Daily Archives: November 7, 2020

The lights went out. I settled into my seat, drink in hand, anticipation building for the start of the show. But rather than watching the stage lights go up on, I clicked on a Zoom link. Welcome to theatre in the age of a pandemic, where health and safety protocols have forced theatres to drastically alter how they operate, from reducing seating to, like the Neo-Futurists, going completely virtual.

Before attending, I had heard of their show The Infinite Wrench before, but had never experienced it in real life. Essentially, they attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. Each play is about two minutes long, and the audience chooses the order in which the plays are performed. Digitally, the show is essentially the same, with the exception of audience choice. The show was streamed on YouTube, with each clip lasting around two minutes before autoplaying to the next.

via GIPHY

I came into the viewing pretty skeptical, of both The Infinite Wrenchs overall concept and its new virtual format. As far as I was concerned, theatre is supposed to be live and in-person. The performers should be so close you can hear their breathing, see their sheen under the stage lights and see their every move, even the unintended ones. I held the belief that theatre is supposed to be consumed surrounded by fellow audience members in uncomfortable seats and low lighting, where the person in the row in front of you wont turn off their phone. Instead, I spent 60 minutes watching a play from the comfort of my dorm room, and I was unexpectedly entranced.

The best thing about this digital Infinite Wrench is that it still felt like theatre. Was it just a taping of the exact same play as if they had a live audience? No. They made use of editing, animation, PowerPoints and other tools that wouldn't work in live theatre without making it feel like a series of short films. Rather, each play was a piece of theatre reimagined. Audience participation was still present, just reimagined. One play, for example, encouraged viewers to howl and scream to cover up curse words. Another asked us to text a number to vote for favorite costumes.

Above and beyond all this, the show still moved me the way only theatre can. At different points I was shocked, terrified, laughing out loud, and miserable. This show sent myself and the rest of the audience on an emotional rollercoaster, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

via GIPHY

While Zooming with some cast members after the show, Northwestern students and faculty who were in the audience got to talking about the advantages of this new online format. One that stood out is the increased accessibility of the show. In its new virtual format, The Infinite Wrench is available for lower prices, people can watch from anywhere, which opens it up to an international audience, and the show is now captioned, which improves accessibility to deaf and hard of hearing communities. Could this be the future of theatre? Will having online options be more widespread even when were back to normal? Personally, I would welcome this change. Theatre should be for everyone.

Check out the Neo-Futurists website here for more information on their shows and how you can support them during this difficult time for the arts.

*Thumbnail courtesy of the Neo-Futurists' website.

Read more here:
The Neo-Futurists: bringing theatre further into the future - North by Northwestern

Unplugged Tour

After a years-long push to automate its stores with helpful worker robots, Walmart Inc. is pulling the plug.

While Walmart plans to experiment with some kinds of robots and automated tech, according to The Wall Street Journal, the retail giant will no longer use robots to scan shelves and track inventory. It turns out that people still do the job better and were less likely to creep out both workersand customers.

It turns out that commissioning a robotics firm to develop mechanical workers just to check whether a shelf was empty wasnt the most cost effective way to keep an eye on inventory. For the foreseeable future, the WSJ reports, humans will handle the job instead.

We learned a lot about how technology can assist associates, make jobs easier and provide a better customer experience, a Walmart spokeswoman told the WSJ. We will continue testing new technologies and investing in our own processes and apps to best understand and track our inventory and help move products to our shelves as quickly as we can.

Unfortunately, the news was devastating for Bossa Nova, the robotics firm that provided Walmart with its inventory robots. The firm, a Carnegie Mellon University-born startup, laid off half of its staff as it tries to drum up replacement business.

We see an improvement in stores with the robots, Walmart told Bossa Nova, someone familiar with the deal told the WSJ, but we dont see enough of an improvement.

READ MORE: Walmart Scraps Plan to Have Robots Scan Shelves [The Wall Street Journal]

More on Walmart robots: Walmart Employees Hate Their New Robot Coworkers

Read the original:
Walmart Is Giving Up on Its Inventory Robots - Futurism

Shady Money

A billion dollars worth of bitcoin linked to the long-defunct darknet marketplace Silk Road suddenly moved this week for the first time since the FBI raided the operation in April 2013.

