Category Archives: Futurism

The oil must flow. False Note

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is publicly committed to curbing carbon emissions but apparently that's just lip service, according to a new investigation that found the petrostate has plans to get developing countries hooked on its lucrative fossil fuel exports.

Reporting from the nonprofit journalism organization Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and Channel 4 News found that Saudi Arabia calls the scheme an "oil sustainability program" on an English-languagegovernment website, with one of its stated goals as "increasing sustainability. But in the Arabic version, it's called an "oil demand sustainability programme" that's meant to "sustain and develop the demand for hydrocarbons as a competitive source of energy, by raising its economic and environmental efficiency."

The country will achieve this by focusing on developing countries like those in Africa and by fostering the increased use of fossil fuel vehicles, in addition to developing oil-hungry supersonic air travel, collaborating on the creation of an inexpensive internal combustion engine at scale, and other projects intended to prop up carbon-emitting industry and infrastructure in poorer countries worldwide.

"When asked by an undercover reporter whether the aim of the program is to artificially stimulate oil demand to counter global efforts to reduce oil consumption and tackle climate change,"the report reads, "a Saudi official responded: 'Yes it is one of the main objectives that we are trying to accomplish.'"

This investigation is important because the country's plans could unravel any progress made towards mitigation efforts on climate change, which has already impacted the world in melting polar ice, devastating forest fires, and record high temperatures.

It also shows that while the kingdom seems to be diversifying its economy beyond its heavy dependence on oil, the country seems to be hedging its bets through this fossil fuel scheme.Saudi Arabia has reportedly enlisted the likes of the state-owned Aramco in its quest.

Critics of the plan say any developing country that chooses to rely on fossil fuels in the future risks impacts to its environment and also the grim prospect of being left behind in technological progress on green technologies.

"As an African, I feel insulted that the Saudis think Africa is not ripe for a green economy and just transition," Nigerian environmental activist Akinbode Oluwafemi told CCR and Channel 4. "What Africa needs is sustainable climate financing that will allow the continent to make the transition to a climate resilient economy.

More on fossil fuels: Exxon is Trying to Find the Guy Who Did Climate Change

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Saudi Arabia Apparently Scheming to Get Poor Countries Addicted ... - Futurism

We're only three days away from Tesla's long-awaited delivery event of its Cybertruck, and there's a ton we still don't know including basic specs like price and range.

There's a potential aesthetic wrinkle as well: while Tesla's marketing materials so far show the truck as having a mirror-like finish, the reality will likely be much smudgier.

Besides making manufacturing an absolute hell for the EV maker, the choice of stainless steel has raised plenty of eyebrows among experts. For one, it's less malleable and more expensive compared to conventional materials like plastic composites and aluminum, as the Wall Street Journal points out.

Stainless steel is also a lot more prone to attracting fingerprints and blemishes, meaning the truck will likely be relatively high maintenance and require owners to polish their vehicles to maintain some semblance of polish.

One clue as to what that maintenance might look like comes from the DeLorean DMC, famously featured in the iconic 1985 sci-fi romp "Back to the Future."As DeLorean restoration expert Chris Nicholsontold the WSJ, in fact, owners may need to go as far as sanding off the top layer of metalto remove stains that arise from organic debris like bird feces.

That'll be a strange new reality in a market in which carmakers have long perfected simpler solutions in the form of automotive paint and clear, scratch-resistant topcoats.

A lot will ride on the aesthetic reality of the Cybertruck for Tesla. Pictures recently shared on the Cybertruck subreddit show an employee polishing a Cybertruck with a product called "Cyber Shield," presumably a consumer-grade cleaner that's designed to keep fingerprints, smudges, and corrosion to a minimum.

"Cyber Shield is a cutting-edge cleaner and protective solution that redefines the way you care for the exterior stainless surfaces of the Cybertruck," an official description spotted by a Cybertruck Owners Club Forum user reads.

It's still unclear, however, if the product will end up being made available to Cybertruck owners.

"Ill use Barkeeper's Friend, thank you very much," one redditor argued, referring to a popular cleaning agent.

"These will be like your phone glass," another user added. "You can polish the shit out of it and it will be super sleek and look awesome. Then you use it for two minutes and it looks like absolute garbage."

Apart from blemishes and fingerprints, getting dents and scratches out of the Cybertruck's unusually hardened exterior might also prove difficult. Since Tesla CEO Elon Musk was hellbent on making the truck "bulletproof," the company was forced to use a fairly thick metal, which is incredibly hard to bend back into shape after damage.

To fix a dent, Nicholson toldthe WSJ, "youd have to beat the absolute hell out of it."

