Category Archives: Futurism

Oops.Smote GOAT

A bunch of crypto-pilled Elon Musk fans spent $600,000 to build a giant statue that features the new Twitter czar's head on a goat's body, riding a rocket and their coin crashed after they took the grotesque work of "art" public.

Over the holiday weekend, the great minds behind the Elon Goat Token an in-your-face homage to the man they consider to be the "Greatest of All Time," or GOAT decided to unleash upon the streets of Austin, Texas their metallic Frankenstein's monster: a bizarre behemoth that's supposedly the face of Musk on a goat's body, but that looks a lot more like if the owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter was grafted onto Dune's infamous shai hulud sandworms.

As commentators have noted, Musk himself hasn't yetacknowledgedthe bizarre homage in any way but the crypto markets sure have.

Indeed, the price of the already-low-value coin has plummeted dramatically since November 26, which was the day the coin's makers held their "#GOATsgiving" unveiling and drive-by of the statue.

As of right now, the Elon Goat Token is worth a very small fraction of a cent, though again, it wasn't worth all that much more at its Thanksgiving Day high, which totaled about $0.002 per coin.

The whereabouts of the strange statue haven't been reported since Saturday, when it was "delivered" to Tesla's Austin Gigafactory. Whether the new Twitter owner has seen it or not is anyone's guess.

Is this the last gasp of the crypto hype machine? Only time will tell.

More on the Elon of it all:Elon Musk's Crying About Trent Reznor Shows That He Is a Big, Big Baby

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Crypto Guys Spend $600,000 on Hideous Wormlike Elon Musk Statue ...

"If we nuke Russia back, they will nuke us and then we have WW3."Nuclear Meltdown

Self-proclaimed political expert Elon Musk has issued a stark warning to Ukraine as Russia's invasion continues.

Using Twitter, the platform he is likely to soon own and control, the world's richest man made a number of eyebrow-raising predictions for eventualities regarding the outcome of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"If Russia is faced with the choice of losing Crimea or using battlefield nukes, they will choose the latter," the SpaceX and Tesla CEO tweeted. "[The West has] already sanctioned/cutoff Russia in every possible way, so what more do they have left to lose?"

"If we nuke Russia back, they will nuke us and then we have WW3," he added.

In short, Musk is arguing that Ukraine should give in to Russia's demands, or else a highly controversial perspective that has already landed him in hot water recently.

Last week, he announced SpaceX will no longer supply Starlink internet satellite tech to Ukraine, a decision he reversed two days later.

Once again, Musk appears here to be focused on Russia's claims to the Crimean Peninsula, a conflict that has flared up repeatedly since Russia annexed it eight years ago and which has been the subject of other recent Twitter tomfoolery from the billionaire entrepreneur.

"Whether one likes it or not, Crimea is absolutely seen as a core part of Russia by Russia," Musk continued in his buried Twitter thread. "Crimea is also of critical national security importance to Russia, as it is their southern navy base. From their standpoint losing Crimea is like USA losing Hawaii & Pearl Harbor."

Musk also played out a different doomsday scenario in his head.

"If Russia faces destruction of their army and utter defeat by NATO, they will use nukes," he noted, "then NATO will respond with nukes and civilization is over."

In true Musk fashion, he followed up his warning with a tactless and seriously misplaced joke.

"But, hey, look on the bright side!" he continued. "At least Russia doesnt get Crimea in that scenario, so you can be comforted by that thought, while watching the mushroom clouds rise."

More mutual admiration: Russia Says Thanks Elon Musk, We Love You Too

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Elon Musk Warns "Civilization Is Over" If Ukraine Doesn't Give in to Russia - Futurism

Image by Getty Images/Futurism

The married couple who helped develop Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine have issued an incredible prediction: they believe there will be a cancer cure in the form of a vaccine before the end of the decade.

Professors Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin the husband-and-wife duo behind the BioNTech pharmaceutical startup that provided the mRNA juice for Pfizer's coronavirus vaccines told theBBC that their company is currently developing a cancer vaccine that they believe will be a sea change in the treatment of the deadly disease.

