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General Atomics’ ‘robot wingman’ makes first flight

General Atomics’ new air combat drone has flown, another step toward what the Air Force is calling the “first of a second generation” of autonomous aircraft.

The drone, called the XQ-67A, is derived from GA-ASI’s Gambit series of aircraft, which the company is proposing for the Air Force’s program to build robot wingmen, called collaborative combat aircraft, or CCAs.

The new platform is part of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s highly classified Off-Board Sensing Station program, or OBSS. The service awarded GA-ASI and Kratos design contracts in 2021, then picked GA-ASI to actually build the design in 2023.

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The Philosophy of Star Trek [Federation, Post Scarcity Economy, Alien Cultures]

Star Trek is the most popular and longest running Sci-Fi franchise in American history. Created by Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek follows the various crew of Starfleet in their missions across the galaxy.

This presentation showcases the inspiration behind Star Trek, how the Federation came to be, examines the post-scarcity economy featured in their future Earth society, and explores the philosophies of all of the major alien cultures shown throughout the Star Trek series.

00:00 — Intro.
09:38 — The Augments.
14:06 — World War 3
15:13 — Post Atomic Horror.
15:45 — First Contact.
17:47 — The Vulcans.
23:30 — Post-Scarcity Economy.
33:24 — The Federation.
45:22 — The Maquis.
48:26 — The Romulans | The Cardassians | The Klingons.
52:00 — The Ferengi.
1:00:00 — The Dominion.
1:06:08 — The Borg.
1:13:34 — Conclusion.
1:16:01 — Outro

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Electric Sheep’s jolly AI-powered garden bot edges, trims and blows

Robotic garden helpers have been keeping lawns in trim for decades, but none are as much fun to watch as the Verdie AI-powered outdoor maintenance bot from Electric Sheep as it wheels around edges, blows debris and gets to grips with power tools.

For the last few years, San Francisco’s Electric Sheep Robotics has been providing automated outdoor maintenance tech as a Robots-as-a-Service rental model. But more recently the company has been acquiring traditional outdoor service providers and “progressively transforming operations by deploying proprietary AI software and robots” in a move towards becoming a large-scale outdoor maintenance company.

Tapping into this US$1 trillion market involves replacing the “wide variety of highly pollutant gas power tools; string trimmers, leaf blowers, weed sprayers, etc” – while also addressing labor shortages in the industry – by rolling out emission-free automated helpers.

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Space Accident Means Tardigrades May Have Contaminated The Moon

# spacebear.

Just over five years ago, on 22 February 2019, an unmanned space probe was placed in orbit around the Moon.

Named Beresheet and built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, it was intended to be the first private spacecraft to perform a soft landing. Among the probe’s payload were tardigrades, renowed for their ability to survive in even the harshest climates.

The mission ran into trouble from the start, with the failure of “star tracker” cameras intended to determine the spacecraft’s orientation and thus properly control its motors. Budgetary limitations had imposed a pared-down design, and while the command center was able to work around some problems, things got even trickier on 11 April, the day of the landing.

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Elon Musk Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman for ‘Flagrant Breaches’ of Contract

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and Sam Altman for allegedly abandoning OpenAI’s original mission to develop artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.

“OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” Musk’s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed late on Thursday in San Francisco.

“Under its new board, it is not just developing but is refining an AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” claims the filing. “On information and belief, GPT-4 is an AGI algorithm.”

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Fisker is talking to Nissan for a lifeline and electric pickup partnership

Nissan has been revealed as the potential savior of Fisker. The Japanese automaker is reportedly talking with Fisker to invest in the company and partner on electric pickup trucks.

Earlier today, we reported on Fisker’s disastrous fourth-quarter results showing that the electric vehicle startup lost $400 million in 2023 and it now has less than $400 million of cash on hands.

The automaker had to admit that it wouldn’t be able to continue operations past next year without a big cash injection.

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Apple Vision Pro may eventually get SteamVR functionality

Apple Vision Pro may gain the ability to play SteamVR games, thanks to developers who have begun porting the open-source ALVR software.

ALVR is software that enables streaming VR games to virtual reality headsets. The adaptation of ALVR allows users to enjoy SteamVR games on Apple Vision Pro’s Micro-OLED displays.

However, interacting with these games requires a specific type of controller that tracks itself instead of one tracked by a headset.

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