quonset writes: Just over two weeks ago, NASA figured out why its Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped sending useful data. They suspected corrupted memory in its flight data system (FDS) was the culprit. Today, for the first time since November, Voyager 1 is sending useful data about its health and the status of its onboard systems back to NASA. How did NASA accomplish this feat of long distance repair? They broke up the code into smaller pieces and redistributed them throughout the memory.

From NASA: "... So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well. The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft's engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 1/2 hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 1/2 hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft. During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

According to French business magazine Challenges, Apple has acquired Datakalab -- a Paris-based startup specializing in artificial intelligence compression and computer vision technology. 9to5Mac reports: Datakalab described itself as "experts in low power, runtime efficient, and deep learning algorithms" that work on device. On its LinkedIn page, Datakalab highlights "industry leading compression and adaptation to deploy embedded computer vision that is fast, cost-effective and precise." Prior to the Apple acquisition had between 10 and 20 employees.

From Datakalab's now-defunct website: "Datakalab is a French technology company that develops computer image analysis algorithms to measure flows in public space. The images are instantly transformed into anonymized statistical data processed locally in 100ms. Datakalab does not store any images or personal data and only keeps statistical data. Datakalab products are built according to the principle of 'Privacy by Design.'"

While neither Apple nor DatakaLab have acknowledged the acquisition, Challenges says that the deal was reported to the European Commission this month. The report says that Datakalab's two founders did not join Apple, but multiple other employees did make the jump. Datakalab also held multiple patents related to AI compression and vision technology. The acquisition makes perfect sense given Apple's rumored ambitions to run its upcoming AI-related features in iOS 18 "entirely on device."

Two months ago the team behind NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter released a video reflecting on its historic explorations of Mars, flying 10.5 miles (17.0 kilometers) in 72 different flights over three years. It was the team's way of saying goodbye, according to NASA's video.

And this week, LiveScience reports, Ingenuity answered back: On April 16, Ingenuity beamed back its final signal to Earth, which included the remaining data it had stored in its memory bank and information about its final flight. Ingenuity mission scientists gathered in a control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California to celebrate and analyze the helicopter's final message, which was received via NASA's Deep Space Network, made up of ground stations located across the globe.

In addition to the remaining data files, Ingenuity sent the team a goodbye message including the names of all the people who worked on the mission. This special message had been sent to Perseverance the day before and relayed to Ingenuity to send home.

The helicopter, which still has power, will now spend the rest of its days collecting data from its final landing spot in Valinor Hills, named after a location in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" books.

The chopper will wake up daily to test its equipment, collect a temperature reading and take a single photo of its surroundings. It will continue to do this until it loses power or fills up its remaining memory space, which could take 20 years. Such a long-term dataset could not only benefit future designs for Martian vehicles but also "provide a long-term perspective on Martian weather patterns and dust movement," researchers wrote in the statement. However, the data will be kept on board the helicopter and not beamed back to Earth, so it must be retrieved by future Martian vehicles or astronauts.

"Whenever humanity revisits Valinor Hills — either with a rover, a new aircraft, or future astronauts — Ingenuity will be waiting with her last gift of data," Teddy Tzanetos, an Ingenuity scientist at JPL, said in the statement.
Thursday NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released another new video tracing the entire route of Ingenuity's expedition over the surface of Mars.

"Ingenuity's success could pave the way for more extensive aerial exploration of Mars down the road," adds Spacae.com: Mission team members are already working on designs for larger, more capable rotorcraft that could collect a variety of science data on the Red Planet, for example. And Mars isn't the only drone target: In 2028, NASA plans to launch Dragonfly, a $3.3 billion mission to Saturn's huge moon Titan, which hosts lakes, seas and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons on its frigid surface. The 1,000-pound (450 kg) Dragonfly will hop from spot to spot on Titan, characterizing the moon's various environments and assessing its habitability.

