Lifeboat Foundation

As if drive-through ordering wasn’t frustrating enough already, now we might have a Siri-like AI to contend with. McDonald’s just rolled out a voice recognition system at 10 drive-throughs in Chicago, expanding from the solitary test store they launched a few years ago.

But when will it come to your neighborhood Golden Arches?

“There is a big leap between going from 10 restaurants in Chicago to 14,000 restaurants across the U.S. with an infinite number of promo permutations, menu permutations, dialect permutations, weather — I mean, on and on and on and on,” admitted McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski, reports Nation’s Restaurant News.

We promise, this isn’t a joke.

A Seattle-based startup called Cybercat developed an aftermarket kit that will convert your shiny new Tesla Cybertruck into a catamaran, and there’s even an option for a hydrofoil extension, a report from InsideEVs reveals.

Continue reading “Say hello to the Cybercat, a modded amphibious Cybertruck with 335 hp” »

Genevieve Klien and I may be traveling in those states in the future.

Oh, and if you live in Northern Nevada or plan to visit Reno, let us know!

Update: It looks like we will be relocating a bit north of Austin!

Thanks to NASA receiving a gift of components from a former spy program, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will observe more sky than ever before.

Are you afraid of the dark?

Hopefully, none of the astronauts vying to join the Artemis crewed Moon missions are similarly nyctophobic. If a new NASA image is anything to go on, they’ll need to get over it.

“NASA astronauts are no strangers to extreme environments,” Megan Dean, a NASA spokesperson tells Inverse. Just as well. In a hauntingly beautiful photograph posted on Twitter this week, NASA teases just how extreme the environment may be when NASA astronauts reach the Moon as part of the Artemis III mission, currently slated for 2025.

Continue reading “Behold! NASA teases how Artemis astronauts will explore the Moon’s south pole” »

Protocol could break quantum-encryption systems.

Machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, vastly speeds up computational tasks and enables new technology in areas as broad as speech and image recognition, self-driving cars, stock market trading and medical diagnosis.

Before going to work on a given task, machine learning algorithms typically need to be trained on pre-existing data so they can learn to make fast and accurate predictions about future scenarios on their own. But what if the job is a completely new one, with no data available for training?

Now, researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have demonstrated that they can use machine learning to optimize the performance of particle accelerators by teaching the algorithms the basic physics principles behind accelerator operations—no prior data needed.

Can spacekime help us make headway on some of the most pernicious inconsistencies in physics?

The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN), made up of the MIT, Caltech, ETH Zurich and the US Army Research Lab, has used 3D printing technology at the nanoscale to form a material that is reportedly more effective at stopping a projectile than Kevlar or steel.

Thinner than a single human hair, the material is made from tiny carbon struts that form interconnected tetrakaidecahedrons – structures with 14 faces – that are fabricated via two-photon lithography.

According to the team, the nano-architected material could potentially replace kevlar for a wide array of bulletproof protective gear used by the armed forces.