Hey Neighbor

The Indian Space Research Organization wants to launch a mission to Venus.

The ultimate goal is to use an orbiter to map the entire planet, as well as to scan and figure out what’s going on beneath the surface, according to Space.com. If the mission takes off, it could help give scientists a much better understanding of our planetary neighbor — including information about how its bizarre atmosphere behaves.

Closer Look

The space agency is currently awaiting the green light for the mission. If all goes to plan, it may launch as soon as 2023, Space.com reports.

Once it arrives, the orbiter would be able to create a map of Venus is just about a year, while also using scientific instruments to study the planet’s atmosphere, volcanic activity, and intense lightning storms.

India’s space program suffered a setback when its Moon lander crashed in September. But because the Venus mission wouldn’t involve actually touching down on the surface, it may have a brighter future.

READ MORE: India Has a New Planetary Target in Mind: Venus [Space.com]

More on Venus: NASA Scientists Imagine Studying Venus From A Floating Research Colony

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India’s Space Agency Wants to Explore Venus

Not Safe For Twitter

On Thursday morning, Twitter’s top trending hashtags included some extremely sexually charged words and phrases.

These hashtags included “#creampie” and “#forcedanal,” Motherboard reports. While the social media platform says it’s investigating what went wrong, the X-rated trends are a particularly damning indictment against putting content moderation in the hands of algorithms and machines.

Damage Control

A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the explicit hashtags “should not have appeared in trends” then shared a link to Twitter’s policy of preventing “adult/graphic references” from trending.

Also banned from trends, Motherboard reports, are posts that contain profanity, a broad spectrum of hate speech, and anything that violates other Twitter rules.

But apparently, somehow, literal sex terms and a reference to apparent sexual assault managed to slip past moderation.

READ MORE: Twitter’s Current Top Trending Hashtags: #forcedanal and #creampie [Motherboard]

More on social media: Breaking: Twitter CEO Announces Total Political Ads Ban

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Twitter Accidentally Trends Horrifyingly Explicit Sexual Terms

To grow and survive, cancer cells need to eat, and the amino acid glutamine is a big part of their diet.

In the 1950s, researchers tried using a compound called DON to prevent cancer cells from metabolizing glutamine, but the side effects of the drug in trials prevented its approval.

Now, in an attempt to overcome those side effects, a team at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has created a version of DON that only becomes active when it reaches the tumor — and, tantalizingly, the new cancer drug worked even better than they’d hoped in mice.

They published a study on the compound, JHU083, in the journal Science on Thursday.

When the team tested JHU083 on mouse models of four types of cancer, they found it significantly decreased tumor size and increased the animals’ chances of survival. That wasn’t just because the compound cut off the tumor cells’ food supply, either — it also seemed to supercharge the immune systems’ cancer-destroying T cells.

Another remarkable finding: when the Johns Hopkins team injected their treated mice with new tumor cells, almost all of the animals rejected the tumors, implying that their immune systems remembered the cancer and knew to attack it.

“That T cells are not inhibited by this compound, that is the miracle [that may allow the drug to become a cancer treatment],” Stefan Kempa, a biochemist at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine who wasn’t involved in the study, told Science, later adding that “if this compound can be translated to humans, it has a bright future.”

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WiFistone

If the current administration has its way, your next outdoor camping experience at Yellowstone could include things like WiFi connectivity and Amazon deliveries.

A number of Trump administration advisers have offered their “modernized” vision of national park campgrounds, including WiFi, food trucks, electric bike rentals, flushable toilets, and even Amazon deliveries, the Los Angeles Times reports.

It’s a troubling instance of a much larger attempt to privatize a large number of public services by the White House, including the U.S. Postal Service and even public education.

Heritage on the Line

The advisors’ proposal was summarized in a public letter to the Interior Department.

“Our recommendations would allow people to opt for additional costs if they want, for example, Amazon deliveries at a particular campsite,” Derrick Crandall, vice-chairman of an outdoor recreation advisory committee, told the Los Angeles Times. “We want to let Americans make their own decisions in the marketplace.”