Several "high-profile astronomers" will meet at London's Royal Society (the UK's national academy of sciences), "to question some of the most fundamental aspects of our understanding of the universe.reports Futurism: As The Guardian reports, the luminaries of cosmology will be re-examining some basic assumptions about the universe — right down to the over-a-century-old theory that it's expanding at a constant rate. "We are, in cosmology, using a model that was first formulated in 1922," coorganizer and Oxford cosmologist Subir Sarkar told the newspaper, in an apparent reference to the year Russian astronomer Alexander Friedmann outlined the possibility of cosmic expansion based on Einstein's general theory of relativity. "We have great data, but the theoretical basis is past its sell-by date," he added. "More and more people are saying the same thing and these are respected astronomers."

A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe's growth in significant ways. Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is "lopsided" after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.
The article notes that another theory is that the so-called cosmological constant that's been used for decades "actually varies across space."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

South America's Amazon River has reached its lowest level since measurements began, according to the Washington Post, while temperatures "hovered above 110 degrees Fahrenheit" for nearly a week as April began in the capital of Mali. "Nights offered little relief, with temperatures often staying above 90 degrees..."

"An overtaxed electrical grid sputtered and shut down," they add, and "dehydration and heat stroke became epidemic... At the city's main hospital, doctors recorded a month's worth of deaths in just four days. Local cemeteries were overwhelmed." The historic heat wave that besieged Mali and other parts of West Africa this month — which scientists say would have been "virtually impossible" in a world without human-caused climate change — is just the latest manifestation of a sudden and worrying surge in global temperatures. Fueled by decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning and an El Niño climate pattern that emerged last June, the planet this year breached a feared warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Nearly 19,000 weather stations have notched record high temperatures since January 1. Each of the last ten months has been the hottest of its kind.

The scale and intensity of this hot streak is extraordinary even considering the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, researchers say. Scientists are still struggling to explain how the planet could have exceeded previous temperature records by as much as half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) last fall. What happens in the next few months, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, could indicate whether Earth's climate has undergone a fundamental shift — a quantum leap in warming that is confounding climate models and stoking ever more dangerous weather extremes.

But even if the world returns to a more predictable warming trajectory, it will only be a temporary reprieve from the conditions that humanity must soon confront, Schmidt said. "Global warming continues apace."
Will this summer's La Niña cool things off? More atmospheric research is underway, and "Schmidt says it's too soon to know how worried the world should be," according to the article. But he does raise this possibility. "What if the statistical connections that we are basing our predictions on are no longer valid?"

"It's niggling at the back of my brain that it could be that the past is no longer a guide to the future."

A large-screen IMAX documentary about the James Webb Space Telescope "has just opened in 300 theaters across North America," write an anonymous Slashdot reader, noting that it's playing for one week only. "And it gets a rave review in Forbes." Imagine venturing to the beginning of time and space, exploring cosmic landscapes so vast and beautiful that they've remained unseen by human eyes until now.

This is the promise of "Deep Sky," an extraordinary IMAX presentation that brings the universe's awe-inspiring mysteries closer than ever before. Directed by the Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn and narrated by the equally acclaimed actress Michelle Williams, "Deep Sky" is a monumental journey through the cosmos, powered by the groundbreaking images captured by NASA's Webb Telescope... "Deep Sky" is more than a documentary about a space telescope; it's an immersive experience that invites audiences to see the universe as never before. Through the power of IMAX, viewers are transported across 13 billion years of cosmic history, to the very edges of the observable universe. Here, in stunning clarity, we witness the birth of stars, the formation of galaxies, and the eerie beauty of exoplanets — planets that orbit stars beyond our own Sun. These images, beamed back to Earth by JWST, reveal the universe's vast beauty on a scale that seems only the giant IMAX screen can begin to convey...

What makes "Deep Sky" particularly captivating is its ability to render the incomprehensible beauty and scale of the universe accessible. The IMAX® experience, known for its breathtaking visuals and sound, serves as the perfect medium to convey the majesty of the cosmos.
The review says the film celebrates the achieve of thousands of people working across decades, "aiming to answer some of humanity's oldest questions: Where did we come from? How did the universe begin? Are we alone in the vastness of space?"

The reviewer also spoke to JWST telescope scientist Matt Mountain — in another article applauding the film for "encapsulating the grandeur of space exploration on the IMAX canvas." In "Deep Sky," viewers are taken on a journey from the telescope's construction to its deployment and early operational phases. The documentary highlights the international collaboration and engineering marvels behind the JWST, featuring insights from key scientists and engineers who brought the telescope to life. The film aims to rekindle a sense of wonder about the universe and our place within it, emphasizing the human desire to explore and understand the cosmos.

