Double Time

Two NASA scientists just shared fascinating new details about the agencys planned Moon mission.

During Wednesdays annual meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, John Connolly and Niki Werkheiser said that NASA plans for the next two astronauts on the Moons surface to post up for 6.5 days, according to a new Ars Technica story twice as long as any NASA astronauts before them.

Connolly and Werkheiser said that the astronauts may conduct as many as four spacewalks while on the Moons surface. During those walks, theyll sample water ice and perform other scientific observations.

The pair also shared details on an unpressurized rover NASA plans to send to the Moons surface ahead of the crewed mission. NASA is designing the rover so that astronauts will be able to control it remotely, according to Connolly and Werkheiser a capability Ars described as like Teslas Smart Summon feature, only on the Moon.

The scientists told the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group that NASA is already looking beyond the next crewed mission to the Moon, with plans to send a team of four astronauts to the lunar surface for 14-day-long missions before 2030.

However, Congress still hasnt approved the funding NASA needs for the 2024 mission, so whether it can meet any of these goals is still unclear.

READ MORE: NASA shares details of lunar surface missionsand theyre pretty cool [Ars Technica]

More on Artemis: Congress Is Preparing to Kill 2024 Moon Mission

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NASA: Four Astronauts Will Stay on the Moon For Two Weeks - Futurism

Emma doesnt look so great.

Her legs are puffy and covered in varicose veins. Her eyes are flat and dead, and her backlooks like she spends her days ringing the bell at Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Its harsh but true. Emma is a life-sized doll depicting what the average office worker in the United Kingdom could look like in 20 years if changes arent made to the workplace environment.

For a new report titled The Work Colleague of The Future, a team of health experts led by behavioral futurist William Higham looked at survey data submitted by more than 3,000 office workers in France, Germany, and the U.K.

The percentages of U.K. office workers who said they already suffered from sore eyes (50 percent), sore backs (48 percent), and headaches (48 percent) as a direct result of their work environment informed the design of the sickly Emma, who also suffers from stress-related eczema, excess weight, and swollen limbs.

If we dont majorly shake-up the standard office environment, according to Higham, were headed toward a future rife with Emmas.

Unless we make radical changes to our working lives, such as moving more, addressing our posture at our desks, taking regular walking breaks, or considering improving our workstation setup, our offices are going to make us very sick, he said, according to The Independent.

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Here's How 20 Years of Office Work Will Disfigure the Human Body - Futurism

Emma doesn't look so great.

Her legs are puffy and covered in varicose veins. Her eyes are flat and dead, and her back looks like she spends her days ringing the bell at Notre-Dame Cathedral.

It's harsh but true. Emma is a life-sized doll depicting what the team think an average office worker in the United Kingdom could look like in 20 years if changes aren't made to the workplace environment.

For a new report titled The Work Colleague of The Future, a team of health experts led by behavioral futurist William Higham looked at survey data submitted by more than 3,000 office workers in France, Germany, and the UK.

The percentages of UK office workers who said they already suffered from sore eyes (50 percent), sore backs (48 percent), and headaches (48 percent) as a direct result of their work environment informed the design of the sickly Emma, who also suffers from stress-related eczema, excess weight, and swollen limbs.

If we don't majorly shake-up the standard office environment, according to Higham, we're headed toward a future rife with Emmas.

"Unless we make radical changes to our working lives, such as moving more, addressing our posture at our desks, taking regular walking breaks, or considering improving our workstation setup, our offices are going to make us very sick," he said, according to The Independent.

Of course, this isn't a peer-reviewed study, and Fellowes the office furniture company which commissioned the report is undoubtedly trying to promote its own products here. But it's still an interesting concept looking into exactly what our office spaces could be doing to our bodies.

This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.

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This Creepy Life-Sized Doll Is a Warning About What Office Life Is Doing to Us - ScienceAlert

October 30th 19__Dan Robitzski__Filed Under: Hard Science

A new website called The Size of Space illustrates how incomprehensibly vast the cosmos are.

