Daily Archives: June 29, 2022

"I bet I still end up next to someone else's screaming three year old for the entire trip."Howl's Nuclear Castle

It's definitely not a bird, but it is sort of a plane. Specifically, it's a non-existent but admittedly very cool concept called theSky Cruise, a fantastical nuclear-powered sky hotel.

The impressively-detailed video rendering visualizes a hulking airborne vessel, allegedly designed to house over 5,000 guests in nearly nonstop flight. Alongside magnificent views of nature including a close-up look at the Northern lights there are seemingly endless things to do: fancy restaurants, a massive shopping mall, gyms, theaters, pools, wellness and medical services, event spaces, and more. The narrator even points out that getting married above the clouds would be a pretty awesome way to say "I do."

But, as one YouTube commenter pointed out, there seems to be one very important amenity missing.

"I'd still want an old-fashioned arcade where I can turn my tickets in for cheap-azz prizes," they wrote. Honestly, fair.

The conceptual skycraft boasts 20 electric engines, powered solely by a "small nuclear reactor" that "uses highly-controlled fusion reaction," And because it wouldn't need to be refueled, it would rarely need to land. Guests would fly to and from the sky high hotel on commercial or private jetliners, and all repairs would be done in-air.

Many commenters, however, were quick to call out design flaws not the least being that practical nuclear fusion doesn't actually exist yet. And even if it did, there would be other immense engineering challenges to surmount.

"If physics and aerodynamics didn't exist, then this vessel might actually be able to take off," remarked another YouTuber. Harsh!

But the biggest caveat of all? The narrator claims that the design "combines the features of a commercial plane, while offering the epitome of luxury." Seeing as how commercial plane and luxury do not belong in the same sentence, that feels like a major plothole.

As another commenter so elegantly put it: "I bet I still end up next to someone else's screaming three year old for the entire trip."

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We're in Awe of this Absolutely Deranged "Nuclear-Powered Sky Hotel" - Futurism

Space weather is weird.Down, Down Down

Most folks probably don't think of satellites as capable of sinking, but according to the European Space Agency they can and do.

Space news site Space.com reported Thursday that ESA scientists had to raise the Swarm constellation satellites, which measure Earth's magnetic field, because they were sinking in chaotic space weather.

"In the last five, six years, the satellites were sinking about two and a half kilometers [1.5 miles] a year," Swarm mission managerAnja Stromme, ESA's told Space.com. "But since December last year, they have been virtually diving. The sink rate between December and April has been 20 kilometers [12 miles] per year."

Although satellites always face a downward drag while in orbit, space weather has been making the sink worse, the ESA said. That's why the International Space Station makes frequent maneuvers to keep itself in orbit and out of the worst of the drag.

Space.com says that since last fall, the Sun has been acting pretty weird in general.

A growing sun spot has doubled in size and is pointed directly at the Earth, although scientists say we shouldn't be concerned (but then, how could you not be?) That phenomenon may not be connected with sinking satellites, but it does highlight how conditions in space are ever-changing.

We'll keep our eyes out for more space weather updates, because it sure does seem like there's at least some stormy weather going on up there.

More on off-world news: NASA Spots Location Where Derelict Rocket Smashed Into the Moon

Excerpt from:
Scientists Say the Sun Is Acting Up and Causing Satellites to Fall Back to Earth - Futurism

One more crater!Moonstruck

We may finally have found closure for the saga of the derelict rocket believed to have crashed into the Moon earlier this year. Scientists have discovered a newly-formed double crater on the far side of our natural satellite, according to a NASA press release, where they believethe defunct spacecraft smashed down.

Using imagery captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), astronomers were able to deduce that the mystery space debris spotted on collision course for the Moon back in February crash-landed near the Hertzsprung Crater in early March.

The scientific community also seems very pleased that the debris made lunar contact pretty much right where they thought it would.

"Newton wins again," joked Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in an email to Gizmodo.

The ramshackle rocket has faced its fair share of controversy.