New submitter Baloo Uriza writes: In a rare display of sanity in the automotive space, British Columbia has banned autonomous cars from its highways after years of watching autonomous cars hamper emergency response efforts in California and outright kill a pedestrian in Arizona. Let's hope this regulatory trend continues and moves into the human space by pulling licenses of drivers with a known history of poor driving. In the shared article, The Drive notes that the ban only applies to self-driving vehicles that exceed a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) autonomy rating of Level 2. [A full breakdown of each of the levels can be found here.] The ban is part of an update to B.C.'s Motor Vehicle Act that went into effect on April 5, 2024 and includes possible consequences of a max penalty of $2,000 (CAD) in fines and up to six months of prison time. Importantly, the ban could change as autonomous driving tech evolves in the coming years.

Since the ban doesn't affect Level 2 vehicles, Tesla owners who use Autopilot and FSD, as well as Ford and GM vehicle owners with BlueCruise and Super Cruise, will be exempt. In fact, there are currently no Level 3 autonomous vehicles for sale in Canada.

Longtime Slashdot reader garyisabusyguy shares a report from The Debrief: Dr. Charles Buhler, a NASA engineer and the co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, has revealed that his company's propellantless propulsion drive, which appears to defy the known laws of physics, has produced enough thrust to counteract Earth's gravity. "The most important message to convey to the public is that a major discovery occurred," Buhler told The Debrief. "This discovery of a New Force is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a sustainable force onto an object and allow center-of-mass translation of said object without expelling mass." "There are rules that include conservation of energy, but if done correctly, one can generate forces unlike anything humankind has done before," Buhler added. "It will be this force that we will use to propel objects for the next 1,000 years until the next thing comes."

To document his team's discovery as well as the process behind their work, which Dr. Buhler cautions is in no way affiliated with NASA or the U.S. Government, the outwardly amiable researcher presented his findings at a recent Alternative Propulsion Energy Conference (APEC). Filled with both highly-credentialed career engineers and propulsion hobbyists, APEC is an organization The Debrief once referred to as the World's Most Exclusive (And Strange) Anti-Gravity Club. In conjunction with that presentation, "The Discovery of Propellantless Propulsion: The Direct Conversion of Electrical Energy into Physical Thrust," Dr. Buhler also sat down with APEC co-founder and moderator Tim Ventura to explain how his past in electrostatics, which is his primary area of expertise, ended up being a key component of his discovery of this new force. [...]

Up next, Buhler says his team is seeking funding to test their devices in space to better understand the force at work. "We're hoping to do some demos," said Buhler. "Some space demos. That's what we're trying to get some funding to do. I think that would be a great way to show off the technology." Besides proving once and for all that the force they are seeing is real, the accomplished engineer believes that such tests could encourage other scientists to search for an explanation of what exactly it is they are seeing. "I think it's a good opportunity for people to run these tests, look at them, watch them go in space, watch it move in space, and then say, "what does it imply? What are the implications?'" Until that time, Buhler says he believes his work proves that the force they are seeing is "fundamental" and that understanding it is the next logical step. "You can't deny this," he told Ventura. "There's not a lot to this. You're just charging up Teflon, copper tape, and foam, and you have this thrust."

So, while his team believes their experiments speak for themselves, the veteran scientist says he also believes it is the job of science to analyze and understand this discovery. If successful, he thinks it may even address some of the harder questions in science, including the nature of dark energy or even space/time itself. "It's easy to make these things," he said, "so it's a tool for the scientific community to use to try to explore those hard questions." If there are companies or individuals interested in working with Exodus Propulsion Technologies, Buhler asks that they reach out via their LinkedIn page.

Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from Reuters: Aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman is working with SpaceX [...] on a classified spy satellite project already capturing high-resolution imagery of the Earth, according to people familiar with the program. The program, details of which were first reported by Reuters last month, is meant to enhance the U.S. government's ability to track military and intelligence targets from low-Earth orbits, providing high-resolution imagery of a kind that had traditionally been captured mostly by drones and reconnaissance aircraft. The inclusion of Northrop Grumman, which has not been previously reported, reflects a desire among government officials to avoid putting too much control of a highly-sensitive intelligence program in the hands of one contractor, four people familiar with the project told Reuters. 'It is in the government's interest to not be totally invested in one company run by one person,' one of the people said.