Now we know why. The US Treasury seized the bitcoins, Wired reports,with the Department of Justice filing a civil forfeiture complaint claiming the bitcoins were stolen by a mysterious hacker named Individual X in court documents.

Its the largest seizure of cryptocurrency in the history of the US Justice Department, CNBC reports.

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to a double life sentence in 2015. The successful prosecution of Silk Roads founder in 2015 left open a billion-dollar question, US Attorney David Anderson in a statement. Where did the money go?

Todays forfeiture complaint answers this open question at least in part, he added. $1bn of these criminal proceeds are now in the United States possession.

The bitcoins were stored under a single address since at least 2013 and were left untouched until this week.

Criminal investigators tracked down the address of the mysterious Individual X using a third party company that specializes in cryptocurrency tracing tools,the BBC reports.

Coincidentally, the value of bitcoin has currently climbed above $15,000, the highest its been since January 2018, according to CNBC.

READ MORE: Record $1 billion worth of bitcoin linked to the Silk Road seized by U.S. government [CNBC]

More on the story: Someone Just Moved $1 Billion in Bitcoin From a Busted Darknet Market

Originally posted here:
US Government Seizes $1 Billion in Silk Road Bitcoin - Futurism

Robot Girlfriend

Scientists from Japans Gifu University built a robot hand for men to clasp when they feel lonely.

The hand, dubbed Osampo Kanojo, which the engineers roughly translate to My Girlfriend in Walk in their research, is meant to feel and even smell like a romantic partner from the forearm down, according to CNET. The idea, supposedly, is to provide some comfort and companionship to the worlds lonely especially in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The robot hand clasps to a users forearm so they can let go without dropping it to the ground.

The Osampo Kanojo is designed to squeeze your hand back and even release liquid through pores in its flesh-like outer layer, an approximation of your partner-in-hand-holding getting sweaty palms, SoraNews 24 reports. On top of that, the research describes a small speaker to play the sounds of a partners footsteps and the ability to vent out the smell of womens shampoo.

The bizarre robot is meant to provide companionship as well as to encourage more walk-taking for those who are working or taking classes from home. And if the current model doesnt float your boat, SoraNews 24 reports that a more masculine version could come soon.

The two robot hands would be fairly similar, except the male model would come with different scents: cologne, barbeque charcoal, and, in perhaps a too-on-the-nose twist, motor oil.

READ MORE: This pale, sweaty robot hand wants to take romantic walks with you [CNET]

More on robots: Watch the ISSs New AI Robot Companion Act Like Kind of a Brat

Read more from the original source:
Scientists in Japan Build Robot to Hold Hands With Lonely People - Futurism

A new MIT algorithm is capable of determining, with impressive accuracy, whether or not people have COVID-19 just by listening to them cough.

The algorithm, which the researchers trainedusing the sound of tens of thousands of coughs recorded over the course of the pandemic, has a 98.5 percent success rate among patients who were already diagnosed with COVID-19, BBC News reports. If they didnt have any other symptoms aside from that cough, the success rate climbed to 100 percent.

It shouldnt replace a proper lab test, the BBC suggests, but it could serve as a point-of-contact test before meeting a group or attending an event.

Other teams of scientists have tried to diagnose the coronavirus for just about as long as the pandemic has been raging. In March, Carnegie Mellon University scientists built a COVID Voice Detector app that scanned for signs of COVID-19 in the sounds of people coughing and reciting the alphabet. The healthcare developer Sonde built an app called Sonde One in July that only asked users to say ahhh before reporting whether they seemed to have coronavirus-like symptoms.

But the MIT teams algorithm described in research published in the IEEE Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology appears to offer a vastly more accurate result.

Theres nothing special about the algorithm the MIT scientists just got their hands on loads and loads of training data with which to refine it. Months ago, the BBC reports, the algorithm had a comparable success rate to those other apps, so it was just a matter of making the model more robust.

Its the same principle as feeding a machine a lot of X-rays so it learns to detect cancer, former BBC reporter Calum Chace, now an AI expert and author, told the BBC. Its an example of AI being helpful. And, for once, I dont see a lot of downside in this.