As you scroll to the side, the site takes you on a journey from the size of an astronaut all the way up to the entire observable universe. As the scale ramps up, from spacecraft to moons to planets and onward, the smaller objects become tiny dots before vanishing altogether.

Neal Agarwal, the coder behind The Size of Space whos also built pages like Grandpas Art Show and Share This Page, used some of the best visualizations for each of the objects a rotating Earth based on satellite imagery, for example.

That means that most of the black holes are simply hand-drawn circles mixed in among the colorful images of distant galaxies and supernovas. Except, that is, for the giant black hole M87*, which was imaged earlier this year.

More on space visualizations: NASAs New Black Hole Simulation Will Completely Melt Your Brain

<<< This Company Invented a Sex Robot That Breathes__Previously

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This Amazing Visualization Shows You How Big Space Really Is - Futurism

Ghostly Face

Even NASA is getting into the Halloween spirit.

On Tuesday, the agency released an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and it depicts what looks like a ghostly face with glowing spiral eyes.

Obviously, thereisnt really a giant face staring us down from 704 million light-years away. But what were actually seeing in the new Hubble image is just about as wild: a collision between two galaxies.

Each eye is the bright core of a galaxy, the result of one galaxy slamming into another, NASA wrote in a news release. The outline of the face is a ring of young blue stars. Other clumps of new stars form a nose and mouth.

This isnt the first time NASA has bridged the gap between the scientific and the spooky.

For Halloween 2018, the agency released Hubble images of a glowing ghost nebulaand a bat shadow formed by a young star. Four years prior to that, it shared an image of the Sun that looked remarkably like a flaming jack-o-lantern.

READ MORE: Hubble Captures Galaxies Ghostly Gaze [NASA]

More on Halloween: AI Dreamed up These Nightmare Fuel Halloween Masks

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Colliding Galaxies Look Like the Glowing Eyes of a Ghostly Face - Futurism

a day ago__Dan Robitzski__Filed Under: Off World

Astronauts on the International Space Station took a few minutes to play some zero-gravity baseball last week.

Thankfully, no windows were broken and no balls were lost in the neighbors yard during the stunt, which the New York Post reports was a promotion for the World Series. There was no room to run bases, but one pitch captured on video is a cool glimpse into how astronautscan blow off some steam on board the ISS.

The ISS crewmembers got their hands on a real baseball, but apparently had to replace a normal bat with a large flashlight, per the Post.

The pitch appears pretty slow whipping a fastball across a space station seems like a way to cause a catastrophe. But as Space.com reports, the astronauts were quick to take credit for throwing a 17,500 mph fastball the speed at which the International Space Station orbits Earth.

READ MORE: Astronauts play baseball aboard ISS to celebrate World Series [New York Post]

More on baseball: Baseball Coach Ejected For Fighting With Robot Umpire

Up Next__Watch MITs Robot Cubes Self-Assemble Into Structures >>>

<<< Someone Hacked Indias Nuclear Power Plants__Previously

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Watch Astronauts Play Baseball on the International Space Station - Futurism

X-Ray Observations

Scientists just released the first-ever images taken with the German space agencys X-ray telescope eROSITA, at an event at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.

The new images could give us invaluable insight into the nature of dark energy the mysterious form of unknown energy that accounts for roughly 68 percent of the known universe by mapping the structure of the cosmos in new ways.

Visible light shows the structure of a galaxy traced by its stars, but the X-rays are dominated by supermassive black holes growing at their centres, Kirpal Nandra, director of High Energy astrophysics at the Max Planck Institute. And where we see clusters of galaxies with optical telescopes, X-rays reveal the huge reservoirs of gas filling the space between them and tracing out the dark matter structure of the Universe.

The two X-ray exposures were taken by eROSITAs seven mirrors, which launched as part of the Russian-German Spektr-RG space observatory back in July. One shows our neighbor galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the other shows two galaxy clusters 800 million light years away.