It's unclear whether other contractors are involved at present or could join the project as it develops. Northrop Grumman is providing sensors for some of the SpaceX satellites, the people familiar with the project told Reuters. Northrop Grumman, two of the people added, will test those satellites at its own facilities before they are launched. At least 50 of the SpaceX satellites are expected at Northrop Grumman facilities for procedures including testing and the installation of sensors in coming years, one of the people said. In March, Reuters reported that the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, in 2021 awarded a $1.8 billion contract to SpaceX for the classified project, a planned network of hundreds of satellites. So far, the people familiar with the project said, SpaceX has launched roughly a dozen prototypes and is already providing test imagery to the NRO, an intelligence agency that oversees development of U.S. spy satellites.

U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing plans to enter the flying car business in Asia by 2030, looking to tap demand for the fast travel the vehicles could provide in the region's traffic-choked cities. Nikkei: Boeing Chief Technology Officer Todd Citron revealed the plans in an interview with Nikkei. The company is developing electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) craft at subsidiary Wisk Aero. The aircraft will adopt autonomous technology, rare among eVTOL craft. The plan is to first obtain certification in the U.S. before expanding into Asia. Details of the Asia business will be finalized in the future, including whether Boeing will sell the aircraft to companies aiming to provide eVTOL transportation services or operate the services itself.

Boeing is currently considering which country in Asia to enter first, including Japan. In Japan, domestic startup SkyDrive and Germany's Volocopter are scheduled to operate air taxi services at the 2025 Osaka World Expo. Boeing opened a research and development base in Nagoya on Thursday. It first established R&D operations in Japan in 2022 but had been renting space from other companies until now.

Sweden is the newest nation to sign onto NASA's Artemis Accords -- a series of non-binding bilateral arrangements for peaceful and responsible exploration. Space.com reports: During a signing event in Stockholm on Tuesday (April 16), Swedish Minister for Education Mats Persson penned the agreement alongside U.S. Ambassador Erik D. Ramanathan. "By joining the Artemis Accords, Sweden strengthens its strategic space partnership with the U.S. on space covering areas such as Swedish space research and the space industry, which in turn also strengthens Sweden's total defense capability," Persson said in a NASA statement. The event in Stockholm comes just on the heels of Switzerland's signing of the Artemis Accords the day before. Greece and Uruguay were also included in February. Sweden is now the 38th nation to join the accords, which were established in 2020, as the first Artemis moon launch inched closer to reality.

The Accords mirror principles set out in 1967, as part of the Outer Space Treaty to help govern international cooperation space. NASA is using the refreshed agreement as a guideline for the Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17, in 1972. In the agency's statement, NASA administrator Bill Nelson welcomed Sweden to the expanding space club. "Our nations have worked together to discover new secrets in our solar system, and now, we welcome you to a global coalition that is committed to exploring the heavens openly, transparently, responsibly, and in peace," Nelson said, adding, "the United States and Sweden share the same bedrock principles, and we're excited to expand these principles to the cosmos."

CNBC reports that nine Google workers were arrested on trespassing charges Tuesday night in protest of the company's $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services to the Israeli government. The sit-in happened at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's office in Sunnyvale and the 10th floor commons of Google's New York office. From the report: The arrests, which were livestreamed on Twitch by participants, follow rallies outside Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale and Seattle, which attracted hundreds of attendees, according to workers involved. [...] Protesters in Sunnyvale sat in Kurian's office for more than nine hours until their arrests, writing demands on Kurian's whiteboard and wearing shirts that read "Googler against genocide." In New York, protesters sat in a three-floor common space. Five workers from Sunnyvale and four from New York were arrested.

"On a personal level, I am opposed to Google taking any military contracts -- no matter which government they're with or what exactly the contract is about," Cheyne Anderson, a Google Cloud software engineer based in Washington, told CNBC. "And I hold that opinion because Google is an international company and no matter which military it's with, there are always going to be people on the receiving end... represented in Google's employee base and also our user base." Anderson had flown to Sunnyvale for the protest in Kurian's office and was one of the workers arrested Tuesday. "Google Cloud supports numerous governments around the world in countries where we operate, including the Israeli government, with our generally available cloud computing services," a Google spokesperson told CNBC, adding, "This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."

