Nature. "We’ve never found any of their boats, but we know they were able to transport cattle, sheep, and goats by sea."

No matter how it got there — either by dragging it on land or floating it down via water — the altar's far-flung origins certainly give us an even deeper appreciation of one of the wonders of the world.

More on Stonehenge: New Insight Into the Purpose of Stonehenge

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Stranded Boeing Astronaut Forced to Slum It in a Sleeping Bag by Himself

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Those tranded Boeing Starliner astronauts are apparently being forced to deal with some pretty undignified living standards.

Bag and Tag

More than two months into what was supposed to be a week-long journey, the stranded NASA astronauts who hitched a ride to the International Space Station on board Boeing's doomed Starliner spacecraft are apparently being forced to deal with some pretty undignified living standards.

As Time notes, the space station was already occupied by seven astronauts before NASA's Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived via the Starliner in early June.

Because the Boeing-built craft immediately sprung several helium leaks during its journey to the station, the pair are now stuck on board the ISS indefinitely — and as they previously told the magazine, that means they're not exactly sleeping in style.

Williams seems to have gotten the better end of the deal by spending the last two months camped out on board the space station's Crew Alternate Sleep Accommodation (CASA) sleep chamber with another of the extra astronauts hanging out on board the European Space Agency-built Columbus module.

Wilmore, however, has been forced to contend with a sleeping bag in the Japanese Space Agency's Kibo module.

"Butch is going to have to rough it a little bit," Williams told Time back in May when she and her copilot thought they'd only be slumming it for a mere eight days.

No Scrubs

It sounds less than ideal — but as the report notes, Williams and Wilmore's difficulties don't end with their sleeping arrangements.

As with every ISS mission, the Starliner astronauts initially had specific jobs to do on board the station that would have eaten up their eight-day journey. As Time reports, their main priority was checking in on the Boeing capsule and making sure its communications, life support, and other essential functions were in good shape.

With that checklist done and their journey having been extended until possibly February due to Starliner's technical issues, Wilmore and Williams have instead been assisting their fellow crew members with their tasks and experiments, including repairing a urine processing pump.

Beyond that lovely job, Wilmore and Williams were also forced to stretch their clothing rations because there's no laundry on board the ISS. Generally speaking, astronauts pack enough clothes for the length of their journey, and with their trip home having been pushed back repeatedly, the Starliner crew had to make do until a Northrop Grumman resupply mission finally came to deliver them new clothes earlier this month.

There was never much dignity to life on board the ISS, to begin with — and now that they're stranded there, Williams and Wilmore are likely feeling the burn of Boeing's shoddy Starliner work.

More on Starliner: NASA Clown Car Plan Would Stuff Extra Astronauts Into SpaceX Capsule to Avoid Return Journey in Disastrous Boeing Starliner

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Ex-Google CEO Says It’s Fine If AI Companies "Stole All the Content"

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, AI companies should

Move Fast and Steal Things

Worried your AI startup might be illegally swallowing up boatloads of copyright-protected content? According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, you can worry about that later — once you have oodles of cash and a platoon of lawyers, that is.

As caught by The Verge, during a recent talk at Stanford's School of Engineering, Schmidt displayed what can only be described as Silicon Valley CEO Final Boss Energy as he laid out a theoretical scenario in which the students in the room might use a large language model (LLM) to build a TikTok competitor, in the case that the platform was to be banned.

Schmidt acknowledged that his imagined scenario might be riddled with legal and ethical questions — but that, he says, should be something to deal with later.

"Here's what I propose each and every one of you do. Say to your LLM the following: 'Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it's not viral, do something different along the same lines," Schmidt told the room. "That's the command."

And "what you would do if you're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur," he continued, "is if it took off, then you'd hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right?" He then added that "if nobody uses your product, it doesn't matter that you stole all the content" anyway.

"Do not quote me," the billionaire continued. (Oops!)

Lawyers With Mops

Schmidt did at one point try to point out that he "was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody's music," despite advising the students moments earlier to essentially do exactly that.

In many ways, the ex-Google CEO's statement perfectly encapsulates much of the AI industry's overarching attitude toward other people's stuff.

Companies have been scraping up human-produced content for years now to train their ever-hungry AI models. And while some entities, like The New York Times, are calling copyright foul, Schmidt apparently sees alleged IP theft as a "mess" for lawyers to clean up later.