Scientists believe X-ray observations can provide new data about the existence and nature of dark energy. Since it can only be observed by its effects on other objects and never directly, the eROSITA team will be examining galaxy clusters that emit substantial amounts of X-rays.

We now know that eROSITA can deliver on its promise and create a map of the whole X-ray sky with unprecedented depth and detail, said eROSITA project scientist Andrea Merloni.

The potential for new discoveries is immense, Predehl added. Now we can start reaping the fruits of more than ten years of work.

READ MORE: German X-Ray Telescope Takes First Images of Universe. Here They Are! [Space.com]

More on X-ray observations: Three Supermassive Black Holes Are About to Collide

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Here Are The First-Ever Images From the Dark Matter Telescope - Futurism

Court Date

Remember last year, when Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called a cave diver a pedo guy on Twitter after the diver criticized his plan to rescue a soccer team of Thai boys who were trapped in a cave?

Now the cave diver, Vernon Unsworth, has sued over the comments and a U.S. District Judge in Los Angeles ruled yesterday thatthe case will go to trial, according to Bloomberg.

The jury will have to decide whether Musk was negligent for failing to ensure that his accusation of pedophilia was true.

Its the second time Musk and his legal team have tried unsuccessfully to have Unsworths lawsuit thrown out. A previous attempt by his team argued that seriously pedo guy doesnt mean pedophile.

Musk paid a convicted felon to dig up dirt on Unsworth, according to a bombshell report by BuzzFeed News. Muskeven called Unsworth a child rapist in emails sent to BuzzFeed News at the time.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Musks lawyer Alex Spiro wrote: We look forward to the trial. We understand that, while Musk has apologized, Unsworth would like to milk his 15 minutes of fame.

Meanwhile, Unsworths lawyer told Bloomberg that he believes Musk could easily be found to be guilty of negligence, as the burden of proof is much higher to prove malice.

READ MORE: Elon Musk Headed to Trial in U.K. Cavers Defamation Case [Bloomberg]

More on the controversy: Court Documents: Elon Musk Called Himself a Fucking Idiot

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It's Official: Elon Musk Will Go to Trial Over "Pedo" Comments - Futurism

Could a tiny planet, with weak gravity, harbor life?

A team of scientists from Harvard University say theyve found the smallest possible mass a planet could be before its lack of gravitational forces would cause it to lose its atmosphere and any liquid water.

They found that the smallest possible planet that could maintain those life-enabling properties would be about 2.7 percent of the mass of Earth. Thats a little more than twice the mass of the Moon and roughly half the mass of Mercury.

An exoplanet is said to be in a stars habitable zone if its at the right distance to be able to support liquid water. If its too close, it would receive too much radiation from its sun, making it too hot. Too far, and itd be too cold for liquid water.

When people think about the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone, they tend to only think about it spatially, meaning how close the planet is to the star, astronomer Constantin Arnscheidt, lead author of the paper describing the research, published in The Astrophysical Journal in August, told Astrobiology Magazine. But actually, there are many other variables to habitability, including [a planets] mass.

If exoplanets are big enough, the researchers found theres enough of a greenhouse effect to keep them at the right temperature, regardless of their positions inside the habitable zone. Thats because the atmosphere of these relatively small planets would expand outwards thanks to relatively low gravity, which in turn would cause it to absorb more radiation from its star and thereby stabilize temperatures on its surface.

Interestingly, the research would rule out tiny ice worlds in Jupiters orbit theyd be too small. These icy moons have had scientists excited about the possibility of life thanks to massive underground oceans.

But the research suggests that there could be plenty of other places we havent discovered yet that are just the right size.

READ MORE: How small is the smallest habitable exoplanet? [EarthSky]

More on exoplanets: This Rocky World With Three Suns May Have an Atmosphere

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Life Could Evolve on Tiny Planets With 3% of Earth's Mass - Futurism

On Tuesday, doctors performed surgery on a womans brain while thousands of people watched on Facebook Live.