TikTok has started testing its Instagram competitor, TikTok Notes, in Canada and Australia. TechCrunch reports: The company said on X that it is in the "early stage" of the app's rollout and that the app is "a dedicated space for photo and text content." "We hope that the TikTok community will use TikTok Notes to continue sharing their moments through photo posts. Whether documenting adventures, expressing creativity, or simply sharing snapshots of one's day, the TikTok Notes experience is designed for those who would like to share and engage through photo content," it said.

The company didn't say much about the app's features and functionality apart from the fact that users can log in with their existing TikTok account. Even the app's description in the app stores is pretty light on details. The screenshots on the App Store listing suggest that the posts will appear in two-column grids on the home page. The screenshots also indicate that you can post multiple photos through a carousel post.

NASA has confirmed that a piece of metal that tore through a Florida home last month was space junk from the International Space Station. NBC News reports: The agency confirmed Monday that the 1.6-pound object was debris from a cargo pallet that had been intentionally released from the space station three years ago. The pallet, packed with aging batteries, was supposed to burn up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere, but a piece survived -- the piece that smashed into a house in Naples, Florida, on March 8.

WINK News, a CBS News affiliate in southwestern Florida, first reported the incident. Naples resident Alejandro Otero told the outlet that the object crashed through the roof and two floors of his home. Otero was not home at the time, he told WINK News, but the metal object nearly hit his son, who was two rooms away. In a blog post about the incident, NASA said it had analyzed the object at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and confirmed that it was part of the equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet.

The piece of space junk is roughly cylindrical in shape and is about 4-inches tall and 1.6-inches wide. NASA said agency staff studied the object's features and metal composition and matched it to the hardware that had been jettisoned from the space station in 2021. At that time, new lithium-ion batteries had recently been installed at the space station, so the old nickel hydrogen batteries were packed up for disposal. The space station's robotic arm released the 5,800-pound cargo pallet containing the batteries over the Pacific Ocean, as the outpost orbited 260 miles above the Earth's surface, according to NASA. NASA said it will perform a detailed investigation of the latest debris incident to determine how the object withstood the extreme trip through the atmosphere.

SonicSpike shares a report: The quest to return rock materials from Mars to Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major overhaul. The US space agency says the current mission design can't return the samples before 2040 on the existing funds and the more realistic $11bn needed to make it happen is not sustainable. Nasa is going to canvas for cheaper, faster "out of the box" ideas. It hopes to have a solution on the drawing board later in the year.

Returning rock samples from Mars is regarded as the single most important priority in planetary exploration, and has been for decades. Just as the Moon rocks brought home by Apollo astronauts revolutionised our understanding of early Solar System history, so materials from the Red Planet are likely to recast our thinking on the possibilities for life beyond Earth.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Within yesterday's Linux 6.9-rc4 release is an interesting little nugget by Linus Torvalds to battle Kconfig parsers that can't correctly handle tabs but rather just assume spaces for whitespace for this kernel configuration format. Due to a patch having been queued last week to replace a tab with a space character in the kernel tracing Kconfig file, Linus Torvalds decided to take matters into his own hand for Kconfig parsers that can't deal with tabs... Torvalds authored a patch to intentionally add some tabs of his own into Kconfig for throwing off any out-of-tree/third-party parsers that can't correctly handle them. Torvalds added these intentional hidden tabs to the common Kconfig file for handling page sizes for the kernel. Thus sure to cause dramatic and noticeable breakage for any parsers not having tabs correctly.