More on the truck: Cybertruck Spotted With Christmas Tree Sticking Way Out of Its Tiny Bed

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Cybertruck Owners May Need to Sand Them Down - Futurism

It's freezing $225 million worth of crypto. Deep Dive

A crypto company is working with the feds after an investigation revealed that millions of dollars worth of its coins were being used for human trafficking.

In a press release, the people behind the stablecoin Tether, whose value is pegged to the US dollar, explained that the company was forced to freeze $225 million worth of its own tokens after the Department of Justice investigation linked it to an international human trafficking syndicate out of Southeast Asia.

The DOJ has also, per its own statement, seized $9 million of Tether from the company as it investigates what is known as a "pig butchering" scam.

The term "pig butchering,"as many outlets have explained,is a play on "fattening the pig" before slaughter, and involves scammers in this case, trafficked people forced into the scheme luring people in with promises of huge returns on investment, having them deposit cash into what seem like legitimate crypto wallets, and then cutting them off from the accounts that the scammers had controlled the whole time.

Honeypotting people out of their hard-earned money is nothing new but the means of labor in pig butchering scams add an additional layer of corruption to the entire endeavor.

AsProPublica explained in its expos on the scam last year, the architects of these scams are creating fake identities to lure unsuspecting victims in, often using romance as a ruse.

But oddly enough, the scammers may also be victims themselves. As ProPublica andViceboth reported last year, many of the scammershad been misled with bait-and-switch job offers themselves and forced to work in scam sweatshops in countries like Cambodia, Laos, or Myanmar.

Tether is far from the first cryptocurrency used in this type of scam. A year ago to the day, the DOJ announced that it had seized fake domains that spoofed real ones from Singapore's financial markets as part of another pig butchering scam. This year, the department seized $112 million worth of crypto in a case based out of Los Angeles.

Notably, however, Tether appears to be the first crypto company to announce that it was working with federal investigators and voluntarily freezing its own funds. It's rare, especially in the wake of FTX, to want to laud a crypto company, but so long as we don't learn Tether was complicit in these schemes, we do have to hand it to them.

More on crypto scammers: Crypto Mining Rig Discovered Under Floor of Courthouse, Stealing Power

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Crypto Company Says Oops, Its Coin Was Being Used in a Human ... - Futurism

"But what he's really doing is destroying everything he built." Empty Musk

How many companies can you destroy at the same time? Investors are worried that red-pilled billionaire Elon Musk is determined to find out.

In an appearance on CNBC's "Last Call" last week, a longtime Tesla investor and advisor Ross Gerber laid into Tesla's CEO, accusing the billionaire of wrecking the Tesla brand and even alleging that Musk has effectively stepped down from his role as the electric vehicle manufacturer's chief executive.

"This isn't about me calling on him to step aside, he has stepped aside," a seemingly very pissed off Gerber, who helms a financial advisement firm and holds tens of millions of dollars in Tesla shares, told CNBC's Brian Sullivan. "None of his actions are to benefit Tesla."

Gerber's comments follow a troubling incident last week in which Musk, responding to an antisemitic tweet espousing the deadly "Great Replacement" theory, proclaimed that the antisemitic rhetoric was the "actual truth." The tweet prompted a barrage of well-earned public backlash, and in the aftermath, it seems that those with a financial stake in the billionaire's other ventures if only because of how Musk's words might impact their pocketbooks are sounding the alarm bells, too.

"He thinks in some weird world that what he says matters," Gerber continued, "but what he's really doing is destroying everything he built."

Gerber's criticism is more than fair. From numerous government investigations to recalls to the cars' dwindling values and much more, Tesla is plagued with ongoing and potentially very consequential issues.

So, plenty of work for a CEO to focus on! Meanwhile, though, rather than present himself as a collected and sane executive with a strong vision for Tesla's future, Musk has inexplicably chosen instead to go mask-off antisemitic online a decision that's not only directly contributing to the downfall of the Musk-owned X-formerly-Twitter, but to the detriment of Tesla's public standing as well. After all, Musk is one of the most recognizable figures in the world, and the many brands that he's known for, most notably Tesla and SpaceX, are inextricably tied to his image. And when a venture is linked so thoroughly to a figurehead, what that figurehead does matters, in a very material sense. (Indeed, in the days since Musk's comments prompted widespread backlash, Tesla's stock has plummeted.)

"I've never had this with any company I've invested in in my entire life, where the CEO does so many detrimental things that destroy the brand, because bottom line that's what's happening," Gerber continued in the CNBC rant. "It's absolutely outrageous, his behaviors and the damage he's caused to the brand."