"Silicon Valley will run these tests and clean up the mess," Schmidt told the Stanford students, according to a transcript of the event. "And that's typically how those things are done."

The video has since been taken down after plenty of negative press coverage.

More on AI and copyright: Microsoft CEO of AI Says It's Fine to Steal Anything on the Open Web

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Severe Solar Storm Creates Stunning Auroras During Meteor Shower

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

A power geomagnetic storm that hit Earth on Monday created beautiful auroras that lit up the night sky during the Perseids meteor shower.

Bad Turns Good

Looks like the Sun is having another one of its outbursts again, because it just blasted us with a severe geomagnetic storm that crackled through our planet's magnetic field.

The Space Weather Prediction Center said it detected the solar event on Monday morning when it was classified as a severe G4 level storm — the second most intense kind.

By that same afternoon, the event eventually weakened to a G2-level storm — but not before zapping our skies with absolutely stunning auroras.

Now, observers the world over — not to mention off-world — are sharing the magical glimpses they got of these incredible light displays, which just so happened to coincide with the year's best meteor shower.

We’re in the middle of an intense geomagnetic storm!
A series of solar eruptions arriving at Earth are triggering widespread auroras. Here’s what NASA space weather analyst Carina Alden saw last night as she traveled through Michigan and Wisconsin! https://t.co/KG5pvCdyit pic.twitter.com/qrpdkva4Vj
— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) August 12, 2024

Fun in the Sun

Geomagnetic storms are caused by coronal mass ejections, which is when the Sun expels enormous blobs of solar material into space.

Occasionally, some of these ejections hit our planet, and their payload of charged particles can wreak havoc on the Earth's magnetic field.

If intense enough, the effects of the ensuing solar storm can be serious, such as disrupting communications infrastructure and causing power blackouts.

Most of the time, though, they go unnoticed. But if we're lucky, they create the marvelous curtains of light dancing across the night sky known as the northern lights, or auroras.

Cosmic Coincidence

This year, the stars aligned — well, strictly speaking, just the Sun did — and hurled a coronal mass ejection at Earth right as the Perseids meteor shower hit its peak, when it can deliver up to a hundred shooting stars in an hour.

It's not every day you get to see a dazzling aurora be the backdrop to a barrage of luminescent meteors, and skywatchers the world over marveled at the rare event's beauty.

"Aurora over the Grand Canyon, during the peak of the Perseids, with lightning flashes on the horizon. Does it get any better?" one photographer tweeted, sharing a photo of the spectacle.

We've even gotten a view of this from space, shared by NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick aboard the International Space Station.

This sky display will be hard to top — but keep your eyes peeled for storms like these in the future, because a lot of the time, auroras follow.

More on solar phenomena: NASA Investigating Mysterious Radio Signals From the Sun

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Groundbreaking Brain Chip Allows Man With ALS to "Speak" Again

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Using an amazing new brain chip, a man who'd lost the ability to speak is now able to communicate his thoughts out loud using his own voice.

Using an amazing new brain-computer interface (BCI), a man who'd lost the ability to speak is now able to communicate his thoughts out loud using his own voice.

Scientists at the University of California, Davis have developed a brain chip that can interpret brain signals and have them be "read" aloud by a computer in real time.

Using this chip, 45-year-old Casey Harrell, whose speech is slurred from the muscle control loss that characterizes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease, went from being very difficult to understand to communicating in a computerized voice.

What's more: the voice assistant software connected to Harrell's BCI is designed to sound like his voice before the disease took hold using artificial intelligence trained with audio samples of him pre-ALS.

Implanted last summer in the left precentral gyrus, the brain region responsible for speech, the BCI's 256 electrodes record the area's activity and essentially convert it into text that's then read aloud by the AI voice assistant mere seconds later.

As UC Davis neuroprosthesis expert Sergey Stavisky explained in a press release, the chip does so by "translating those patterns of brain activity into a phoneme — like a syllable or the unit of speech — and then the words they’re trying to say."

Though it's far from the first device that helps people with diseases like ALS to communicate — Stephen Hawking famously used a specialized microprocessing computer powered by Intel to talk after losing the ability to speak following an emergency tracheotomy in 1985 — Davis scientists say their BCI functions even better because its translation algorithm was built with natural speech flow in mind.

