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NASA is already so impressed by the Starship that it has contracted SpaceX to build a lunar-landing version of it to return astronauts to the moon as early as 2024. The selection has enraged Musk’s rivals such as Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos Jeffrey (Jeff) Preston BezosSeat on Bezos-backed space flight sells for million at auction Researchers: Wealth accumulation at Ivy League presents ‘fundamental threat to our democracy’ Democrats reintroduce bill to create ‘millionaires surtax’ MORE and has perturbed some members of Congress. Both have only themselves to blame — Blue Origin for offering an inferior design and Congress for underfunding the Human Landing System project.

Military technology development has often been defined by the advent of new ways to transport people and cargo. The racing galleon of the 16th century became the frigates and ships of the line that defined naval warfare in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The steam engine and iron and steel armor led to the dreadnoughts of the early 20th century. Modern warships incorporate nuclear power. Air travel has caused the same sort of evolution, from the motorized kites of World War I to modern jets that can deliver destruction and death from thousands of miles away.

Now, space transportation technology is poised to cause a similar revolution in the military’s ability to defend the United States and its allies and to inflict mayhem and death on any enemy that would propose to make war on America. The great irony is that the Starship will be used by a branch of the military that Musk once compared to Starfleet, the fictional service depicted in the “Star Trek” television shows and movies. The thought would likely bring a smile to the face of the franchise’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, in whatever afterlife one envisions him inhabiting.

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WASHINGTON—The Biden administration launched an initiative Thursday aiming to make more government data available to artificial intelligence researchers, part of a broader push to keep the U.S. on the cutting edge of the crucial new technology.

The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force, a group of 12 members from academia, government, and industry led by officials from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation, will draft a strategy for creating an AI research resource that could, in part, give researchers secure access to stores of anonymous data about Americans, from demographics to health and driving habits.

They would also look to make available computing power to analyze the data, with the goal of allowing access to researchers across the country.

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It is called the “city brain”, an artificial intelligence system that is now being used across China – only megacities could afford them before – for everything from pandemic contact tracing to monitoring illegal public assemblies and river pollution.

Authorities at all levels are now using AI for everything from pandemic control to monitoring illegal public assemblies.

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An emerging ransomware strain in the threat landscape claims to have breached 30 organizations in just four months since it went operational, riding on the coattails of a notorious ransomware syndicate.

First observed in February 2021, “Prometheus” is an offshoot of another well-known ransomware variant called Thanos, which was previously deployed against state-run organizations in the Middle East and North Africa last year.

The affected entities are believed to be government, financial services, manufacturing, logistics, consulting, agriculture, healthcare services, insurance agencies, energy and law firms in the U.S., U.K., and a dozen more countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America, according to new research published by Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 threat intelligence team.

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Hundreds of websites worldwide crashed this morning following a massive internet outage – with the UK government, Amazon and Spotify among those experiencing issues.

Millions of users across the globe reported problems trying to access web pages, with Netflix, Twitch and news websites including the BBC, Guardian, CNN and the New York Times hit by the problem.

Passengers desperately trying to fill out locator forms on UK.Gov to enter the UK from Portugal and abroad were also affected by the outage.

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Satellite images showing the expansion of large detention camps in Xinjiang, China, between 2016 and 2018 provided some of the strongest evidence of a government crackdown on more than a million Muslims, triggering international condemnation and sanctions.

Other aerial images—of nuclear installations in Iran and missile sites in North Korea, for example—have had a similar impact on world events. Now, image-manipulation tools made possible by artificial intelligence may make it harder to accept such images at face value.

In a paper published online last month, University of Washington professor Bo Zhao employed AI techniques similar to those used to create so-called deepfakes to alter satellite images of several cities. Zhao and colleagues swapped features between images of Seattle and Beijing to show buildings where there are none in Seattle and to remove structures and replace them with greenery in Beijing.

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It might be days before production resumes after an “organized cybersecurity attack” affected some servers supporting JBS USA’s North American and Australian IT systems, officials said.

CANBERRA, Australia — Thousands of meat workers had no work for a second day on Tuesday after a cyberattack crippled the world’s largest meat processing company. A government minister said it might be days before production resumes.

JBS is also Australia’s largest meat and food processing company, with 47 facilities across the country including abattoirs, feedlots and meat processing sites. JBS employs around 11000 people.

JBS USA said in a statement from Greeley, Colorado, on Monday that it was the target on Sunday of an “organized cybersecurity attack” affecting some of its servers supporting its North American and Australian IT systems.

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Papers and a diverse range of personal items belonging to the late British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking have been acquired by Cambridge University and a UK museum group.

Under an agreement between Cambridge University Library, the Science Museum Group and the UK government, the entire contents of the world-renowned scientist’s office and archive will be preserved for .

The £4.2 million ($5.9 million, 4.8 million euros) deal means 10000 pages of Hawking’s and other documents will remain in the university city of Cambridge in eastern England where he died in 2018.

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