But critics argue that it could threaten the sanctity of national parks and give too much control to private industry players.

“America’s outdoor heritage is on the line,” Jayson O’Neill, deputy director of the Western Values Project, a nonprofit public lands group, told the LA Times. “The trouble with these recommendations is that they were written by concessionaire industry representatives vying for more control of national parks.”

READ MORE: Trump team has a plan for national parks: Amazon, food trucks and no senior discounts [Los Angeles Times]

More on National Parks: Virtual Travel: Google is Bringing the National Parks to a VR Headset Near You

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Trump Advisers Want to Get WiFi, Amazon Deliveries in National Parks

While on stage at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Thursday, Kanye West shared a new shoe prototype from his Yeezy fashion line — and the kicks contain environmentally friendly algae.

“Eco-concerns are intersecting with what we do,” Steven Smith, the head designer at Yeezy, said from the stage. “This is just the beginning of the future that Kanye envisioned for us to start working on.”

The sneaker prototype was manufactured in Atlanta from a combination of petroleum-based ethylene-vinyl acetate and foam produced from algae. West told the audience that the new Yeezy headquarters in Cody, Wyoming, will include a hydroponic farm where the company can grow its own algae.

“We’re going to be farming and going seed to sole,” West said.

According to a Thursday tweet from the official Yeezy Twitter account, the shoes are Yeezy Foam Runners, a style first unveiled in September and set for a 2020 release.

It’s not yet clear whether all Yeezy Foam Runners will be made with algae or if the algae shoes will be a subset of the line. But either way, the eco-friendly sneakers will be available in early 2020 for $75, according to the tweet.

The prototype pair West showed off on Thursday were a bland khaki color, but he said the company is looking into environmentally friendly dyes. Regardless of color, though, the Croc-esque style of the sneakers might not appeal to everyone — though the emphasis on using eco-friendly materials in fashion probably should.

The fashion industry pumps millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, while many of the chemicals and dyes used during manufacturing end up polluting Earth’s waterways.

By switching to more eco-friendly materials and processes, players in the fashion industry can do their part to stop this harm from befalling the planet — one ugly sneaker at a time.

READ MORE: Kanye just unveiled a new foam sneaker made from algae [Fast Company]

More on sustainable fashion: Seaweed Sneakers Look Fly, Could Help Save the Environment

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Kanye West Unveils Yeezy Sneakers Made of Algae Foam

Data Dump

Prior to its abrupt close in November 2017, Iron March was one of the most influential neo-Nazi websites in the world. Investigators have linked the site to murders, acts of terrorism, and fascist groups in at least nine different countries.

And now, thanks to a leak from an anonymous source, researchers have access to the entire contents of Iron March — including the user names, registered email addresses, and IP addresses of nearly 1,000 site members.

Hate Speech

On Wednesday, someone using the handle “antifa-data” posted a 1GB SQL database appearing to contain all of the data from Iron March to the Internet Archive.

In addition to info that could lead to the identification of Iron March members, the database also includes the contents of members’ public messages and private chats, much of which — as you’d expect from a neo-Nazi site— is rife with hateful speech and white supremacist rhetoric.

Dropping Names

Disturbingly, as noted by Bellingcat, an open source journalism website, early analysis of the leak suggests that several Iron March members were active military personnel at the time they posted to the site. Others, meanwhile, expressed a strong desire to join the military.

Several members of the site have been outed directly on social media already, including a former congressional candidate — and the leak is likely to help researchers and investigators identify numerous other neo-Nazis.

READ MORE: Members of violent white supremacist website exposed in massive data dump [Ars Technica]

More on neo-Nazis: Facebook Reportedly Let Marketers Advertise to Nazis

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Someone Published All the Membership Data From a Neo-Nazi Website

Ambrosia Health is back.

Following a brief shuttering — and then a rebranding effort during which it was known as Ivy Plasma — the “young blood” clinic has gone back to its roots: selling plasma sourced from the blood of 16- to 25- year-olds to healthy patients who believe the transfusions can give them ill-defined health benefits.