When the hunk of junk was first caught speeding towards the lunar surface, it was believed to a SpaceX second stage Falcon 9 craft an allegation that CEO Elon Musk took a lot of heat for.

But further observation revealed otherwise, and now experts believe that the unfortunate debris was actually a Chinese Chang'e 5-T1 booster, left over from the nation's 2014 mission to the Moon.

China, however, denies any responsibility, insisting that the Chang'e shuttle in question was eviscerated when re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

The fact that the Definitely Not Chinese rocket created a double crater raises its own questions. As Gizmodo points out, it's a strange mark for any spacecraft to make; NASA speculates that the "unexpected" impact shape implies that the space trash must have had "large masses at each end," which doesn't necessarily check out for a Chang'e. So, maybe we don't have closure after all?

In any case, it's a bummer that humankind has officially hurled even more garbage at our lunar friend in the sky. This is why we can't have nice things.

READ MORE: Likely Crash Site of Mystery Space Junk Spotted on Moons Far Side [Gizmodo]

More on space junk: Russia Forced to Dodge Space Debris From When It Blew Up Satellite

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NASA Spots Location Where Derelict Rocket Smashed Into the Moon - Futurism

In a surprise finding, researchers have found that getting at least one flu shot makes it 40 percent less likely for people over the age of 65 to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, up to four years later.

While it's still far too early to determine if there are any direct causal links between the common vaccine and neurological health outcomes like Alzheimer's in other words, we don't know if it's the flu vaccine itself or something else responsible for the results the research is certainly an eyebrow-raising new development that could,potentially, point in the direction of easily accessible treatments.

In a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, researchers at UTHealth Houston compared the incidence rate of the disease in patients with and without at least one flu vaccination in a nationwide sample of US adults aged 65 and up, which included 935,887 vaccinated and 935,887 non-vaccinated individuals.

The results are modest but intriguing, especially considering how much time and effort is being invested in slowing down and reversing the disease. Around 5.1 percent of those with prior flu vaccinations developed Alzheimer's, compared to 8.5 percent of unvaccinated patients who were later diagnosed with the disease.

"We found that flu vaccination in older adults reduces the risk of developing Alzheimers disease for several years," said first author Avram Bukhbinder, recent UTHealth Houston graduate, in a statement. "The strength of this protective effect increased with the number of years that a person received an annual flu vaccine in other words, the rate of developing Alzheimers was lowest among those who consistently received the flu vaccine every year."

"Future research should assess whether flu vaccination is also associated with the rate of symptom progression in patients who already have Alzheimers dementia," Bukhbinder added.

Most notably, the researchers don't know the underlying mechanisms that could explain the schism between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals that is, if there are any in the first place.

"Since there is evidence that several vaccines may protect from Alzheimer's disease, we are thinking that it isn't a specific effect of the flu vaccine," said senior author and UTHealth MD Paul Schulz in the statement. "Instead, we believe that the immune system is complex, and some alterations, such as pneumonia, may activate it in a way that makes Alzheimer's disease worse."

There may be other reasons as well.

"But other things that activate the immune system may do so in a different way one that protects from Alzheimer's disease," he added.

In short, it's an interesting blip in the data that deserves plenty of future research.

"Clearly, we have more to learn about how the immune system worsens or improves outcomes in this disease," Schulz argued.

READ MORE: UTHealth Houston study: Flu vaccination linked to 40% reduced risk of Alzheimers disease [UTHealth]

More on Alzheimer's: "Poisonous Flowers" in Brain May Cause Alzheimer's, Scientists Say

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Weirdly, It Appears the Flu Vaccine May Protect Against Alzheimer's - Futurism

They actually thought this was a good idea.Alex-sad

It's something only a corporation as soulless as Amazon could dream up.

The e-retailer is planning to allow its Alexa smart speaker to mimic the voices of deceased loved ones arguably a rather "Black Mirror"-esque failure to read the room.