Read the original post:
MIT Algorithm Detects COVID-19 in the Sound of Your Cough - Futurism

Scientists at Columbia University have developed a nasal spray that seems to block the coronavirus from infecting the nose and lungs.

If it works on people the spray hasnt yet been tested on human subjects yet it could become an effective, low-cost preventative measure while we wait around for an effective vaccine, The New York Times reports.

Having something new that works against the coronavirus is exciting, Dr. Arturo Casadevall, immunology chair at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who didnt work on the spray, told the NYT. I could imagine this being part of the arsenal.

The team tested out the spray on cultured cells and ferrets, finding in their study which was shared online Friday but has yet to undergo peer review at an academic journal that it protected against multiple known strains of the coronavirus for a full 24 hours. In a small study, COVID-free ferrets placed in a cage with a COVID-infected ferret remained healthy, while the ferrets which were given a placebo ended up catching the coronavirus.

If it works this well in humans, you could sleep in a bed with someone infected or be with your infected kids and still be safe, Dr. Ann Moscona, study coauthor and Columbia pediatrician and microbiologist, told the NYT.

The next step would be to test the nasal spray on human volunteers, but Moscona says the team needs to raise more funding before it can.

If it does work out, the NYT reports, the spray could feasibly become a compelling in-between measure to slow the diseases spread until a vaccine is available. It seemed to totally block viral replication in studies, significantly lowering the risk of being exposed to people with COVID-19. And because it doesnt need refrigeration, the team says it would be considerably cheaper to manufacture and distribute than other, more fragile treatments.

See more here:
If This COVID-Blocking Nasal Spray Works on Humans, It Could Change the Course of the Pandemic - Futurism

Lobby Filled

A new Amazon patent describes a poetic way to deal with toxicity in online games.

Instead of just giving them the boot, Business Insider reports that the system would instead give the most toxic gamers a taste of their own medicine by putting them all in the same matches with each other. Then, all the people who would otherwise ruin your game end up harassing and trolling each other instead.

The patent, first spotted by Protocol, takes things a step beyond other attempts to weed out the worst members of online gaming communities. Games including Apex Legends and Max Payne 3 have already changed their system so that cheaters and trolls end up in the same games together, sequestered away from anyone trying to actually enjoy themselves.

But this new patent would track gamers throughout all of their matches, minding the names they call teammates and opponents as well as other metrics for their behavior. Similar idea, but more ambitious in terms of how people get sorted.Its sort of like a gaming version of the algorithms already used and abused by real-world law enforcement, but with vastly lower stakes and no one is actually prevented from playing the game as a result.

Of course, as with many unusual tech patents, theres no indication when, how, or even if the system will ever be developed and implemented.

But that said, the patent describes a world where you can just enjoy a game free of the morons who get off on ruining things for everyone else and thats tempting.

READ MORE: Amazon envisions pairing toxic gamers with other toxic gamers in a new patent filing [Business Insider]

More on gaming: Battery-Free Game Boy Powered by Force of Mashing Buttons

More here:
Amazon Patent Makes the Most Horrible Gamers Play With Each Other - Futurism

Series Of Tubes

Some of the participants in SpaceXs public Starlink beta are reporting internet speeds higher than 95 percent of U.S. internet users.

Starlink, a constellation of what will eventually be tens of thousands of satellites, was launched for the purpose of beaming down internet service to the planet, especially rural areas with weak connections. SpaceX told users to expect moderate signals during the public beta, Business Insider reports, but some users have already had better luck than they ever did with a conventional internet provider.

SpaceX made its expectations clear from the beginning: The space company called the public test a Better Than Nothing Beta and suggested users might see speeds of 50 to 150 Mbps.

Starlink will forever change the game, one user from rural Montana said on Reddit as they shared their 174 Mbps download speeds. Another beta tester boasted of their results in Seattle, which were slightly lower but still better than 95 percent of the U.S.

Of course, these users are getting what they paid for: Participation in the public beta means paying $99 per month on top of a one-time $499 expense for a Starlink router, tripod, and terminal that allows users to connect, Business Insider reports.

