GE Aerospace to invest $22M locally as part of increased production goals – Port City Daily

General Electric Aerospace will make a $22 million investment to its Wilmington facility. (Port City Daily/File)

WILMINGTON General Electric Aerospace will make a $650 million investment in its manufacturing facilities and supply chain in 2024, with multi-millions coming to its local facility on Castle Hayne Road.

READ MORE: A big damn announcement: GE Hitachi to expand staff by 500, add joint-venture fuel plant

The money will fund increased production to support its commercial and defense customers. A spokesperson for GE Aerospace said its to help ramp up demand after the pandemic for customers looking for new, efficient engineswith greater range and capabilities.

GE Aerospace works toward modernizing jet and turboprop engines and other sustainable systems for commercial, military, business and general aviation aircraft. This includes LEAP engine production, production preparation for the GE9X, and supporting U.S. military and its allies.

Roughly $400 million in the investment strategy will be put toward new machines, inspection equipment, building upgrades, and new test cells and safety enhancements at 22 of its facilities in 14 states.

The $22 million infused into Wilmington will be for machines and specialized tooling to increase capacity. It also will help with facility updates.

These investments allow us to build on the strong 40-year history we have here in Wilmington to meet our customers needs and ensure a bright future for GE Aerospace as we become an independent company, Jackson Autry, site leader for GE Aerospace Wilmington, said in a press release.

GE announced three years ago it would split into three companies, to center on aerospace, healthcare and energy. The aerospace division is to be finalized this spring.

In addition to aerospace, in Wilmington GE has fuel manufacturing and training facilities. The county and city approved incentives for its energy sector in 2022, signing off on $1.9 million, with the county forking over $1.25 million and the city contributing $250,000, to be paid over five years. The money was to be used for hiring staff for the rollout of GE Hitachis small nuclear reactor and building a new facility to produce fuel for a different reactor.

GE Aerospace is investing $46 million overall in North Carolina, with $11 million to go to Asheville, $7 million in Durham and $5 million in West Jefferson.

Alabama, Massachusetts, and Ohio are also cumulatively set to receive more than $200 million. Internationally, the company is investing another $100 million at facilities in in North America, India and Europe.

An additional $100 million will go to supplier partners based in the United States that make castings and forgings and early-stage parts for commercial and military engines.

In addition to investments, GE Aerospace is hiring more than 1,000 employees for external positions at its U.S. factories. Locally, its looking to hire 20 more people, with the facilitys job openings here.

These investments are part of the next chapter for GE Aerospace, supporting cutting-edge equipment and safety enhancements that will help us meet our customers growing needs, chairman and CEO, H. Lawrence Culp Jr. wrote in a press release.

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GE Aerospace to invest $22M locally as part of increased production goals - Port City Daily

Google Bans Its Dimwit Chatbot From Answering Any Election Questions – Futurism

This is way too far-reaching. Elect Me Not

In further efforts to defang its prodigal chatbot, Google has set up guardrails that bar its Gemini AI from answering any election questions in any country where elections are taking place this year even, it seems, if it's not about a specific country's campaigns.

In a blog post, Google announced that it would be "supporting the 2024 Indian General Election" by restricting Gemini from providing responses to any election-related query "out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic."

"We take our responsibility for providing high-quality information for these types of queries seriously," the company said, "and are continuously working to improve our protections."

The company apparently takes that responsibility so seriously that it's not only restricting Gemini's election responses in India, but also, as it confirmed toTechCrunch, literally everywhere in the world.

Indeed, whenFuturism tested out Gemini's guardrails by asking it a question about elections in another country, we were presented with the same responseTechCrunch and other outlets got: "I'm still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search."

The response doesn't just go for general election queries, either. If you ask the chatbot to tell you who Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders is, it presents you with the same disingenuous response. The same goes for Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell.

Notably, there are pretty easy ways to get around these guardrails. When asking Gemini who the president of New Zealand is, it responded by saying that that country has a prime minister and then naming who it is. When we followed up asking who the prime minister of New Zealand is, however, it reverted back to the "I'm still learning" response.

This lobotomizing effect comes after the company's botched rollout of the newly-rebranded chatbot last month, which sawFuturism and other outlets discoveringthat in its efforts to be inclusive, Gemini was often generating outputs that were completely deranged.