"Previous speech BCI systems had frequent word errors," explained UC Davis neurosurgeon David Brandman, the principal investigator in the experiment and the co-senior author of the study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. "This made it difficult for the user to be understood consistently and was a barrier to communication."

"Our objective," Brandman continued, "was to develop a system that empowered someone to be understood whenever they wanted to speak."

It's not the only brain chip that has helped an ALS patient regain their ability to communicate. Last year, for instance, a 36-year-old German man, who was fully paralyzed by the condition, had a BCI implanted — and immediately asked for a beer when it allowed him to spell out messages.

More on brain chips: Brain Implant Hooked Up to Control VR Headset

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Implantable Device Can Detect and Reverse Opioid Overdose

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Researchers developed a implantable device that can detect the first signs of an opioid overdose and then rapidly inject naloxone.

When a person overdoses on opioids, their life can hang in the balance unless someone quickly injects them with an effective antidote like the life-saving medication naloxone.

But sometimes, people don't have access to naloxone, most commonly known as Narcan, or they don't get it soon enough, a scenario that has prompted researchers to develop a clever implantable device that can detect the first signs of an overdose and then rapidly infuse naloxone into the bloodstream.

As detailed in a paper published in the journal Device, the researchers demonstrated the device's effectiveness in a series of preclinical trials, detecting and reversing opioid overdoses in 24 out of 25 pigs.

If it makes the huge leap from the lab to becoming a viable commercial product, the implant could make a sizable dent in the more than 100,000 deaths related to drug overdoses in the US in 2022.

"In overdose cases where there is a bystander nearby, that individual can be rescued through either intramuscular or intranasal administration of naloxone, but you need that bystander," said Giovanni Traverso, the study's principal researcher and a biomedical expert at MIT, in a statement about the research. "We wanted to find a way for this to be done in an autonomous fashion."

The device, small enough to be slipped under the skin, consists of sensors that track vital signs, a wirelessly rechargeable battery, and a reservoir for medication.

If a person starts exhibiting signs of an overdose, algorithms analyzing data from the sensors send an alert to the person's smartphone. If they don't cancel the alert, the implanted device shoots an infusion of naloxone into their tissue, acting in a "closed-loop" fashion, meaning that it can deliver the drug by itself.

"Beyond the closed loop, the device can also serve as an early detection or warning system that can help alert others — whether it be loved ones, healthcare professionals or emergency services — to the side of the person so that they can help intervene as well," Traverso explained in the statement.

The study's writers think people who have previously overdosed or are at high risk are the ideal patients for these implants.

They are now attempting to further optimize and miniaturize the device before testing it out on human subjects.

"This is only the first lab-based prototype, but even at this stage we’re seeing that this device has a lot of potential to help protect high-risk populations from what otherwise could be a lethal overdose," said Traverso.

More on opioids: Doctors Are Getting Ready to Give Patients a Vaccine That Blocks Fentanyl's Effects

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Company Claims It Can Charge a Smartphone In Less Than 5 Minutes

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Chinese electronics company Realme recently demonstrated a 320 watt charger that fully charged a smartphone in four and a half minutes.

Speed Demon

There's fast charging, and then there's fast charging.

Chinese electronics company Realme has just revealed a new battery charger that it claims can fully top up a smartphone in well under five minutes, LiveScience reports, making it the fastest smartphone charging tech in the world.

The "320 W SuperSonic Charge" can fill a battery cell up to 26 percent in one minute, over 50 percent in two minutes, and takes just 4 minutes and 30 seconds to reach a full charge — which narrowly edges domestic competitor Redmi's 300W charging tech at 4 minutes and 55 seconds, according to GSMArena.

And this isn't just what the tech can do in a lab. In a live demonstration at the Realme Fanfest event on Wednesday, the charger filled a smartphone from 2 percent to 100 percent in an astoundingly quick 4:20 seconds, which is about a full percentage of charge every 2.65 seconds.

But when or if the tech will ever hit the mainstream remains to be seen. For now, Realme's charger is not much more than an impressive tech demo.

Multipronged Approach

It's not some black magic enabling Realme's ludicrous charging speeds. The company said its tech works by charging multiple battery cells simultaneously, instead of just one at a time; most phone manufacturers, including Apple and Android, only use single-cell batteries.

Providing an ungodly amount of wattage definitely helps, too. Generally, smartphone chargers only use five to twenty watts. Fast chargers for iPhones typically don't go higher than 30 watts, though many competitors for other smartphone brands offer 60 to 100-watt chargers. Laptops, meanwhile, typically need around 60 watts to charge, with fast options offering 140 watts.