For now, Starlink internet cuts off for seconds at a time every couple of minutes a predicted glitch that SpaceX told users to expect but those interruptions will likely fade as more satellites are launched and coverage becomes more comprehensive.

READ MORE: SpaceXs Starlink internet public beta is giving some users blistering download speeds of more than 160 Mbps, including in rural Montana [Business Insider]

More on Starlink: SpaceX Gives Early Starlink Internet to Towns Destroyed by Wildfires

Go here to see the original:
Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US - Futurism

Jacob Morgan, founder of FutureOfWorkUniversity.com, identified the skills and mindsets that leaders must possess if they want to lead themselves, their people and their organizations to success. Get to know them!

Stay informed and join our daily newsletter now!

November4, 20205 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When we hear the word water, an image immediately comes to mind, we know what we are talking about. The same does not happen with the term leadership or when we want to refer to the leader. However, this character plays a fundamental role in cultures and organizations.

Jacob Morgan, a futurist who explores leadership, the future of work and the experience of employees, participated in INCmty where he pointed out the nine skills and mindsets that the leader of the future must have, whom he referred to as "the leader of today" .

Also founder of FutureOfWorkUniversity.com , an online education and training platform that helps individuals and organizations thrive in the changing world of work, he made a comparison between leaders and beacons.

In this regard, he said that the lighthouses have served as a pillar to guide sailors and explorers to their destinations safely. "When I think of a leader I think [of a lighthouse] and that I want you to have in your mind for yourself," he said.

"Your job as a leader is not only to become that lighthouse, but to shine your light on others in your organization and direct it to success," he added, clarifying that a lighthouse without ships at sea is useless, the same as building yourself. as a leader if you don't have people to guide.

In this changing world, in the same way that businesses and organizations change, leadership will experience several changes. How do you lead in a rapidly changing world where it is clear that what worked in the past will not work in the present or the future?

To answer this question, Jacob interviewed more than 140 of the world's top CEOs and interviewed 14,000 employees in partnership with LinkedIn. With this research, he was able to identify a new arsenal of nine skills and mindsets that leaders must possess if they want to guide themselves, their people, and their organizations to success.

Photo: Incmty

Jacob identified four mentalities or mindsets for the leader of the future.

On the other hand, Jacob emphasized the skills that leaders must develop in line with these four mindsets, and that will help unleash the full potential for their teams and organizations:

Jacob emphasized that leaders must step out of the box and break paradigms, as they can no longer see themselves as individual beings at the top; they are a vital gear for teams to function and deliver results.

He also asked INCmty attendees to participate in the FutureLeaderSurvey.com survey.

Here is the original post:
These are the Skills and Mindsets of the Leader of the Future - Entrepreneur

Soil Spill

If the planets temperatures increase by just two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, it could trigger a catastrophic release of even more carbon currently sequestered in the soil.

New projects, published Monday in the journal Nature Communications, suggest that scenario would release 230 billion tons of carbon more than twice as much as the U.S. has emitted into the atmosphere over the last century. Needless to say, thatgrim eventuality could fast-track us toward planetary disaster.

Two degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures is the upper threshold of global warming that the Paris agreement which U.S. President Trump backed out ofin 2019 is trying to avoid.

The University of Exeter study looked into the sensitivity of the planets soil, which holds between two and three times more carbon than the atmosphere, and found that rising temperatures would rapidly reduce its ability to retain the carbon.

The research, unfortunately, didnt even account for all of the carbon releases that rising temperatures would trigger. Other massive carbon sinks, like Arctic permafrost and the oceans, would also be releasing their stores of carbon at the same time.

Our study rules out the most extreme projections but nonetheless suggests substantial soil carbon losses due to climate change at only 2C warming, and this doesnt even include losses of deeper permafrost carbon, study coauthor and Exeter researcher Sarah Chadburn said in a press release.

READ MORE: Warming of 2 C would release billions of tons of soil carbon [University of Exeter]

More on carbon sinks: Ah Crap: The Arctic Is Releasing a Ton of New Greenhouse Gas

See more here:
Our Soil is Poised To Release Billions of Tons of Carbon - Futurism