More on Elon Musk's antisemitism: Rabbis Warn That Elon Musk Is Spreading the Type of Antisemitism "That Leads to Massacres"

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Longtime Tesla Investor Says Elon Musk Has Effectively Stepped ... - Futurism

How much more of this kind of madness can she take? Find a Replacement

After X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk cosigned some awfully antisemitic comments, the website's punching bag CEO has been inundated with messages from confederates.

AsAxios andForbes have both reported, X CEO Linda Yaccarino's colleagues from the advertising industry have been privately advising her to jump ship to save herself following Musk's latest and perhaps worst bigoted outburst that saw him agreeing with Nazi talking points in line with the "great replacement" conspiracy theory that posits that Jews want to "replace" white people by killing them.

In an interview withAxios, marketing consultant Lou Paskalis, a friend of Yaccarino's, said that he'd sent her a text telling her she should leave the social network "before her reputation is damaged" by Musk's latest debacle.

"I think the advertising community is now working to save the reputation of a beloved member of our industry who does not share Elon Musk's views and certainly did not know them when she accepted the role of CEO," Paskalis continued. "If she did, she would not have accepted it."

Before joining the sinking ship formerly known as Twitter, Yaccarino worked as an advertising executive at NBCUniversal for 11 years, eventually becoming the company's head of global ad sales and clearly making more than a few friends along the way.

Several of those friends, Paskalis told Axios, had also urged the X CEO to resign as companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple and others began pausing their advertisements on the platform en masse in response to alarming reporting from the think tank Media Matters for America where, in full disclosure, this writer used to work about their company's sponsored content running astride Nazi content.

In response, Musk threatened to issue a "thermonuclear lawsuit" against MMFA for its reporting, which we're sure is not doing anything to assuage the anxiety of the CEO's friends.

According toForbes' reporting on the groundswell of concern directed towards Yaccarino, the CEO has thus far resisted her well-wishers, which does seem in accordance with a post she made on the social network suggesting that she's not going anywhere anytime soon.

"I believe deeply in our vision, our team, and our community," the CEO tweeted. "Im also deeply committed to the truth and there is no other team on earth working as hard as the teams at X."

Whether she'll continue the weather the storm as the debacle deepens, however, remains to be seen.

More on Musk: Rabbis Warn That Elon Musk Is Spreading the Type of Antisemitism "That Leads to Massacres

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Twitter CEO Keeps Getting Texts From Colleagues Telling Her to ... - Futurism

It's quite the journey. Ice Plunge

The ice giants Uranus and Neptune are shrouded in a frosty and swirling atmosphere of largely hydrogen and helium. And neither planet features a solid surface, which complicates our efforts to explore them.

In fact, they're the two planets that have yet to be directly explored by any type of human-made spacecraft. Suspected liquid oceans are buried beneath thick layers of surface clouds, greatly obscuring their cores from our view.

But it's nonetheless possible to send an atmospheric probe careening through their atmospheres in an effort to get a better idea of their composition though getting a probe through these clouds at blistering speeds and having it live long enough to send back valuable data will require plenty of ingenuity.

To get a better idea of what it takes to send a probe through Uranus and Neptune's atmospheres, an international team of researchers recently simulated such a mission inside Oxford University's hypersonic plasma tunnel, reaching simulated velocities of 11.8 miles per second. Videos show a simulated probe being pummelled by gases found in both Uranus and Neptune's atmospheres.

"The tunnel is capable of measuring both convection and radiative heat flux, and critically provide the required flow speeds for the replication of ice giant entry, with traces of [methane]," explained ESA aerothermodynamics engineerLouis Walpot in an August statement.

Despite the blistering speed, they still fell short of the velocities required for these probes to actually make it very far. A probe would need an inertial velocity of at least 15.5 miles per second, per the researchers.

"The challenge is that any probe would be subject to high pressures and temperatures, and therefore would require a high-performance thermal protection system to endure its atmospheric entry for a useful amount of time," said Walpot in the latest statement.

"To begin designing such a system we need first to adapt current European testing facilities in order to reproduce the atmospheric compositions and velocities involved," he added.

Fortunately, obvious jokes aside, there's growing momentum behind our efforts to probe Uranus and Neptune.

Earlier this year, NASA astrophysicist Kathleen Mandt called for the space agency to develop an exploratory probe to investigate the "mysteries of the Uranus system."

The 2023-2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey, a publication produced by the US National Research Council that identifies key questions for future planetary exploration efforts, chose NASA's proposed Uranus Orbiter and Probe mission as a high priority.

But developing a probe that can survive the plunge into the two planets' icy atmospheres will be anything but easy, even with widespread support and funding.

More on Uranus: Scientists May Have Just Discovered New Oceans in Two of Uranus' Moons

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Scientists Simulate What It's Like to Dive Into Uranus - Futurism