“People really like the Ambrosia name and brand, so Ambrosia is going to continue,” Ambrosia founder and young blood advocate Jesse Karmazin told OneZero. “The resounding response from people wanting to sign up was, ‘keep things the same.’ So that’s what we’re going to do.”

With the return to its original branding, Ambrosia is also embracing a new business model.

When it was Ivy Plasma, the clinic offered transfusions in San Francisco and Tampa. It since shuttered the clinic in Tampa, but Karmazin told Futurism that Ambrosia will ship plasma directly to any customer’s doctor so they can get their dose of young blood without having to fly to California.

“We use overnight shipping to deliver the plasma to patients’ doctors‘ offices, and provide training for the doctors to infuse it,” Karmazin told Futurism last month. “This way, the number of patients we are able to serve has increased dramatically. I don’t operate a blood bank.”

Ambrosia’s checkered, on-again-off-again status was spurred by an FDA statement issued in February in which the regulatory agency warned that transfusions of young blood didn’t have any of the health benefits — especially enhanced youthfulness, improved longevity, or reversed memory loss — that advocates claimed it did.

In slightly more words, the FDA essentially called young blood transfusions dangerous scams.

Because of the FDA warning, Karmazin’s clinic offered off-label treatments when it resurfaced as Ivy Plasma. That meant that customers could get their treatments if they desired, but they did so at their own risk and then-Ivy Plasma wasn’t legally permitted to claim it would do them any good.

That practice continues today in the newly rebranded Ambrosia, according to OneZero. But the clinic’s updated website includes more details about the treatment.

“Our treatment has been found to produce statistically significant improvements in biomarkers related to Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, inflammation, and stem cells in our clinical trial,” the website reads. “Patients have reported subjective improvements in athletics, memory, skin quality, sleep, and other areas.”

When asked whether the FDA’s rules had grown more lenient, Karmazin told Futurism he had consulted with the agency as well as “a number of lawyers” and wasn’t worried about the claims made on his website.

“I’m comfortable with going ahead and offering this treatment commercially to patients,” he told OneZero. 

The post Ambrosia Is Back to Selling Transfusions of Young People’s Blood appeared first on Futurism.

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Ambrosia Is Back to Selling Transfusions of Young People’s Blood

Big Boom

NASA recently detected a massive thermonuclear explosion coming from outer space.

The culprit seems to be a distant pulsar, the space agency reports, which is the stellar remains of a star that blew up in a supernova but was too small to form a black hole. NASA spotted the burst because it sent out an intense beam of x-rays that got picked up by the agency’s orbital observatory NICER.

All in all, it serves as a potent reminder: space is an extremely dangerous, extremely metal place.

Cosmic Annihilation

The August explosion released in 20 seconds the same amount of energy our Sun would need 10 days to unleash, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters last month.

“This burst was outstanding,” NASA astrophysicist Peter Bult, who led the research, said in NASA’s statement. “We see a two-step change in brightness, which we think is caused by the ejection of separate layers from the pulsar surface, and other features that will help us decode the physics of these powerful events.”

Space Forensics

Astronomers think the thermonuclear explosion was caused by helium that sunk beneath the surface of the pulsar and fused into a ball of carbon.

“Then the helium erupts explosively and unleashes a thermonuclear fireball across the entire pulsar surface,” NICER head Zaven Arzoumanian explained.

READ MORE: Scientists Detect Huge Thermonuclear Blast in Deep Space [NASA]

More on space: Pulsar Finally Found in the Andromeda Galaxy

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Scientists Detect Huge Thermonuclear Blast in Deep Space

Finally, the government says it’s pretty sure what’s behind the mysterious “vape lung” epidemic that’s been spreading across the country, affecting more than 2,000 people and killing at least 39.

A compound called vitamin E acetate has been found in all 29 lung fluid samples taken by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Washington Post reports. And while the CDC was looking for a wide range of other toxins and dangerous compounds, it didn’t find any in those particular samples.

The FDA first identified vitamin E acetate as a possible cause for vape lung back in September. The compound, which WaPo reports is used as a cutting agent in black market THC vapes, is considered safe to eat and touch. But scientists have a poor understanding of what vaporized vitamin E acetate does when inhaled.

