Lifeboat Foundation

A fine handed to the US TV firm Dish by the FCC could help kick-start the market for solutions to space debris.

We’ve just taken a major step toward cleaning up space junk. On Monday, October 2, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US issued its first fine for space debris, ordering the US TV provider Dish to pay $150,000 for failing to move one of its satellites into a safe orbit.

“It is definitely a very big symbolic moment for debris mitigation,” says Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer at the University of Mississippi. “It’s a great step in the right direction.”

Their advantages extend beyond reducing carbon emissions.

Thirteen US states are now implementing underground thermal energy networks to reduce buildings’ carbon emissions as part of a nationwide push to adopt cleaner energy sources.

Thermal energy networks use pipe loops that connect multiple buildings and provide heating and cooling through water-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat is commonly used in these networks, but it is also possible to bring in waste heat from other buildings through the sewer system.

Getty’s entire brand is built on authenticity. CEO Craig Peters sat down with us at Code to talk about how the company is dealing with AI and disinformation.

We’ve got another great conversation from the Code Conference today: my chat with Getty Images CEO Craig Peters. Getty is one of the most important photography services in the world, and as you might imagine, we talked quite a bit about the promise and peril of generative AI when it comes to photography. Craig was great onstage — he’s direct and no-nonsense about what AI can and can’t do, and we got right into it.

About a year ago, Getty banned users from uploading or selling AI-generated content. At the time, the company said it was… More.

Continue reading “Getty Images CEO Craig Peters has a plan to defend photography from AI” »

AI-powered parking platform Metropolis today announced that it raised $1.7 billion to acquire SP Plus, a provider of parking facility management services, in a combination of equity and debt.

Eldridge Capital and 3L Capital co-led the tranche with participation from BDT & MSD Partners’ affiliated credit funds, Vista Credit Partners, Temasek, Slow Ventures and Assembly Ventures. As a part of the financing, Metropolis will take on $650 million in loans and $1.05 billion in Series C preferred stock financing.

Metropolis will pay roughly $1.5 billion for SP Plus “while retaining significant capital on its balance sheet,” Metropolis co-founder and CEO Alex Israel said in a press release. Prior to the latest fundraise, Metropolis had raised $226 million in total.

Likewise, the company behind an app that can recommend your next TV binge, movie to watch, podcast to stream or book to read, is out today with its own entertainment-focused AI companion, Pix. Built using a combination of Likewise’s own customer data and technology from partner OpenAI, Pix can make entertainment recommendations and answer other questions via text message or email, or by communicating with Pix within the Pix mobile app, website or even by speaking to Pix’s TV app using a voice remote.

Founded in 2017 by former Microsoft communications chief Larry Cohen with financial backing from Bill Gates, the recommendations startup aims to offer an easy way for people to discover new TV shows, movies, books, podcasts and more, as well as follow other users and make lists of their favorites to share. While today, recommendations are often baked into the streaming services or apps we use to play our entertainment content, Likewise maintains a registered user base of more than 6 million, and over 2 million monthly active users.

To build Pix, the company leveraged around 600 million consumer data points along with machine learning algorithms, as well as the natural language processing technology of OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 and 4. To work, the AI chatbot learns the preferences of the individual user and then provides them with personalized recommendations — similar to Likewise itself. In addition, the bot will reach out to users when new content becomes available that matches their interests.

The Vela pulsar has claimed the record for emitting the most powerful gamma rays among all known pulsars.

A corpse of a dead star has been found to be emanating the most intense gamma rays ever observed. This unexpected observation was found coming from the Vela pulsar, situated in the constellation Vela.

Astronomers noted that the detected gamma rays had an astonishing energy level of 20 tera-electronvolts (TeV), which is ten trillion times higher than the energy of visible light.

Continue reading “Most energetic gamma-ray emission detected from a pulsar” »

The ultimate goal is to place 3,200 satellites into low Earth orbit.

Jeff Bezos is moving one step closer to entering the broadband satellite market with its venture, Project Kuiper. Amazon-led Project Kuiper aims to place a swarm of thousands of small satellites or constellations into low Earth orbit (LEO).

The primary objective of this project is to extend internet access to regions currently lacking reliable connectivity, particularly rural and remote areas where the installation of internet infrastructure is either costly or logistically challenging.

Continue reading “Amazon’s Project Kuiper test mission to launch on Oct 6” »

From LED lights to medical imaging, quantum dots have many varied applications.

The creation of quantum dots earned its developers the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023, an invention that could have also been a contender for the Physics Prize. These tiny elements of nanotechnology, which are so miniature that their size dictates their properties, are today used in many useful and practical applications and have even been reported to direct surgeons as they tackle tricky tumor tissue.

Nobel Prize/Twitter.

Continue reading “Chemistry Nobel Prize goes to quantum dots that guide surgeons” »

It is basically GPT-4 but with vision.

On September 25, OpenAI gave ChatGPT the ability to see, hear, and speak, making it a truly multimodal large language model. And along came GPT-4V, which is basically GPT-4 but with vision.

This feature enables users to input image prompts of almost anything under the sun and ask GPT-4V to analyze them. Available currently only to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, users are posting on social media how they are using and utilizing the upgrade.