We believe that everyone’s future can be richer, happier and more efficient. But you can’t embrace that future unless you take the first, most crucial step: being informed about it.
Welcome to The Tipping Point, a regular post on Future Tech for people who don’t have enough time to read all the full news stories. Instead we shorten them, concentrate everything into one post, put that in your face, and you have to suck it. So let’s go!
This Weeks News!
AI: OpenAI has published the text-generating AI it said was too dangerous to share
The Verge
“GPT-2 is part of a new breed of text-generation systems that have impressed experts with their ability to generate coherent text from minimal prompts. The system was trained on eight million text documents scraped from the web and responds to text snippets supplied by users. Feed it a fake headline, for example, and it will write a news story; give it the first line of a poem and it’ll supply a whole verse.”
“In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional. “
“Brave Software, makers of the innovative Brave browser which combines privacy with a blockchain-based digital advertising platform, today announced the official launch of Brave 1.0. The Brave open source browser fundamentally shifts how users, publishers, and advertisers interact online by giving users a private, safer, and 3-6x faster browsing experience, while funding the Web through a new attention-based platform of privacy-preserving advertisements and rewards. “
MEDICINE: The world’s first Gattaca baby tests are finally here
Technology Review
“The baby-picking test is being offered by a New Jersey startup company, Genomic Prediction, whose plans we first reported on two years ago. The company says it can use DNA measurements to predict which embryos from an IVF procedure are least likely to end up with any of 11 different common diseases. In the next few weeks it’s set to release case studies on its first clients.”
ROBOTICS: Fall is here and packs of robot dogs are frolicking in the leaves
The Verge
“If you’ve not experienced these delights before, then the video above from MIT’s biomimetics lab will give you the basic idea. The bots you can see are the university’s Mini Cheetah: a lightweight and modular quadruped that’s been under development for years.”
SPACE: The second Starlink mission goes off without a hitch!
SpaceX
“Addressing a question about comments he made earlier this week at the U.S. Air Force startup pitch day event in California, Musk said that his stated launch cost of only around $2 million per Starship flight are essentially required, should the final goal be to set up a “self-sustaining city on Mars.” In order to make that city a reality, he added, SpaceX will need to build and fly around 1,000 Starships according to his estimates, which will need to transport cargo, infrastructure and crew to Mars over the course of around 20 years, since planetary alignment only really allows for a realistically achievable Mars flight once every two years.”
TRANSPORT: The Impending Autonomous Car Shitstorm
AlexShoolman.com
“Fully Self Driving (FSD) cars are coming, there’s no question about that. Whether it’s 2022, 2023 or even 2025 they’ll be here very soon. The thing is, virtually no one seems to grasp just how much of an absolute shitstorm it’s going cause when it all drops. As such today we’re going to explore what it will mean for you and I, the average Joe person just going about their lives.”
And that’s it for this week! Let us know in the comments what you think or if you have found any other important news! Also if you know of someone who’d benefit from The Tipping Point don’t forget to share this and tell them to Subscribe!
The benefits include: 1) How to get those silky smooth videos that everyone loves to watch, even if you're new 2) How to fly your drone, from taking off to the most advanced flight modes 3) Clear outlines of how to fly with step-by-step instructional demonstrations and more 4) Why flying indoors often results in new pilots crashing their drone 5) What other great 3rd party apps are out there to get the most out of your drone 6) A huge mistake many pilots make when storing their drone in the car and how to avoid it 7) How to do all of these things whilst flying safely and within your countries laws.