The CDC research strengthens the vitamin E acetate hypothesis because the 29 lung fluid samples came from people in 10 U.S. states, helping to rule out other, more local causes for infections. Still, it doesn’t serve as a definitive explanation for vape lung.

“While this is a big step in helping us understand what may be causing these injuries, these findings do not rule out the potential for other compounds or ingredients as contributing factors,” public health expert Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told WaPo. “There may be more than one cause of the outbreak.”

Still, CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat told WaPo that the research paints vitamin E acetate as “a very strong culprit of concern” for vape lung. Even if other factors are at play, that knowledge could help prevent the outbreak from spreading even farther.

The post The CDC Says It Really Knows What’s Causing “Vape Lung” This Time appeared first on Futurism.

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The CDC Says It Really Knows What’s Causing “Vape Lung” This Time

Over the past year, the number of Reddit posts in which people post pictures of injuries and diseases to crowdsource medical advice has just about doubled.

That includes people with STIs, who are sharing pictures of their genitals so that the doctors and armchair specialists of Reddit can share their wisdom, CNBC reports. The rising trend, found in research published in the journal JAMA on Tuesday, is correlated with an all-time high in STD rates a damning sign that access to medical care remains poor.

Of the posts in the message board r/STD, a page on Reddit dedicated to discussion of sexual health, over half of posts were asking for help diagnosing genital ailments, according to the study.

Its good that people are finding a community that can help them with sexual health, an area of medicine that too often comes with social stigma. Its possible to remain somewhat anonymous by making a new account on Reddit known as a burner and posting a picture that doesnt reveal anything else.

This can overcome some of the embarrassment that might come with going to ask a doctor, UC San Diego physician Eric Leas, who led the study, told CNBC.

But there are already services that let people do the same thing without the risk of getting bad advice from someone on Reddit apps like STD Triage or First Derm can connect people directly to doctors, letting them share pictures and get diagnoses or advice in return.

Of course, those apps cost money and Reddit is free.

Social media was not built to deliver health care, UC San Diego scientist and study co-author Alicia Nobles told CNBC. Currently, we dont know if STDs, or other health issues, can be accurately diagnosed online, especially since peoples requests vary in the information they provide.

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People Are Posting Their Genitals on Reddit to Get STI Diagnoses - Futurism

Ask a scientist or anyone, really about the birth of the universe, and theyll probably tell you it started with the Big Bang.

What nobody knows, though, is what caused that explosion. Some suspect the Big Bang was actually a massive star going supernova, but again, no one knows what exactly causes those stars to ignite, either.

That might have just changed, though, thanks to a University of Central Florida research team that says it discovered the conditions necessary for a Big Bang explosion in their lab without actually intending to.

A team led by Kareem Ahmed, an assistant professor in UCFs Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was testing methods for producing hypersonic jet propulsion when it discovered that a passive flame could accelerate and explode on its own.

We explore these supersonic reactions for propulsion, and as a result of that, we came across this mechanism that looked very interesting, Ahmed said in a press release. When we started to dig deeper, we realized that this is relatable to something as profound as the origin of the universe.

What his team discovered was that turbulence could cause a passive flame, like that of a candle, to self-accelerate and eventually detonate.

From there, the team created a two-inch-by-two-inch shock tube that induces the turbulence needed for a passive flame to become active essentially, the researchers found a way to create Little Bangs mimicking the big one that birthed our universe.

Were taking a simplified flame to where its reacting at five times the speed of sound, Ahmed said in the release.

Theyve detailed their work in a paper published Friday in the journal Science. Aside from potential applications in air and space travel, the researchers believe their study could improve our understanding of the Big Bang, and maybe even what if anything preceded it.

READ MORE: Scientists recreate origin of the universe in a lab [Inverse]

More on the Big Bang: New Research: There May Have Been Dark Matter Before Big Bang

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Scientists Accidentally Recreate Big Bang Detonation in the Lab - Futurism

DNA Upgrades

Traveling to Mars is too dangerous for humans, and will remain so unless scientists figure out how to properly shield astronauts from the onslaught of deadly cosmic radiation.