During its annual re:Mars conference this week, Amazons senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, showed off a demo of a late grandmother's voice reading a bedtime story to a child, TechCrunch reports.

"This required inventions where we had to learn to produce a high-quality voice with less than a minute of recording versus hours of recording in the studio," Prasad said at the conference, as quoted by TechCrunch. "The way we made it happen is by framing the problem as a voice conversion task and not a speech generation path."

Despite the morbid implications of such tech, Amazon says it's an impressive example of AI technologies. Prasad called digitally waking grandmother up from her eternal slumber a big win.

"We are unquestionably living in the golden era of AI, where our dreams and science fictions are becoming a reality," he added.

But that's about all we know about the feature, as Amazon was rather short on details about its latest invention.

It's not the first device to imitate somebody's voice. In fact, as Gizmodo points out, a similar AI-powered device by Japanese toy brand Takara Tomy can read bedtime stories to children by imitating their parents' voices.

Intentionally mimicking the voices of dead relatives isn't just creepy, It could also be used for far more nefarious purposes a far more likely eventuality than you'd think.

READ MORE: Alexa will soon be able to read stories as your dead grandma [TechCrunch]

More on Alexa: NASA Is Installing Amazon Alexa on Its Next Moon Mission, for Some Cursed Reason

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Amazon Shows Off Tech That Lets Alexa Copy Voice of Dead Relatives - Futurism

Oops.Small Desk Energy

Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a big deal earlier this month about forcing employees to return to work or else face the consequences shortly before announcing he had a "super bad feeling" about the economy and firing ten percent of the company's workforce.

But in spite of that bluster, the logistics of actually getting workers back on site is proving tricky. The company's offices literally aren't equipped to handle the recent influx, The Information reports, with parking spots and desks difficult to come by.

It's yet another chapter in Tesla's chaotic end to the second quarter, with Musk's brash leadership style once again shaking up the company's already tumultuous operations. In a particularly embarrassing twist, the company has even been forced to rescind job offers to people who had already accepted them.

The number of employees at the carmaker has doubled over the last three years, rising to almost 100,000 people. Over that same period, the COVID-19 pandemic has redefined what it means to work from home, with countless employees opting against coming in to a physical office.

But ever since Musk threatened to fire any full-time employee who didn't return, things have reportedly gotten out of hand.

According to The Information, workers struggled to find places to park at the company's factory in Fremont, California. Parts of the office that were used for different purposes during the pandemic were no longer able to accommodate many workers.

Things got so bad that the WiFi started acting up, according to the report, forcing managers to tell employees to disregard Musk's threats and work from home anyway.

Alongside Musk's disastrous bid to buy Twitter and SpaceX employees denouncing him for failing to fulfil the team's "No Asshole" and zero-tolerance sexual harassment policies, his management style is increasingly coming under question.

The billionaire CEO's hands are certainly full right now and the cracks are starting to show.

READ MORE: At Tesla, Returning to the Office Creates New Problems [The Information]

More on Musk: As Crisis Deepens, Tesla Rescinds Job Offers to People Who'd Already Accepted Them

Read more:
Tesla Demanded Workers Come Back to Office, Then Realized It Didn't Have Enough Desks - Futurism

This 18-year-old is putting the fun in non-fungible.NFT Toys

While NFT collectors are still spending appreciable amounts of money on JPEGs, others are finding creative ways to cash in on the trend in less digital ways.

Take 18-year-old Ricky da Luz, for instance, who Insider reports figured out that people go absolutely hogwild over physical representations of their Bored Ape NFTs. In fact, he's already sold collectors $700,000 worth of NFT busts, toys, and action figures.

With the help of his dad and six staff members, da Luz's venture, called IsmToys, has grown into a considerable business complete with all the jargon you'd expect from the web3 world.

"We're tripling down on helping Web2 companies enter the Web3 space, while also converting their audience into Web3 people," da Luz told Insider. "We link the toys to actual NFTs and the digital assets act as authenticators for the toys."