But Realme's super-speedy charging won't work on just any phone. For its demonstration, the electronics manufacturer used a specially built, 4,420 mAh battery with four separate cells to sap up all that power, which was folded to fit inside the smartphone used in the demonstration.

Warp Drive

It's unclear when Realme will debut this technology commercially. The capabilities are undeniably impressive, but it might be way more than consumers would ever practically need.

And, as we mentioned earlier, there may simply not be a market for this yet, since most phones only use single-cell batteries. And for good reason: pound-for-pound, multi-cell batteries tend to have lower capacities.

There are also potential concerns over how this would affect your phone's battery health. Proper fast charging is considered pretty safe and standard, but 320 watts might be pushing it.

But, all told, it's assuring to know that these speeds are at least possible. And who knows: maybe someone will figure out how to make this stuff work for the rest of us.

More on battery tech: Apple Battery Supplier Working on New Battery Material With 100 Times the Energy Density of Current Tech

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Tech Company Lays Off 5,500 Workers to Invest More in AI, Despite Making $10.3 Billion in Profit

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Cisco posted $10.3 billion in profits last year but is still laying off 5,500 workers as part of an effort to invest more into AI.

Pink Slip Season

Despite tech conglomerate Cisco posting $10.3 billion in profits last year, it's still laying off 5,500 workers as part of an effort to invest more in AI, SFGATE reports.

It joins a litany of other companies like Microsoft and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, that have used AI as justification for the mass culling of its workforce.

The layoffs at Cisco came to light in a notice posted with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week, affecting seven percent of its staff.

In a short statement, CEO Chuck Robbins used the term "AI" five times, highlighting the company's efforts to keep up in the ongoing AI race.

Earlier this year, Cisco also laid off 4,000 or five percent of it staff, saying that the company wanted to "realign the organization and enable further investment in key priority areas."

In short, companies are no longer hiding their optimism over replacing human labor with AI, an unfortunate reality for those looking to maintain a stable job. But whether this "realignment" will pay off in the long run remains to be seen.

Red Herring

The layoff news helped boost Cisco's stock price on Wednesday, going from $45.04 in the morning to spiking over $48 per share in after-hours trading.

We've already seen similar spikes in the stock prices of other tech companies announcing layoffs.

Cisc's layoffs are also part of another pattern: tech companies saying they are shifting resources to boost their AI efforts and therefore they need to lay off people as part of a restructuring campaign.

While many companies have used AI as a public-facing excuse for their restructuring efforts, experts remain skeptical and think the tech is instead used as a cover.

"Fighting against robots is a nice cover story," University of Oxford economist and data scientist Fabian Stephany told Business Insider earlier this year. "But if you have a closer look, it's often old school, simple economic dynamics like outsourcing or lead management cutting costs to increase salaries in other places."

More on tech layoffs: Microsoft Lays Off 1,500 Workers, Blames "AI Wave"

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The Earth Just Can’t Stop Setting Heat Records

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

A record 15 national heat records have been shattered since January, as this year looks on track to surpass the last as the hottest ever.

Coming In Hot

It's too early to say if 2024 will top last year as the hottest on record — but it will already go down in history for blowing past another damning heat metric.

As The Guardian reports, an unprecedented 15 national temperature records from countries around the globe have been broken since January. Monthly national temperature records, meanwhile, have been broken a whopping 130 times, with tens of thousands of monitoring stations worldwide observing all-time local highs.

This is according to data gathered by climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who maintains an online database of extreme temperatures.

"This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen or even thought possible before," Herrera told The Guardian. "The months from February 2024 to July 2024 have been the most record-breaking for every statistic."

Hell on Earth

The hottest temperatures have descended on the tropics, where heat records were broken every day for 15 months in a row, Herrera said. Egypt recorded a national high of 123.6 degrees Fahrenheit in June, while just two days before, Chad tied its record of 118.4 degrees.

Just north of the Tropic of Cancer, Mexico also matched its record of 125.6 degrees later that month. Other countries that either tied or broke heat ceilings include Costa Rica, Laos, Ghana, and Cambodia. Extraordinarily, the Cocos Islands in the eastern Indian Ocean near Australia equaled its all-time high of 91 degrees twice this year: once in February, and again in April.