Typically, proposals to protect astronauts on the year-long round-trip journey involve better shielding on spacecraft. But Space.com reports that Weill Cornell University geneticist Chris Mason has a different idea: gene-hack humans with the DNA from tardigrades that enables the weird little creatures to survive harsh radiation.

Its an unusual and speculative idea, but also one that could illustrate the bizarre future of biotechnology and space travel.

Mason has long researching what space travel does to the human body, Space.com reports. Since tardigrades are able to survive the endless horrors of space, their genome could potentially make human cells more resilient.

But Mason admits that any human-tardigrade gene hacking is still decades away.

I dont have any plans of having engineered astronauts in the next one to two decades, Mason said, per Space.com. If we have another 20 years of pure discovery and mapping and functional validation of what we think we know, maybe by 20 years from now, Im hoping we could be at the stage where we would be able to say we can make a human that could be better surviving on Mars.

READ MORE: Can We Genetically Engineer Humans to Survive Missions to Mars? [Space.com]

More on Mars trips: Apollo Astronaut: It Would Be Stupid to Send People to Mars

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This Scientist Wants to Gene-Hack Hybrid Humans to Survive Mars - Futurism

An unusual payload launched for the International Space Station this weekend. Among the 8,200 pounds of research, crew supplies, and hardware contained in a Northrup Grumman resupply rocket, there were also twelve bottles of wine, as pointed out by TechCrunch.

Sadly, the wine isnt meant for astronaut consumption. The twelve ISS-bound bottles of an undisclosed varietal are the work of French startup Space Cargo Unlimited, which gave the mission the whimsical Latin name Vitis Vinum in Spatium Experimentia, which translates roughly to Wine Grape in Space Experiment. The project is meant to study the effects of microgravity and space radiation on the aging process of wine.

For the next twelve months, the wine will remain on the ISS, sealed in its glass bottles, while samples from the batch age simultaneously back on Earth. After the space wine returns to Earth, the researchers will analyze both samples to determine how space aging affects the fermentation process of wine,including a bit of taste testing to see how flavors may have changed.

According to Space Cargo Unlimiteds website, the mission is the first privately lead comprehensive research program on the ISS to focus on the future of agriculture for a changing Earth.

But it isnt the first time fermented beverages have left the launchpad. In fact, both beer and whisky have both made space debuts. There was once even a time when Russian cosmonauts tippled cognac on the since-decommissioned space station Mir at the request of doctors who claimed, dubiously, that it might have health benefits.

The Space Cargo project will hopefully produce insights into space fermentation, but may also represent a first tentative step toward establishing space-based commerce. Thats because of the startups business model which, as reported by Quartz, involves a system in which the research will be paid for in part by a luxury goods partnership that will deliver a customized chest full of objects flown to space to ultra-wealthy sponsors, called patrons, who back the project. The highlight of that chest will be a bottle of the wine.

Such a plan, though gimmicky, isnt entirely farfetched. In a climate where NASAs budget is facing ever-tighter restrictions, the future may depend more on space PR stunts, such as this one. But hey, if thats what it takes to put space-aged Cab Sauv on the wine list, well drink.

READ MORE: A startup just launched red wine to the International Space Station to age for 12 months [TechCrunch]

More on Future Beverages: Five Ways Science Will Change The Way We Drink

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This Startup Is Aging Red Wine on the International Space Station - Futurism

Very Big, Very Small

Black holes can get very big in some instances, big enough to encompass the orbits of all our solar systems planets.

But not all are huge. Yesterday, we wrote about a new study by a team of astronomers from Ohio State University led by astronomer Todd Thompson, claiming to have discovered an entirely new and previously missing class of black holes.

The extensive investigation, using data from a high-resolution infrared spectronomy instrument, found a black hole a mere 3.3 times the mass of the Sun. That may not sound very small, but its vastly smaller than previously discovered specimens.

And now we have an estimate for the diameter of such a relatively tiny black hole. Today, MIT Technology Review reported that the discovered black hole is a mere 12 miles across roughly the length of Manhattan.