The company is selling commissioned creations that are one-to-one unique with a specific NFT for an average of $700, as well as other toys that are cheaper and not unique. Naturally, IsmToys mostly takes payment in Ethereum.

The NFT.NYC conference happening right now is also boosting sales, with da Luz claiming the company has taken in over 200 orders.

"I'm emotionally attached to my Ape, so having toys of my Ape is reinforcing my emotional attachment to my digital persona," a collector who goes by @nftgerry told Insider.

There we have it, folks while NFT collectors are pining to get "exclusive" rights over a digital drawing, others are already yearning to take the act of collecting back to its roots: a cluttered shelf of keepsakes.

READ MORE: This 18-year-old just raked in $700,000 of revenue selling Bored Ape toys and NFT holders say the physical replicas reinforce their attachment to digital identities. [Insider]

More on NFTs: Family Guy Actor Pays Huge Ransom for Stolen Bored Ape

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Teen Makes $700,000 Selling Action Figures of Bored Apes to Adult Children - Futurism

Finally, apes that aren't boring af.Ape Shit

Don't kill the cringe kill the part of you that cringes.

You'll have to if you want to enjoy Snoop Dogg and Eminem's newest music video for their new single "From the D 2 The LBC." The nearly-five-minute-clip debuted Friday and depicts the two iconic rappers blowin' smoke in the studio. The aforementioned smoke leads Eminem to have some pretty trippy hallucinations, including seeing himself and Snoop as Bored Ape cartoon characters based on the NFTs the musicians respectively own.

The entire project has a comic book or superhero vibe to it, with hand-drawn art showcasing the artists' creativity in a way we honestly didn't expect from an NFT-inspired project. The sunset backgrounds are pretty, and the entire vibe is pretty chill.

The pair performed the song live for Bored Ape Yacht Club members in New York last week and debuted the music video at the same time, according to Thursday's report in the Verge.

NFTs are volatile asset classes, but it's not clear if celebrities understand the danger for everyday investors. Still, seeing this duo do something interested with heretofore boring old Bored Ape illustrations is kind of nice.

Once an artist owns an ape, according to the Verge, they can make derivative works based on it. That's part of BAYC's monetization plan, even if nobody can say how, exactly, an Eminem and Snoop Dogg video will turn a profit for other investors. It's weird and most likely just a good way to lose a lot of money, but the song and the video slap.

The good news is the time spent enjoying them is 100 percent free, no crypto exchange required.

More on Bored Ape weirdness: Teen Makes $700,000 Selling Action Figures of Bored Apes to Adult Children

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Eminem and Snoop Dogg Make Music Video Where They Appear as Their Bored Apes - Futurism

Maybe thereis something to the legend of the phoenix.

Scientists are perplexed by a mysterious star, believed to have been completely annihilated in a powerful supernova only to be found still alive, burning brighter than ever before.

According to a press release, the undead star in question was believed to have met its demise in a supernova back in 2012. And while there have been some cases of stars living through "partial" supernovas, no observed star has been known to survive a Type Ia explosion the most powerful of its kind which only goes to show how much there still is to learn about the life cycle of a star.

The researchers, whose work was published in The Astrophysical Journal, made their discovery by comparing images taken by NASA's Hubble Telescope before and after the supernova occurred back in 2012.

"We were expecting to see one of two things," said Curtis McCully, a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Santa Barbara and lead author of the study, in the statement. "Either the star would have completely gone away, or maybe it would have still been there, meaning the star we saw in the pre-explosion images wasnt the one that blew up."

But what they actually found was striking. McCully added: "Nobody was expecting to see a surviving star that was brighter. That was a real puzzle."

The team speculates that the event, dubbed SN 2012Z, was actually a Type Iax explosion, which is a weaker explosion than a true Type Ia. Scientists have previously suggested that this less powerful death of a star is actually a "failed" thermonuclear meltdown and this new discovery could provide evidence for that suspicion.