Top takeaways from Stanford's new AI Index Report [PDF]:
1. AI beats humans on some tasks, but not on all. AI has surpassed human performance on several benchmarks, including some in image classification, visual reasoning, and English understanding. Yet it trails behind on more complex tasks like competition-level mathematics, visual commonsense reasoning and planning.
2. Industry continues to dominate frontier AI research. In 2023, industry produced 51 notable machine learning models, while academia contributed only 15. There were also 21 notable models resulting from industry-academia collaborations in 2023, a new high.
3. Frontier models get way more expensive. According to AI Index estimates, the training costs of state-of-the-art AI models have reached unprecedented levels. For example, OpenAI's GPT-4 used an estimated $78 million worth of compute to train, while Google's Gemini Ultra cost $191 million for compute.
4. The United States leads China, the EU, and the U.K. as the leading source of top AI models. In 2023, 61 notable AI models originated from U.S.-based institutions, far outpacing the European Union's 21 and China's 15.
5. Robust and standardized evaluations for LLM responsibility are seriously lacking. New research from the AI Index reveals a significant lack of standardization in responsible AI reporting. Leading developers, including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, primarily test their models against different responsible AI benchmarks. This practice complicates efforts to systematically compare the risks and limitations of top AI models.
6. Generative AI investment skyrockets. Despite a decline in overall AI private investment last year, funding for generative AI surged, nearly octupling from 2022 to reach $25.2 billion. Major players in the generative AI space, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, and Inflection, reported substantial fundraising rounds.
7. The data is in: AI makes workers more productive and leads to higher quality work. In 2023, several studies assessed AI's impact on labor, suggesting that AI enables workers to complete tasks more quickly and to improve the quality of their output. These studies also demonstrated AI's potential to bridge the skill gap between low- and high-skilled workers. Still, other studies caution that using AI without proper oversight can lead to diminished performance.
8. Scientific progress accelerates even further, thanks to AI. In 2022, AI began to advance scientific discovery. 2023, however, saw the launch of even more significant science-related AI applications -- from AlphaDev, which makes algorithmic sorting more efficient, to GNoME, which facilitates the process of materials discovery.
9. The number of AI regulations in the United States sharply increases. The number of AIrelated regulations in the U.S. has risen significantly in the past year and over the last five years. In 2023, there were 25 AI-related regulations, up from just one in 2016. Last year alone, the total number of AI-related regulations grew by 56.3%.
10. People across the globe are more cognizant of AI's potential impact -- and more nervous. A survey from Ipsos shows that, over the last year, the proportion of those who think AI will dramatically affect their lives in the next three to five years has increased from 60% to 66%. Moreover, 52% express nervousness toward AI products and services, marking a 13 percentage point rise from 2022. In America, Pew data suggests that 52% of Americans report feeling more concerned than excited about AI, rising from 37% in 2022.

A monthslong "Star Wars"-themed festival called Season of the Force is now happening at Disneyland — including John Williams compositions in the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge land during the park's fireworks. SFGate reports: Before the show starts, a voice rings through the land. "Black Spire Outpost has a long and colorful history of heroes and legends, Jedi and Sith, royalty and resistance," it says. "Those who would rule and those who refuse to bow. Here we celebrate that fiery spirit tonight." Then as the first fireworks fly into the sky, the majestic "Star Wars" music begins...

During the day, the land is overrun with tiny robots. Season of the Force also includes daily appearances from the new BDX Droids, cute little "explorer companions," per Disneyland, designed to assist with "exploration and research." These new audio-animatronics interact with guests, clicking and whirring with a surprising amount of personality.

Sabine Wren from "Ahsoka" is also making appearances in Galaxy's Edge during Season of the Force, and there are specialty food offerings in the land like the Celto Slush (a green, pandan-flavored horchata cold brew coffee drink) and the return of Dewback Chili Noodles (spicy fettuccine with ginger-spiced ground pork, broccolini stems and shredded red cabbage).
For the event, Disneyland's long-running Star Tours ride now includes appearances from the Mandalorian (and Grogu), Ahsoka, and Cassian Andor, according to the article. "Also back this year is Hyperspace Mountain, the seasonal overlay of Space Mountain that puts riders into an intergalactic fight between the Resistance and the First Order."

After nearly 11 years as CNN's space correspondent, Miles O'Brien found himself in 2003 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida covering the launch of the space shuttle Columbia: As part of the post-launch routine, NASA began sharing several replays of the launch from various cameras trained on the vehicle. And that was when we saw it. Producer Dave Santucci called me into our live truck, and said, "You got to look at this." It was kind of a grainy image of what looked like a puff of smoke, as if someone dropped a bag of flour on the ground and it broke open. We played it over and over again, and it did not look good at all. The giant orange fuel tank was filled with super cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen, so it was enveloped in insulating foam. A big piece of the foam had broken away near a strut called the "bipod," striking the leading edge of the orbiter's left wing. It was made of reinforced carbon to protect the aluminum structure of the spacecraft from the searing heat of re-entry from space.