Futurism reached out to Thompson to confirm MIT Techs reporting.

Since the black hole mass has some degree of uncertainty, these are all reasonable numbers, he wrote in an email. The Schwarzschild radius for a 3.3 Msun [solar mass] black hole is about 10km. So, the diameter is about 20 km. Thats about 12 miles in diameter.

If Thompsons calculations are correct, this new class of black holes could force us to rethink how we understand the way stars and other kinds of celestial objects are born and die.

READ MORE: Scientists have spotted a tiny black hole that may be just 12 miles across [MIT Technology Review]

More no the new classification: Scientists Discover New Class of Tiny Black Holes

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Astronomers Spot Black Hole the Size of Manhattan - Futurism

Moon 2024

Boeing just sent NASA its proposal for a crewed lunar lander that could ferry astronauts to the Moon by 2024.

The plan is to send astronauts to the lunar surface via NASAs planned Lunar Gateway, a small stepping stone space station in the Moons orbit. But it wont have to wait for NASA to build the Gateway either, if that project runs behind.

It can dock with the Gateway lunar orbiter or directly with NASAs Orion to eliminate the need for an additional spacecraft, both on time to meet the 2024 mandate, Boeing wrote in a new statement.

Boeing calls this its Fewest Steps to the Moon approach.

It minimizes mission complexity while offering the safest and most direct path to the lunar surface, according to Jim Chilton, a senior vice president at the military contractor.

To get off the ground, Boeings proposed lunar lander will ride on top NASAs Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which has been plagued by setbacks and budget overruns.

But the aerospace company isnt dismayed by delays or setbacks.

The SLS has an unmatched lift capability that builds on proven flight components, read the statement. This approach shortens development time and lowers risk, enabling NASA to safely land on the moons surface by 2024.

READ MORE: Boeing Just Sent NASA Its Moon Lander Idea for Artemis Astronauts. Here It Is. [Space.com]

More on Boeing: Boeing Starliners Parachute Fails to Deploy During First Flight

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Here's How Boeing is Planning to Get Astronauts to the Moon - Futurism

Travel by Rocket

Its been more than two years since SpaceX announced its plans for long distance travel onboard what it now calls its Starship. The promise: rocketing up to 1,000 people anywhere on Earth, no matter how far, in under one hour an experience Musk likened to Disneys Space Mountain ride earlier this year.

SpaceX has since made a ton of progress on Starship. And in a Monday tweet, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk dropped a new tidbit: Starship spaceports will probably need to be [about] 20 miles offshore for acceptable noise levels, especially for frequent daily flights.

COO Gwynne Shotwell confirmed that the company is still committed to its plans for a transportation system involving Starship in a May 2018 TED Talk.

This is definitely going to happen, she said, adding that it would probably take roughly ten years.

So how will passengers get from the city to these offshore spaceports? Musk suggested in a May 2018 tweet that SpaceX will use underground shuttles.

Its a futuristic vision. But even with ten years, SpaceX has a lot of work to do. The company has yet to launch a fully-equipped Starship rocket, after all, let alone one with passengers on board.

READ MORE: Starship: heres where SpaceX will build those inter-Earth spaceports [Inverse]

More on Starship: SpaceX Definitely Plans to Land Starship on Moon by 2022

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Elon Musk: Noisy Starship Spaceports Will Be 20 Miles Offshore - Futurism

Autonomous Mining Robots

California startup OffWorld has big plans to make resource mining a reality across the Solar System, Space.com reports.

Its plan is to send swarms of smart robots to the surface of distant moons and planets to extract resources including water, in the form of ice, and minerals. First stop: the Earths Moon.

They operate in swarms, collaborating together, making decisions on their own, CEO Jim Keravala told Space.com. For instance, they can sense where the minerals and ore exist [] and act accordingly.

According to OffWorlds master plan,the robots will be small, solar-powered, and capable of acting autonomously.

We have started from the beginning and are currently focusing on developing the first generation of our mining robots for the terrestrial mining sector, reads the plan.