"Yes, we feel that a cure for cancer, or to changing cancer patients' lives, is in our grasp," Tureci told the BBC.

The couple is incredibly confident in their approach, with Sahin, the husband, telling the broadcaster that successful cancer vaccines "will happen, definitely, before 2030."

According to Tureci, it was research for mRNA-based and patient-specific cancer vaccines that led them to the spike protein discoveries that ultimately acted as a "tailwind" for current COVID vaccines.

Now, research from coronavirus vaccines "gives back" to their cancer treatment research, Tureci argued, which is focused on tumorous cancers like melanoma and bowel cancer.

The mRNA or messenger RNA in BioNTech's developing vaccines will target cancer cells as if they were on a "'wanted poster' of the enemy," she told the BBC reporter. In doing so, the mRNA will be able to distinguish cancer cells from normal ones and then kill them.

When the host asked the pair if there's "still a chance" that the vaccines won't work, the wife deflected.

"I don't think so," Tureci replied. "Everything we have learned about the immune system and about what we achieve with a cancer vaccine shows, in principle, the clear activity we can induce those killer T-cells, we can direct them."

"As scientists, we are always hesitant to say we will have a cure for cancer," she continued, adding that the pair nevertheless has "a number of breakthroughs" in the works that they're going to continue pursuing.

This news is as exciting as it is ambitious but given the couple's incredibly successful track record, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic.

More mRNA:First Woman Reportedly Cured of HIV

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Vaccine Makers Predict We Will Have Cancer Cure "Before 2030" - Futurism

That can't be right.Speed Demon

Back in 2017, scientists observed a spectacular collision of two neutron stars that blasted a jet of radiation so powerful that NASA says the energy it released was "comparable to that of a supernova," according to a press release by the agency.

But it's taken scientists until now to unpack all the data that was gathered because of its complexity. Among other intriguing findings: stuff appearing to travel faster than light which, of course, is impossible. But don't worry. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation.

The event, designated GW170817, is what's known as a binary neutron star merger. Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of once-massive stars and some of the densest objects in the universe. According to NASA, just a single teaspoon of one would weigh four billion tons on Earth.

With that sort of unfathomable density comes great gravity enough to draw two of these neutron stars together in an explosive collision that launched gravitational waves and gamma radiation into space, making it the first time scientists have detected both from a neutron star merger, NASA says.

The Hubble Space Telescope observed the two neutron stars collapse into a black hole in the aftermath of the explosion. A spinning disk then formed around the black hole, which beamed incredibly fast jets of matter into space. Combining their findings with that of the National Science Foundation, scientists were able to piece together the event with extreme precision including how fast the jets were moving.

Initially, from the Hubble observations, it appeared the jets were traveling at seven times the speed of light. Of course, that's impossible. The scientists attribute this discrepancy to a phenomena known as superliminal motion. Essentially, since the jet approaches our planet at nearly the speed of light, NASA says, the light it emits at later points has a shorter distance to travel each time, making it seem like it's moving faster than it really is.

With some additional calculations, scientists found the real speed: at least 99.97 percent the speed of light which, to be fair, is still pretty damn fast.

The scientists hope their findings, published in a paper this week in Nature, will allow for even more precise observations of neutron star mergers in the future, which could potentially help calculate the rate of the universe's expansion.

More on stars: Huge Graveyard of Stars Surrounds Our Galaxy, Scientists Say

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Scientists Spotted Something That Appeared to Be Moving 7 Times the Speed of Light - Futurism

Kids? Being better at technology than adults? We're shocked.Honor Code

Tech-savvy students are reportedly getting straight As by using advanced language generators mainly OpenAI's wildly advanced GPT-3, according to Motherboard to write papers for them. And as these AI-written responses can't be detected by plagiarism software, schools are likely to have a difficult time combatting this next-gen subversion.