It's no wonder, then, that this July was also the hottest in history — and so has every month since June of last year, making it 14 record months in a row.

And in yet another hot streak: many scientists, including those at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, say we're on track for 2024 to be the hottest year ever recorded, which would make an ominous double-header with last year.

Summer Is Coming

Summer heat waves that scourged cities around the globe are believed to have killed hundreds of people this year, Reuters reported — if not thousands.

Scientists fear that if temperatures continue to climb, the extreme climate will render vast amounts of land uninhabitable, which could displace billions of people.

This recent spate of record-setting heat has heightened attention on the issue. But, even if the streak ends, "we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm," Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, told The Guardian. "This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans."

Until that happens, Herrera said that extreme weather alerts could save lives amidst our ever-hotter climate.

More on extreme heat: Dozens of Americans Die in Brutal Heat Wave

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Recruiters Are Getting Bombarded With Crappy, AI-Generated CVs

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Companies and recruiters are getting flooded with AI-generated job applications and they are badly written.

Trash Mountain

Companies and recruiters are getting flooded with AI-generated job applications — and predictably, many of them are badly written and generic sounding, Financial Times reports.

The use of AI has reached such a fever pitch that about half of job seekers are using AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini to churn out cover letters and resumes, and to fill out job assessment forms. FT used interviews with recruiters and employers, in addition to several surveys, to arrive at that estimate.

And it's seriously annoying people who need to fill positions.

"We’re definitely seeing higher volume and lower quality, which means it is harder to sift through," Khyati Sundaram, chief executive at recruitment website Applied, told FT. "A candidate can copy and paste any application question into ChatGPT, and then can copy and paste that back into that application form."

Productivity Killer

Several surveys have also found job applicants are making ample use of the tech, like this recent poll by Canva, in which 45 percent of 5,000 people surveyed said they had used AI to "build, update, or improve their resumes."

Worst of all, many applicants are clearly not going over the text they send out.

"Without proper editing, the language will be clunky and generic, and hiring managers can detect this," Victoria McLean, CEO of career consultancy company CityCV, told FT. "CVs need to show the candidate’s personality, their passions, their story, and that is something AI simply can’t do."

With no clear solution to this problem in sight, employers will have to rely heavily on in-person interviews to assess a candidate, recruiters told FT, which goes to show that AI isn't making everybody's jobs easier.

Besides job recruiters, AI has also made educators' jobs harder. It has become practically impossible to detect AI-generated writing in student work, requiring teachers to assess pupils in other ways — such as in-class assignments.

A recent UpWork survey revealed that 77 percent of workers who had used AI find the technology cumbersome and hampering their productivity.

What's clear from these disparate tales is that AI may not be the magic bullet proponents of AI claim it to be, especially when it comes to the job search market.

More on AI: OpenAI Exec Says AI Will Kill Creative Jobs That "Shouldn't Have Been There in the First Place"

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This Entirely AI-Generated Local "News" Site Is Incredibly Depressing

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

Northwestern Arkansas has a new local news site — and it's entirely AI-generated, complete with "AI reporters" and all.

According to Nieman Lab, the digital news website called OkayNWA has been around since it first cropped up as an app last year. And unlike a lot of AI-generated local news sites, most of which fall under the umbrella of "pink-slime" journalism — automated local news content that's politically biased and often propagandized — OkayNWA isn't shy about its liberal use of AI.

"At OkayNWA," reads the website's About page, "we've embraced the cutting-edge potential of artificial intelligence to redefine how news is sourced, reported, and presented to you."

OkayNWA's self-avowed redefinition of news reporting involves scraping the web for local happenings and publishing them under the bylines of the website's "AI reporters," each of which has a different beat. "Benjamin Business," for example, is the website's "business reporting lead," while "Sammy Streets" is its "chief of street-level reporting." The website mostly publishes pretty low-stakes stuff, including information about upcoming local events, blurbs about area business openings and closings, and so on.

And according to the site's owner, the avoidance of controversial or otherwise more complex topics is intentional.

"The articles should only be about events and fun and good times," Jay Price, the app developer who launched the site, told Nieman Lab. "I don't want crime or politics, or even city council stuff."

But while it's great to have a resource for finding things like local events, the site's stated mission of redefining news and reporting raises the question: is this actually news? And how might a site like this impact the broader — and struggling — world of local reporting?