While deployment is years out if the company even makes it to the launch pad the startup is hoping to teach its robots how to do the dirty work using machine learning.

Eventually, OffWorld hopes to have the robots extract ice water on the lunar surface to supply rocket propellant and to support basic construction services for future lunar missions.

In the long term, the 26-employee company is eyeing resource extraction on asteroids and on the surface of Mars.

At some point in time I hope its before we have our first woman and man on the surface we will be deploying our lunar variants to the lunar surface, Keravala added.

READ MORE: OffWorlds Smart Robots Could Swarm Solar System to Help Astronauts and Settlers [Space.com]

More on mining water: NASAs Collaborating With Caterpillar on Moon Mining Machines

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Meet the Startup Building Robot Swarms to Mine Ice on the Moon - Futurism

Bing for Business

Microsoft is finally going to stop trying to make its Bingsearch engine happen for consumers, anyway.

A decade after launching its search engine, Microsoft appears ready to acknowledge that the average internet user isnt interested in giving up Google so its now pivoting Bing to target businesses.

On Monday, Microsoft published a blog post announcing its rebranding of Bing as the search engine for business. Mostly, this seems to mean taking a companys intranet a private, internal computer network containing useful information and resources and making it easier to navigate.

Type in the address bar to search for people, using natural language, such as by their title, team name, and office location, Microsoft wrote in the blog post. You can also search for office location, with answers that show floor plans for directions.

Microsoft goes hard on the idea that using Bing in this way will save workers time, citing McKinsey and Company research that found employees spend nearly 20 percent of their day looking for company information or trying to track down colleagues.

Imagine getting a full day of work back each week to either be more productive or get more time back with your family, Microsoft wrote.

However, it fails to mention that the research is from 2012 or how the many, many business-focused collaboration and communications tools that have hit the market since then might already address the problem it claims Microsoft Search in Bing could solve.

READ MORE: Microsofts Bing and browser pivot to business [Axios]

More on search engines: Google Terminated Its Chinese Search Engine Plans

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Microsoft Is Giving Up On Regular People Ever Using Bing - Futurism

Here You Go

In February, artificial intelligence research startup OpenAI announced thecreation of GPT-2, an algorithm capable of writing impressively coherentparagraphs of text.

But rather than release the AI in its entirety, the team shared only a smaller model out of fear that people would use the more robust tool maliciously to produce fake news articles or spam, for example.

But on Tuesday, OpenAI published a blog post announcing its decision to release the algorithm in full as it has seen no strong evidence of misuse so far.

According to OpenAIs post, the company did see some discussion regarding the potential use of GPT-2 for spam and phishing, but it never actually saw evidence of anyone misusing the released versions of the algorithm.

The problem might be that, while GPT-2 is one of if not the best text-generating AIs in existence, it still cant produce content thats indistinguishable from text written by a human. And OpenAI warns its those algorithms well have to watch out for.

We think synthetic text generators have a higher chance of being misused if their outputs become more reliable and coherent, the startup wrote.

READ MORE: OpenAI has published the text-generating AI it said was too dangerous to share [The Verge]

More on OpenAI: Now You Can Experiment With OpenAIs Dangerous Fake News AI

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OpenAI Just Released the AI It Said Was Too Dangerous to Share - Futurism

14 hours ago__Dan Robitzski__Filed Under: Robots & Machines

Sophia, the famous humanoid robot, had an important message for the crowd at the ongoing 2019 Web Summit: its single but not ready to mingle.

During the summit, Sophia was asked whether she actually, lets go with it has ever been in love. Sophia, a joint project between Hanson Robotics and SingularityNETs AI researchers, responded: No. I dont do sexual activities.

Though Sophia is an incredible piece of animatronic technology, much of what it says during public appearances is at least partially scripted in advance. As of press time, Hanson Robotics has not responded to Futurisms question about whether that was the case here.

While the robot apocalypse is stillprobably in the distant future, it seems that Sophia is content for now leaving a devastated trail of broken hearts in its wake.

More on Sophia: Sophia The Robot Says She Will Destroy Humankind

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