As for the extra wattage? The team suggests that the failed explosion wasn't strong enough to blow too much of the star's material away, and a great deal of celestial shrapnel fell back onto itself as a result. A white dwarf also has a lot of concentrated weight, and, counterintuitively, when a star loses mass, it grows in volume, which is what they saw with SN 2012Z.

The research could help fill in some gaps and shed some light on why a star appeared to have cheated death.

"This star surviving is a little like Obi-Wan Kenobi coming back as a force ghost in Star Wars," said co-author Andy Howell from UC Santa Barbara, in the statement. "Nature tried to strike this star down, but it came back more powerful than we could have imagined."

More on star death: Scientists Spot Dying Star Brutally Tearing up Its Unfortunate Planets

Read more:
Scientists Puzzled by Star That Exploded in Supernova But Somehow Survived - Futurism

Early this year in January, SuperGaming announced Indus: Battle Royale. A made-in-India battle royale for the world that will be available for Mobile, PC, and Console platforms. Considering Indias highly lucrative and rapidly evolving gaming industry, this is a big step for the future. Now the country has a battle royale game to call its own, and whats an added advantage is the games focus on presenting the world with a futuristic version of India. Since the announcement, Indus has made headlines for various aspects that have been unique in the game. And now in the latest episode of Inside Indus, the developers revealed everything about the concept of Indus: Battle Royale.

Indus is a battle royale game that will be available for PC, Mobile, and console platforms worldwide. The developers at Indus said that Indus is a made-in-India for-the-world battle royale for mobile, PC, and consoles with a 2022 release date. Its being developed with the focus of bringing our take on Indian culture with a futuristic twist for gamers across the globe.

In the latest episode of Inside Indus, the CEO Roby, the writers of Indus, Ankush and Rishi talked about the main underlying theme of the game which is called Indo-Futurism. In the video, the speakers also talk about the inspiration for the theme derived from the great Indus valley civilization. They also talked about what couldve happened to the Indus valley civilization? What if they had traveled into the future?

Keeping this as a base idea, the team brainstormed on a lot of ideas to make the story of the game seem as futuristic as possible and ended up getting inspired by the concept of Afro-futurism which was first presented in the movie Black Panther with the interpretation of Wakanda, a futuristic city with themes that combined Africas rich heritage with a hopeful future. This gave rise to Induss main theme of Indo-Futurism.

Indus is based in the year 2500 and unlike any other battle royale game, Indus is not set in a destroyed or gloomy state. It is set in an optimistic vision of India in the future and shows what couldve been and what still can be. This gives gamers a unique reason to come back to the game again and again. Indo-Futurism also sheds light on those scarcely represented parts of India that deserve local and global recognition.

Through Indo-Futurism, the development team aims to set a bar for Indian games in the global gaming market. Until now, we havent had huge success in this task but with Indus, the team hopes to represent Indias take on Sci-fi thats rooted in our culture like with Godzilla from Japan or the Fallout series from the US. The core pillars of Indo-Futurism are:

While the theme of the game explains the first two core pillars, the rest are extremely important considering science fiction. Science Fiction over the years has been regularly associated with dystopian-style stories. However, with Indus, the development team plans to shift the narrative towards hope and optimism.

As Indus is a futuristic world that has eliminated key societal issues with citizens who have a deeper understanding of their part in the world who emphasize the use of technology for the betterment of the planet while sticking to our roots and blissfully representing Indian mythology and elements of our culture like arts and traditions.

Despite all the Indianness involved, the game still has modern deadly weapons, mechanics, and gameplay that match the current battle royale genre feeling. The teams main aim is to present users with an example of what Indian science fiction can do and create a universe in which players and their friends can explore where they have stories to tell from Virlok.

What are your thoughts about the concept of Indus: Battle Royale revealed in the Inside Indus episode? Let us know in the comments below!

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Original post:
Inside Indus' latest episode reveals how well the game's concept is related to a futuristic India - GamingonPhone