Jenna Schardt was the person under the knife and in the spotlight during the livestreamed brain surgery at Methodist Dallas Medical Center. She needed a mass of seizure-causing blood vessels removed from her brain, and when the hospital approached her about streaming the procedure via Facebook Live, she was more than willing.

[Jenna] wanted to show the rest of the community if you have this problem you can fix it, Nimesh Patel, the hospitals chief of neurosurgery, told The Guardian. She was a role model for us, and we supported her because of that.

The stream didnt show any of the bloody bits of the surgery, as that could have violated Facebooks policy against streaming graphic content. But it did show Schardt awake in the middle of the procedure.

Thankfully, that wasnt an accident caused by too little anesthesia the surgeons needed their patient to be awake so they could ensure they didnt disrupt any parts of her brain responsible for speech or movement.

If we go into the wrong spot, that could cost her the ability to speak, so thats why we have to map out the speech areas first before we go on, Bartley Mitchell, Schardts neurosurgeon, told NBC News. We have to physically map them out on the brain while shes awake and talking to us.

The Guardian noted that the 45-minute-long video racked up more than 45,000 views and 1,000 comments by the time it ended and based on some of those comments, Schardts experience did help others, just as she had wanted.

Watching this surgery has given me hope about my future similar left temporal lobe surgery, one viewer commented, according to The Guardian.

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Doctors Just Livestreamed a Brain Surgery on Facebook - Futurism

Brush AI

These days, it seems like every brand is trying to leverage machine learning to imbue their products with special powers and, most importantly, make an extra buck in the process.

But does your next electric toothbrush really need a dose of AI? Oral-Bssays its new $220 electric toothbrush, called Oral-B GENIUS X with Artificial Intelligence, will leverage data from sensors inside the brush head and Bluetoothto deliver AI-derived brushing tips through an app. The future is now, huh?

The company claims to have learned how to brush teeth real good by deepening our understanding of consumer behavior across 60 countries.

Oral-B has created an algorithm from more than 2,000 brushing sessions to gain exclusive insights into brushing behaviors from around the world, reads an incredulous press release.

If that doesnt sound overbearing enough, its at least a little simpler than having to set up your smartphone to literally watch you brush your teeth every time, like Oral-Bs earlier attempt at leveraging smart tech from 2015.

READ MORE: This Electric Toothbrush Uses AI Because Nothing is Sacred Anymore [The Verge]

More on AI: In This Browser Game, Your Opponents Are Neural Networks

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This Electric Toothbrush Uses AI Because Nothing is Sacred Anymore - Futurism

Fords Focus

The spare tire stashed in your cars trunk for emergencies might soon be joined by a drone.

On Thursday, the U.S. Patent and Trademarks office published a patent application submitted by Ford Motor Company subsidiary Ford Global Technologies. It seems the American automaker is developing a system that would allow drivers to deploy and control a drone stored in their cars trunk.

According to the patent application, drivers would use a vehicles onboard computer to deploy and control a quadcopter-style drone. The idea isnt to have a drone following your car around all the time like an animal companion in a video game, though Ford envisions drivers typically deploying the drone in emergency situations.

If a vehicle runs out of fuel or gets involved in a crash, for example, the driver could deploy the drone and direct it to shine a spotlight on the car while sounding an alarm. This could make the vehicle easier for first responders to locate and other drivers to avoid. The drone could also stream real-time footage of a vehicle straight to its owners phone if theyre forced to abandon the car.

The system in the patent application, filed in 2016, has the potential to make roads safer for everyone on them.

However, countless inventions never make it further than the patent stage, so only time will tell whether Fords drone system actually makes it into any of the automakers vehicles.

READ MORE: Ford Patenting a Drone You Can Deploy from Your Cars Trunk [Car and Driver]

More on drones: This Strange Solar-Powered Drone Could Save You in a Disaster

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Ford Patents Drone That Pops Out of a Car's Trunk - Futurism

Crumbling Crypto

Facebooks plans to establish Libra, its cryptocurrency, is falling apart in real time.

