Hear Stanley Kubrick Explain The 2001: A Space Odyssey Ending In A Rare, Unearthed Video
July 11th, 2018Via: Esquire:
I’ve tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it, but I’ll try.
The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.
They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn’t quite sure. Just as we’re not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what we think is their natural environment.
Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.
YouTube Is Fighting Conspiracy Theories with ‘Authoritative’ Context and Outside Links
July 11th, 2018More than ever: https://duckduckgo.com/
Via: The Verge:
YouTube is adding “authoritative” context to search results about conspiracy-prone topics like the Moon landing and the Oklahoma City Bombing, as well as putting $25 million toward news outlets producing videos. Today, the company announced a new step in its Google News Initiative, a program it launched in March. The update is focused on reducing misinformation on YouTube, including the conspiracy theories that have flourished after events like the Parkland shooting.
This update includes new features for breaking news updates and long-standing conspiracy theories. YouTube is implementing a change it announced in March, annotating conspiracy-related pages with text from “trusted sources like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica.” And in the hours after a major news event, YouTube will supplement search results with links to news articles, reasoning that rigorous outlets often publish text before producing video. “It’s very easy to quickly produce and upload low-quality videos spreading misinformation around a developing news event,” said YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan, but harder to make an authoritative video about a developing story.
YouTube is also funding a number of partnerships. It’s establishing a working group that will provide input on how it handles news, and it’s providing money for “sustainable” video operations across 20 markets across the world, in addition to expanding an internal support team for publishers. (Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, is a member of the working group.) It’s previously invested money in digital literacy programs for teenagers, recruiting prominent YouTube creators to promote the cause.
U.S. Is Set to Become World’s Top Oil Producer, Government Says
July 11th, 2018Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. government sees oil production further climbing next year even amid transportation logjams in the country’s most prolific shale play.
The Energy Information Administration sees U.S. crude output averaging 11.8 million barrels a day in 2019, up from its 11.76 million barrel a day estimate in the June outlook.
“In 2019, EIA forecasts that the United States will average nearly 12 million barrels of crude oil production per day,” said Linda Capuano, Administrator of the EIA. “If the forecast holds, that would make the U.S. the world’s leading producer of crude.”
Tesla Will Build Gigafactory in Shanghai to Serve Chinese Market
July 10th, 2018Via: Electrek:
Tesla has now confirmed the reports that came out of China this morning about a deal to allow the start of Gigafactory 3 construction in Shanghai.
The automaker confirmed the deal and said that it plans to start construction “in the near future” for the first cars to roll off the line in “2 years.”
Related: BMW Agrees to $4.7 Billion Contract with China’s CATL for Battery Cells
San Francisco: Where a Six-Figure Salary Is ‘Low Income’
July 9th, 2018Via: BBC:
A family getting by on $117,400 (£87,970) in San Francisco can now be considered ‘low income’, according to US government figures. How can that be the case?
That workers with six-figure salaries could be considered “poor” is something that might surprise many people.
Yet a recent report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development suggests that is the reality in three areas – San Francisco and nearby San Mateo and Marin Counties – where families like these may be eligible for housing assistance.
It set the figures after looking at salaries and housing costs in the area and while $117,400 for a family of four was “low income”, $73,300 (£54,900) was “very low income” – the highest figures anywhere in the US.
Two Children Died in Samoa After Receiving MMR Vaccinations
July 9th, 2018Via: New Zealand Herald:
Samoan health authorities have stopped all children’s vaccinations in the island nation after the deaths of two toddlers.
A full inquiry into the circumstances of the deaths has also been launched at the request of Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Sailele Malielegaoi.
The situation comes after two children, both aged 1, died minutes after receiving an MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccination at Safotu Hospital, in Savaii, on Friday.
…
Families of the youngsters told TV1 Samoa they had made formal complaints with local police and were calling for investigations into their children’s deaths.
The mother of one child told the station she asked that her son not get the vaccination after learning about the death of the little girl, which had occurred about two hours earlier at the same hospital.
It is alleged the nurse insisted that the vaccination go ahead and was given without consent.