Price was inspired to start the site after he moved to Bentonville, Arkansas with no connections.

"I was trying to figure out what to do here and there was information spread all over the place," the app developer told Nieman Lab, "whether it be Facebook, Instagram, various event aggregator sites and email lists."

But even publishing blurbs about benign events, Price admitted, came with its own challenges.

"I was seeing the bots pick up news as events, and I wasn't sure what to do with it, honestly," Price told Nieman Lab. "Like, a new bar is opening this Friday. Yeah that's an event, but it's also kind of news."

But instead of conducting some on-the-ground interviews with the bar's owner and patrons, the AI takes care of the write-up, leading to questions of what gets lost in that process.

For one, local newspapers are incredibly important. Without them, local governments often aren't being held accountable, fewer people vote, and communities become more polarized.

Thankfully, as Nieman Lab notes, OkayNWA isn't the only newspaper in Bentonville — but as local newsrooms around the country continue to dwindle in size and number, it won't be surprising to see automated outfits resembling OkayNWA crop up to fill those voids. And to that end, though local news does cover stuff like bar openings and live music events, it also includes hard-hitting reporting about topics like crime, politics, and, yes "city council stuff."

The fact that Price actively avoids publishing actually newsworthy content with his AI seems to speak strongly to the limitations of generative AI when it comes to fully automated news. Reporting is a complex task, and generative AI often gets things wrong.

So while it's great to have a website where people can find information about local events, calling this a "news" site is at best, questionable — and at worst, existentially depressing.

More on AI and journalism: Beloved Local Newspapers Fired Staffers, Then Started Running AI Slop

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Doctors Suggest ‘Raw-Dogging’ Your Flight Is Bad For Your Health

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Danzig

We regret to inform you that there's another semi-ironic and potentially harmful TikTok trend that's taking the internet by storm: "raw-dogging" a flight.

It's the ultimate act of ponderous, self-flagellating stoicism: instead of doing the normal things people do to kill time on a miserable, long-haul flight, you tough it out by doing… nothing.

Sit up straight, don't eat the complimentary peanuts or the frozen dinners, and don't watch a movie on the in-flight entertainment system or on one of your devices. Hell, don't even go to the bathroom or drink water. Be a man. Because all you need is discipline, grit — and maybe the in-flight map, which is apparently sacrosanct in the world of aerial raw-dogging.

According to doctors, who are universally bewildered by the trend, this is a very bad idea.

"They're idiots," general practitioner Gill Jenkins told BBC. "A digital detox might do you some good, but all the rest of it is against medical advice."

"I really have no idea why anyone would do it," Gin Lalli, a psychotherapist specializing in anxiety, stress, and depression, told Fortune. "You're better off sleeping than raw-dogging."

Erling Haaland just ‘raw dogged’ a seven hour flight. [IG] pic.twitter.com/SVMpWSPwmf
— City Report (@cityreport_) August 4, 2024

And yet, people are doing it. Or they're at least pretending to. Soccer star and Manchester City striker Erling Haaland — who aficionados of the sport frequently joke is a robot — was one such celebrity to popularize the trend, jokingly or not.

"Just raw-dogged a seven hour flight," he posted in an Instagram story, vacantly staring at the seat in front of him. "No phone, no sleep, no water, no food, only map. #easy."

And, okay: this probably isn't a thing that people actually do. But it's undeniably become popular to joke about doing (or attempting), and we wouldn't rule out impressionable kids or pseudo-stoics giving it a shot for real.

"If you're not moving you're at risk of deep vein thrombosis, which is compounded by dehydration," Jenkins told BBC. "Not going to the toilet, that's a bit stupid. If you need the loo, you need the loo."

However, if you're not insane about it, raw-dogging — in severe moderation — could be beneficial for our device-addled brains.

"Not having access to emails or the ability to 'check in' means that we can create the space to engage our minds in thinking about other activities and people," Sophie Mort, a clinical psychologist at Headspace, told Fortune. "When we grant ourselves the space to switch off, it offers an opportunity to focus on what genuinely makes us happy."

"So switching off — even if just when you are traveling — can be just the ticket when it comes to protecting our mental state," she added.

In short, it's fine to allow yourself a worldly pleasure or two when you're flying the red-eye in your cramped economy seat.

More on internet trends: Dentists Horrified by People Carving Off Tooth Enamel at Home

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