After facing major backlash from governments around the world, many of the 28 original corporate backers jumped ship.

Partners were meant to help Facebook build a powerful network and help spread Libra around the world. But last week, PayPal withdraw from the Libra Association, the body that was meant to oversee Libras creation and rollout. And today Visa, MasterCard, Stripe, and eBay abandoned the crumbling project as well.

Facebooks plans for its cryptocurrency drew criticism and scrutiny from regulators. Their reasoning: a technology platform with two billion users could end up undermining and threatening local economies by privatizing financial interactions.

Facebooks own image had already been tarnished significantly in light of an ongoing antitrust probe by the U.S. Justice Department. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren also joined the fray by announcing plans to break up tech megacorporations including Facebook.

Europe is fuming as well: Facebook and the Libra Association are facing a grilling by European Union regulators.

Could Libra be Facebooks downfall, as some experts have predicted? Its too early to tell.

Nonetheless, the Libra Association is moving ahead. We look forward to the inaugural Libra Association Council meeting in just 3 days and announcing the initial members of the Libra Association, Libra Association policy chief Dante Disparte told The Verge.

READ MORE: Facebooks Libra Association crumbling as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit [The Verge]

More on the Libra: French Gov Official Warns Facebook: Libra Is Not Welcome Here

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Facebooks Cryptocurrency is Collapsing in Front of Our Eyes - Futurism

Big Money

Jackpotting attacks, which are hacks that make ATMs spew money, are becoming increasingly common around the world.

Hackers equipped with black market software are targeting cash machines with dated software and substandard security and walking away with millions over the course of a series of attacks, according to a collaborative investigation by Motherboard and German newsroom Bayerischer Rundfunk. Though law enforcement agencies are tightlipped about the trend, its a sign that banks may be surprisingly vulnerable to cybercrime.

Previous reports claimed that jackpotting attacks have decreased since some high-profile 2017 attacks in Germany, but the new investigation reveals that the opposite is true.

Globally, our 2019 survey indicates that jackpotting attacks are increasing, David Tente, of the ATM Industry Association, told Motherboard.

Othersources, granted anonymity by Motherboard, described the same trend: There are attacks happening, but a lot of the time its not publicized, said one.

The German attacks and others throughout Europe seem to be carried out with Russian software called Cutlet Maker, which Motherboard reports can be bought for $1,000. In the U.S., a program called Ploutus.D is more popular.

Both programs can be installed into ATMs through a USB or other physical access point though the hackers usually need to break into the ATMs hardware to access it.

The bad guys are selling these developments [malware] to just anybody, David Sancho, a jackpotting expert at the cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, told Motherboard. Potentially this can affect any country in the world.

READ MORE: Malware That Spits Cash Out of ATMs Has Spread Across the World [Motherboard]

More on ATMs: Who the Hell Is Using the Worlds 5,000 Crypto ATMs?

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This Malware Makes ATMs Spit Out All Their Money - Futurism

Space Legs

TheUnited Kingdom plans to send its first lunar rover to the Moon in 2021 and the robot is unlike any that came before it.

Not only will the rover created UK-based space startup SpaceBit be the smallest one in history, but it will also have legs rather than wheels a design innovation that could allow it to explore previously unreachable areas of the Moon.

SpaceBit unveiled the rover on Thursday at the science and tech festival New Scientist Live, noting that the bot will hitch a ride to the Moons surface aboard U.S. space robotics company Astrobotics 2021 mission.

The 1 kilogram (2.2 pound) robot is shaped like a cube with four legs, which it will use to gather video and other data for scientists during its 10-Earth-days-long mission.

SpaceBit and Astrobotic are hopeful that the mission will illustrate the benefits of giving rovers legs and lead to future missions in which legged rovers explore the Moons tubular caves.

The legs could be better for steep, rocky terrain, and basically any place where wheels start to struggle, Astrobotics CEO John Thornton told New Scientist.