University of Auckland vaccinologist Dr Helen Petousis-Harris said one death, let alone two, was extremely rare, and there had never been a death associated with the MMR vaccine in New Zealand.
Engine Tests Underway for DARPA ‘Phantom Express’ Spaceplane Program
July 9th, 2018Via: Space News:
A space shuttle-era main engine is undergoing a series of daily test firings to demonstrate its suitability for use on a reusable spaceplane under development.
The Aerojet Rocketdyne AR-22 engine is in the midst of a series of 10 100-second engine firings over the course of 10 days at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. As of July 2 the company has completed six such tests and was on track to complete the rest on schedule.
The engine is a version of the Space Shuttle Main Engine with only minor modifications, said Jeff Haynes, AR-22 program manager at Aerojet, in a July 2 interview. “We’re not designing or building any new hardware for this engine,” he said. “We’re taking and making use of existing hardware, most of it being flight proven.”
One minor difference in the engine, he said, is using a new flight controller, or computer system, from the updated version of the RS-25 engine intended for use on NASA’s Space Launch System. “The rest of it is not new technology,” he said.
The purpose of the test series is to demonstrate that the engine can be used 10 times in 10 days. That is a major requirement of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Experimental Spaceplane program, for which the AR-22 will power Boeing’s Phantom Express vehicle.
Although the AR-22 and its shuttle-era predecessors have decades of experience, the same engine has never been tested so frequently. Haynes said that there was only one case where the same engine was fired one day apart. “We’ve already far exceeded that in this series,” he said.
Wealthy Worried About Keeping Control of Their Minions After “The Event”
July 6th, 2018
Via: Medium:
The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers?—?if that technology could be developed in time.
U.S.-China Trade War Underway
July 6th, 2018Via: Guardian:
A long-threatened trade war between the US and China has got under way after the world’s two largest economies imposed tariffs on each other. The US implemented tariffs on $34bn in Chinese goods, to which Beijing responded with levies on a similar quantity of US imports.
Minutes after the US tariffs went into effect at 12.01am on Friday US time, a spokesperson for China’s ministry of commerce said, “China promised not to fire the first shot, but in order to safeguard the country’s core interests as well as that of the people, it is forced to fight back,” according to Xinhua. The ministry stopped short of saying China had implemented its retaliatory duties.
Later on Friday, a spokesman for the ministry of foreign affairs said after the US tariffs kicked in, Chinese tariffs on US goods had immediately gone into effect.
Ahead of the tariffs, Chinese state media published a series of editorials criticising the US and emphasising the country’s readiness for a trade war. Chinese companies and investors girded for the worst, while economists cautioned any impact on the economy would be minimal.
Self-Driving Cars Are Headed Toward an AI Roadblock
July 4th, 2018Via: The Verge:
If you believe the CEOs, a fully autonomous car could be only months away. In 2015, Elon Musk predicted a fully autonomous Tesla by 2018; so did Google. Delphi and MobileEye’s Level 4 system is currently slated for 2019, the same year Nutonomy plans to deploy thousands of driverless taxis on the streets of Singapore. GM will put a fully autonomous car into production in 2019, with no steering wheel or ability for drivers to intervene. There’s real money behind these predictions, bets made on the assumption that the software will be able to catch up to the hype.
On its face, full autonomy seems closer than ever. Waymo is already testing cars on limited-but-public roads in Arizona. Tesla and a host of other imitators already sell a limited form of Autopilot, counting on drivers to intervene if anything unexpected happens. There have been a few crashes, some deadly, but as long as the systems keep improving, the logic goes, we can’t be that far from not having to intervene at all.
But the dream of a fully autonomous car may be further than we realize. There’s growing concern among AI experts that it may be years, if not decades, before self-driving systems can reliably avoid accidents. As self-trained systems grapple with the chaos of the real world, experts like NYU’s Gary Marcus are bracing for a painful recalibration in expectations, a correction sometimes called “AI winter.” That delay could have disastrous consequences for companies banking on self-driving technology, putting full autonomy out of reach for an entire generation.