I reached out to some of my sources inside the shuttle program. Everyone had seen it, of course, but the people I spoke with cautioned me not to worry. The foam was very light, and it had fallen off on earlier missions and nothing of concern had happened as a result... I wish I hadn't taken my eye off the ball. Space was my beat, and I was uniquely positioned to put this concerning event into the public domain. Like NASA's leadership, I went through a process of convincing myself that it was going to be okay. But I had this sinking feeling. It didn't feel right. A spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere at 17,500 miles an hour — much faster than a rifle bullet — is enveloped in a glowing inferno of plasma...

[As it returned to earth 16 days later] the communication between the ground and the orbiter became non-routine. Producers in the control room realized the gravity of the situation, and we cut to a commercial break to get me off the couch. As I was making my way across the newsroom, I started heaving. I knew in an instant that they were all gone. There was no survivable scenario. I was sickened. It was like a body blow. Somehow I got my act together and started talking. I felt like it was my responsibility to mention the foam strike, to get the information out there to the public. About an hour after Columbia had disintegrated, I shared with a huge global audience what I knew... "That bipod is the place where they think a little piece of foam fell off and hit the leading edge of that wing."

During the mission, I could have easily done a story about the foam strike, spreading the word that some NASA engineers believed there may be some reason for concern. What if I had done that? It might have made a difference.
"A rescue mission would not have been impossible," the article concludes, "and I feel certain that if NASA managers saw that gaping hole in Columbia's wing, they would've tried.

"We will never know for sure, but I do know how so many of us on the ground failed to do our jobs during that mission. It still haunts me."


CNN broadcasts the last two episodes of its four-part series Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight tonight at 9 p.m. EST (time-delayed on the west coast until 9 p.m.PST). CNN's web site offers a "preview" of its live TV offerings here.

The news episodes (along with past episodes) will also be available on-demand starting Monday — "for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN connected TV and mobile apps." It's also available for purchase on Amazon Prime.

In the view of Jim VandeHei, CEO of Axios, artificial intelligence will eviscerate the weak, the ordinary, the unprepared in media," reports the New York Times: VandeHei says the only way for media companies to survive is to focus on delivering journalistic expertise, trusted content and in-person human connection. For Axios, that translates into more live events, a membership program centered on its star journalists and an expansion of its high-end subscription newsletters. "We're in the middle of a very fundamental shift in how people relate to news and information," he said, "as profound, if not more profound, than moving from print to digital." "Fast forward five to 10 years from now and we're living in this AI-dominated virtual world — who are the couple of players in the media space offering smart, sane content who are thriving?" he added. "It damn well better be us."

Axios is pouring investment into holding more events, both around the world and in the United States. VandeHei said the events portion of his business grew 60% year over year in 2023. The company has also introduced a $1,000-a-year membership program around some of its journalists that will offer exclusive reporting, events and networking. The first one, announced last month, is focused on Eleanor Hawkins, who writes a weekly newsletter for communications professionals. Her newsletter will remain free, but paying subscribers will have access to additional news and data, as well as quarterly calls with Hawkins... Axios will expand Axios Pro, its collection of eight high-end subscription newsletters focused on specific niches in the deals and policy world. The subscriptions start at $599 a year each, and Axios is looking to add one on defense policy...

"The premium for people who can tell you things you do not know will only grow in importance, and no machine will do that," VandeHei said....VandeHei said that although he thought publications should be compensated for original intellectual property, "that's not a make-or-break topic." He said Axios had talked to several AI companies about potential deals, but "nothing that's imminent.... One of the big mistakes a lot of media companies made over the last 15 years was worrying too much about how do we get paid by other platforms that are eating our lunch as opposed to figuring out how do we eat people's lunch by having a superior product," he said.
"VandeHei said Axios was not currently profitable because of the investment in the new businesses," according to the article.

But "The company has continued to hire journalists even as many other news organizations have cut back."