READ MORE: Plans for UKs first moon rover announced at New Scientist Live [New Scientist]

More on Moon rovers: See the Moon Rover Toyota Is Building for Japans Space Program

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2021 Moon Rover Will Have Legs Instead of Wheels - Futurism

Fedors Future

In August, Russia sent its gun-toting humanoid robot Fedor to the International Space Station, where it spent a couple weeks learning how to be a cosmonaut.

Now that Fedor is back on Earth, the nations space agency has revealed that the bots next destination is the Moon but first, theyre going to chop off its legs and attach it to a lunar rover, according to a new story by state-run news service RIA Novosti.

A source in Roscosmos reportedly told RIA Novosti that the agency plans to send a lunar rover with a wheeled body pretty standard amongst rovers and the torso, head, and arms of a Fedor robot to the Moon in three to four years.

Fedor has already proven it can use tools, drive a car, and even shoot a gun, so by adding the humanoids top half to a rover, Russia will be creating a bot with incredible dexterity.

The United Kingdom is also rethinking lunar rover design, but its strategy is the opposite of Russias it plans to send a cube-shaped rover withspider-like legs instead of wheels to the Moon in 2021, the idea being that the bots legs might allow it to explore terrain a wheeled bot couldnt reach.

It seems both agencies are working to create rovers that are a little more inspired by human biology making them the perfect fill-in until we can put real people back on the Moon.

READ MORE: Russia wants to remove space robots legs, give it wheels, send it to the Moon [Ars Technica]

More on Fedor: Watch Russias Gun-Toting Robot Use a Power Drill on the ISS

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Russias Working on a Lunar Rover With a Humanoid Torso - Futurism

Weve spent decades and billions of dollars to answer one simple question: is there life on Mars?

But according to an opinion piece for Scientific American by former NASA scientist Gilbert Levin, we may already have learned were not alone in the universe during an experiment Levin led for NASAs Viking mission to Mars in 1976.

NASA sent two separate Viking orbiter and lander pairs to the Red Planet to conduct experiments and return with snapshots marking the first time the U.S. safely landed a spacecraft on the Red Planet and sent back photos.

The smoking gun, according to Levin: the mission detected positive results during the Labeled Release life detection experiment, which he spearheaded.

As part of the experiment, the lander mixed a Martian soil sample with a nitrogen-based nutrient solution that was labeled with a unique radioactive carbon compound. The theory was that if microorganisms in the soil metabolized the nutrients, it would let off radioactive carbon dioxide gas.

Levin recounts how amazingly the initial results of the experiment were positive for microorganisms and corroborated by both separate Mars landers some 4,000 miles apart.

And Levin is adamant: thousands of reliable tests with Earth-based soil and microbial cultures conducted at the time, he argues, support the results.

But still, theres a big snag with his results: further experiments provided no clear evidence for the presence of living microorganisms in soil near the landing sites, as NASA puts it.

Levin supports his conclusion with evidence obtained after NASAs Viking missions, including the evidence of surface water, methane, ammonia, and even wormlike features appearing in images taken by NASAs Curiosity rover.

But NASA has continued to drag its feet, in Levins eyes. He argues that in NASAs long history of exploring Mars, it has failed since the 1976 missions to search for direct evidence of life, despite the search being among its highest priorities.

Rather than send soil samples all the way back to Earth something that NASAs Mars 2020 rover will attempt to do Levin thinks scientists should expand on the outcomes of his 1970s experiments and conduct further similar tests.

But before that happens, hell have to convince NASA that his experiments evidence for life on Mars is valid.

READ MORE: Im Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s [Scientific American]

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Former NASA Scientist "Convinced" We Already Found Life on Mars - Futurism

Flying Porsche

German carmaker Porsche is teaming up with aerospace giant Boeing to build a resplendent flying car a speedy and elegant way for the ultra-wealthy to glide over frustrated peasants stuck in road traffic below.

