Lifeboat Foundation

Orbital Reef is one of NASA’s in-development successors for the ISS.

Sierra Space, the company developing a new space station called Orbital Reef alongside Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, just blew up a small prototype for an inflatable astronaut habitat, a recent press statement (Dec .13) reveals.

The company conducted what it calls the “ultimate burst pressure test” (UBP) as part of the development of Orbital Reef, which is one of several privately-developed successors to the International Space Station that have been funded by NASA.

Continue reading “Watch a space habitat prototype for Orbital Reef explode into pieces in dramatic video” »

The supersonic aircraft startup parted ways with Rolls-Royce earlier this year.

Boom Supersonic, the company aiming to take commercial supersonic airliners back to the skies, now has plans to build a new proprietary engine.

Boom Supersonic finds Rolls-Royce replacements.

Continue reading “Symphony: Boom Supersonic announces it will develop its own aircraft engine” »

Al Rihla in Arabic means “a journey,” and perhaps this was one of the epic journeys of the technologically loaded football.

The FIFA World Cup official match ball, Al Rihla, has been launched into space and back in a football frenzy to garner attraction to the ongoing World Cup in Qatar.

From space to the football pitch. We brought the official football for FIFA World Cup Qatar, becoming part of this historical out-of-the-world journey together with.

Continue reading “FIFA World Cup’s high-tech balls kicked 76 miles into space aboard SpaceX rocket” »

Scientists have been striving to achieve fusion ignition for decades.

Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) announced a major breakthrough for nuclear fusion on Tuesday, December 13. In a historic first, they achieved fusion ignition during a nuclear fusion experiment. This means they produced more energy than they put into their fusion experiment, paving the way for practically limitless clean energy production from nuclear fusion.

Continue reading “Nuclear fusion lab achieves ‘ignition’: What does that mean, and why is it so important?” »

Musk’s attention to Twitter is hurting his bread and butter.

Since September last year, Elon Musk has been regarded as the world’s richest person. The stock price of the electric vehicle-making company Tesla has been the sole reason behind his dramatic rise to the top. With Tesla stock dropping 50 percent value since the beginning of the year, Musk has now dropped to number two on the list of the world’s richest people, Bloomberg.

Getty Images.

Continue reading “Tesla’s sinking stock price pushes Elon Musk to #2 on the world’s richest list” »

The rules will go into effect starting in 2023.

China has issued rules and guidelines that regulate the use of artificial intelligence within the country. The regulations are cautious when it comes to AI. This includes the trending AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, AI-generated art, the many methods of utilizing AI in the health care sector and all forms of artificial intelligence, in general.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), has issued a set of rules to follow when incorporating AI. The CAC is the internet regulator and censor in China. The agency released guidelines on “deep synthesis”. The regulatory measures will take effect starting on Jan. 10, 2023.

Continue reading “China will regulate AI-generated content with a new set of regulations” »

The different colors that we can see are based on different wavelengths of light. The human eye can detect and differentiate wavelengths in three bands (red, green, and blue) covering the range from 450 to 650 nanometers, but we cannot see light from the hundreds of other bands of light that exist outside of that range. There is a technology called hyperspectral imaging that can give an enhanced view of what is going on in the world around us. There are specialized cameras that separate up to 300 bands of light with prisms and then digitize the energy they are detecting on a wavelength-specific basis. These cameras have a huge range of potential applications.

The human eye can only see three primary color bands (red, green, blue). There are hundreds of more bands and with enhanced hyperspectral camera technology there are many valuable applications.

Global payments giant Visa says it will invest $1 billion by 2027 to expand its investments in Africa amidst a digital payments boom on the continent.

Visa chief Al Kelly announced this pledge on Wednesday during the U.S.-Africa Business Forum, a sub-event in the broader U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, a three-day event where U.S. President Joe Biden invited heads of state and senior government officials from Africa to discuss several issues ranging from food security to climate change.

“Visa has been investing in Africa for several decades to grow a truly local business, and today our commitment to the continent remains as firm and unwavering as ever,” said the Visa CEO in a statement.

Less than two weeks ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a powerful new chatbot that can communicate in plain English using an updated version of its AI system. While versions of GPT have been around for a while, this model has crossed a threshold: It’s genuinely useful for a wide range of tasks, from creating software to generating business ideas to writing a wedding toast. While previous generations of the system could technically do these things, the quality of the outputs was much lower than that produced by an average human. The new model is much better, often startlingly so.

Put simply: This is a very big deal.

We’re hitting a tipping point for artificial intelligence: With ChatGPT and other AI models that can communicate in plain English, write and revise text, and write code, the technology is suddenly becoming more useful to a broader population of people. This has huge implications. The ability to produce text and code on command means people are capable of producing more work, faster than ever before. Its ability to do different kinds of writing means it’s useful for many different kinds of businesses. Its capacity to respond to notes and revise its own work means there’s significant potential for hybrid human/AI work. Finally, we don’t yet know the limits of these models. All of this could mean sweeping changes for how — and what — work is done in the near future.

Continue reading “ChatGPT Is a Tipping Point for AI” »