"It would be simple assignments that included extended responses," a college student who goes by innovate_rye on Reddit told Motherboard. "For biology, we would learn about biotech and write five good and bad things about biotech. I would send a prompt to the AI like, 'what are five good and bad things about biotech?' and it would generate an answer that would get me an A."

Kids? Using their vast knowledge of burgeoning technologies to circumvent digital boundaries that adults simply don't know how to keep up with? No one could have seen this one coming.

If plagiarism software were capable of flagging AI-made prompts, this probably wouldn't be an issue. But while there's definitely a philosophical debate to be had about whether any AI-generated writing should ever be considered original, it's technicallyseen as such by plagiarism-checking softwares and it's unclear if or when those systems will ever be able to catch up.

"[The text] is not copied from somewhere else, it's produced by a machine, so plagiarism checking software is not going to be able to detect it and it's not able to pick it up because the text wasn't copied from anywhere else," George Veletsianos, Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning & Technology and associate professor at Royal Roads University, told Motherboard.

"Without knowing how all these other plagiarism checking tools quite work and how they might be developed in the future," he continued, "I don't think that AI text can be detectable in that way."

Of course, these kids are definitely cheating, and teachers are probably right to be concerned about what this means for learning moving forward.

Ask innovate_rye, though, and AI's just helping him focus on what he thinks is important.

"I still do my homework on things I need to learn to pass, I just use AI to handle the things I don't want to do or find meaningless," innovate_rye told Motherboard.

"If AI is able to do my homework right now," he added, "what will the future look like?"

READ MORE: Students Are Using AI to Write Their Papers, Because Of Course They Are[Motherboard]

More on GPT-Cheating: This Grad Student Used a Neural Network to Write His Papers

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Sneaky Students Using AI to Write Their Papers For Them - Futurism

He may never recover.Tragic Accident

In January, a SpaceX employee performing a routine check on one of the company's Raptor engines was severely injured when an over pressurized valve exploded a newly-revealed incident the company has yet to publicly acknowledge.

Francisco Cadaba, who had been with the Elon Musk-led company for ten years, sustainedlife-threatening injuries to his head, extremities, and respiratory systemon January 18, according toreportingfrom the just-launched news siteSemafor(which you cansign up for here).

While Cadaba has since woken from a months-long coma,he is unable to survive without medical assistance and incapable of communicating.

SpaceXwasfined $18,475 for two safety violations one with the highest order of penalty by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration(OSHA), a seemingly paltry sum given the severity of Cadaba's injuries.

Most worryingly, SpaceX "has made no announcement to the public or to its workers about [Cadaba's] status," former employees toldSemafor, who worry that Cadaba's family may not be compensated for his inability to work, likely for the rest of his life.

In the meantime, Cadaba's family have been relying on the charity of his co-workers who've donated over $51,000 to their GoFundMe page.

Cadaba's case is sadly symptomatic of the driving philosophy behind many private spacecompanies including SpaceX,whichhave sometimesoverlookedthe livesand safety ofworkers.

That philosophy in Silicon Valley parlance from which the space industry draws inspiration is often articulated as "move fast and break things."

The more failures, the faster one can learn and improve, the theory goes.But while "breaking things" at a software company doesn't involve putting your life at risk, a private space company can be considerably more dangerous.

"We have flammable liquids on site in bulk quantities," Preston Wood, senior safety manager at aerospace manufacturer Relativity Space,toldSemafor. "We've got cryogenics, high pressure gasses, inert gasses that can create oxygen deficient atmospheres. Those commodities are very dangerous."

Elon Musk, SpaceX's high profile CEO, has been anavid adopter of the Silicon Valley ethos. "A high production rate cures many ills," Musk said inarecentinterview.

But, as Cadaba's tragic workplace injury goes to show, that approach can come with a human cost that can't be cured.

As of today, both OSHA's and the workers' compensation investigations are currently ongoing.

Read more: An accident at SpaceX

More on SpaceX: Elon Musk Says He Can't Give Free Starlink to Ukraine Anymore After Officials There Were Mean to Him

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SpaceX Reportedly Kept Quiet After an Employee Was Horrifically Injured This Year - Futurism