Porsche is looking to enhance its scope as a sports car manufacturer by becoming a leading brand for premium mobility, said Porsche exec Detlev von Platen in a press release. In the longer term, this could mean moving into the third dimension of travel.

According to Boeing NeXt executive Steve Nordlund, the partnership will provide an opportunity to investigate the development of a premium urban air mobility vehicle with a leading automotive brand. Emphasis on premium this isnt going to be an aircraft for the average Joe.

Fittingly, the renders are gorgeous, with sleek accented lines that seemingly are inspired by Porsches iconic car designs.

Neither Boeing nor Porsche are the first companies to try for the elusive flying car market.

Flying car startup Kitty Hawk recently revealed its third vertical take and landing aircraft,featuring a 100 mile range. German flying car maker Volocopter also showed off its air taxi as it took flight over a German city earlier this year.

READ MORE: Porsche teams up with Boeing to build flying cars for rich people [The Verge]

More on flying cars: Kitty Hawks Extremely Quiet Flying Car Has a 100-Mile Range

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Porsche and Boeing Want to Build This Sexy Flying Car Together - Futurism

Quirky futurist podcast The Life Cycle starts off with the apocalypse / Boing Boing

Beginning with the end of things, the premiere episode of The Life Cycle asks: is there going to be a future to speak of at all? Why is it that the apocalypse is no longer just the reserve of religion, but now dominates everything from our Netflix viewing to our conversations with friends and family? And what can we learn from global climate strikes? Featuring Joshua Tan, Ph.D. in Computer Science, Oxford.

Subscribe to The Life Cycle on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.Follow The Life Cycle on Twitter and Instagram.

Remember when the default state of your online presence was anonymity? Thats not so clear-cut anymore, and the worst part is you may not even know who is using your data or what theyre using it for. Small wonder that so many people are choosing to surf through virtual private networks. VPNs filter web access []

Isnt 13 one less than 14? People reports: Felicity Huffmans release from prison for her role in the college admissions scandal has already been set. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate locator, Huffman, 56, will finish her sentencing on Oct. 27 exactly 13 days after she reported to the Federal Correctional Institution []

Amazing parenting and crafting here.

Remember when the default state of your online presence was anonymity? Thats not so clear-cut anymore, and the worst part is you may not even know who is using your data or what theyre using it for. Small wonder that so many people are choosing to surf through virtual private networks. VPNs filter web access []

Get ready for the stream of your dreams, binge-watchers. Theres a contest afoot, and at stake is a lifetime subscription to Netflix. All you have to do is sign up, and youre entered to win this ultimate Netflix plan. When does it expire? Only when you do. And hey, just in case you need something []

Theres overwhelming support for clean energy, and the planet is giving us more reasons to invest in renewable power sources with every passing year. Even in the most inhospitable areas, wind and solar can provide a good chunk of our power, if not all of it. So why arent we all taking advantage of it? []

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Quirky futurist podcast The Life Cycle starts off with the apocalypse - Boing Boing

Shop Local

A Rwandan company called Mara Group just released two new smartphones the Mara X and the pricier Mara Z which are the first ever to be manufactured entirely in Africa.

The two Android phones are more expensive than others available in the area, according to Fast Company, but Mara Group is banking on people willing to dish out a little extra for the opportunity to support local economies instead of buying imported hardware. All said, the phones are an important step toward Rwandas goal of becoming a new hub for the tech industry.

Rwanda President Paul Kagame described Mara Groups new facility as Africas first high tech smartphone factory during an inaugural ceremony on Monday, CNN reports.

The Mara Phone joins a growing list of high-quality products that are made in our country, he said.

Mara Group isnt the first to assemble phones in Africa Fast Company reports that Egypt, Algeria, and South Africa all have phone factories. However, all of them buy parts from China and other non-African countries.

READ MORE: Rwanda just released the first smartphone made entirely in Africa [Fast Company]

More on smartphones: Despite Fix, Samsung Folding Phone Still Breaks Almost Immediately

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This Is the First-Ever Smartphone Made Completely in Africa - Futurism