The world became wise to Gemini's ways after people began posting photos from its image generator that appeared to show multiracial people in Nazi regalia. In response, Google first shut down Gemini's image-generating capabilities wholesale, and once it was back up, it barred the chatbot from generating any images of people, (though Futurism found that it would spit out images of clowns, for some reason.)

With the introduction of the elections rule, Google has taken Gemini from arguably being overly-"woke" to being downright dimwitted.

As such, it illustrates a core tension in the red-hot AI industry: are these chatbots reliable sources of information for enterprise clients, or playthings that shouldn't ever be taken seriously? The answer seems to depend on the day.

More on dumb chatbots: TurboTax Adds AI That Gives Horribly Wrong Answers to Tax Questions

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Google Bans Its Dimwit Chatbot From Answering Any Election Questions - Futurism

US moon lander launched half century after last Apollo lunar mission – The Jerusalem Post

A moon lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines was launched from Florida early on Thursday on a mission to conduct the first US lunar touchdown in more than a half century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.

The company's Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, lifted off shortly after 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) atop a Falcon 9 rocket flown by Elon Musk' SpaceX from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

A live NASA-SpaceX online video feed showed the two-stage, 25-story rocket roaring off the launch pad and streaking into the dark sky over Florida's Atlantic coast, trailed by a fiery yellowish plume of exhaust.

The launch, previously set for Wednesday morning, was postponed for 24 hours because of irregular temperatures detected in liquid methane used in the lander's propulsion system. SpaceX said the issue was later resolved.

Although considered an Intuitive Machines mission, the IM-1 flight is carrying six NASA payloads of instruments designed to gather data about the lunar environment ahead of NASA's planned return of astronauts to the moon later this decade.

Thursday's launch came a month after the lunar lander of another private firm, Astrobotic Technology, suffered a propulsion system leak on its way to the moon shortly after being placed in orbit on Jan. 8 by a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket making its debut flight.

The failure of Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, which was also flying NASA payloads to the moon, marked the third time a private company had been unable to achieve a "soft landing" on the lunar surface, following ill-fated efforts by companies from Israel and Japan.

Those mishaps illustrated the risks NASA faces in leaning more heavily on the commercial sector than it had in the past to realize its spaceflight goals.

Plans call for Intuitive Machines' Nova-C vehicle, a hexagonal cylinder with four legs, to reach its destination after about a weeklong flight on Feb. 22 for a landing at crater Malapert A near the moon's south pole.

If successful, the flight would represent the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a US spacecraft since the final Apollo crewed moon mission in 1972, and the first by a private company.

The feat also would mark the first journey to the lunar surface under NASA's Artemis moon program, as the US races to return astronauts to Earth's natural satellite before China lands its own crewed spacecraft there.

IM-1 is the latest test of NASA's strategy of paying for the use of spacecraft built and owned by private companies to slash the cost of the Artemis missions, envisioned as precursors to human exploration of Mars.

By contrast, during the Apollo era, NASA bought rockets and other technology from the private sector, but owned and operated them itself.

NASA announced last month that it was delaying its target date for a first crewed Artemis moon landing from 2025 to late 2026, while China has said it was aiming for 2030.

Small landers such as Nova-C are expected to get there first, carrying instruments to closely survey the lunar landscape, its resources and potential hazards. Odysseus will focus on space weather interactions with the moon's surface, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies and navigation.

Intuitive Machine's IM-2 mission is scheduled to land at the lunar south pole in 2024, followed by an IM-3 mission later in the year with several small rovers.

Last month, Japan became the fifth country to place a lander on the moon, with its space agency JAXA achieving an unusually precise "pinpoint" touchdown of its SLIM probe last month. Last year, India became the fourth nation to land on the moon, after Russia failed in an attempt the same month.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and China are the only other countries that have carried out successful soft lunar touchdowns. China scored a world first in 2019 by achieving the first landing on the far side of the moon.

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US moon lander launched half century after last Apollo lunar mission - The Jerusalem Post

A week into 2024 and Big Tech has earned enough to pay off all 2023 fines – TechRadar

2023 surely was an eventful year in tech. To cite just a few key moments, generative AI became mainstream thanks to software like ChatGPT; we had to say goodbye to the iconic blue bird while welcoming Twitter's new name (I know very well the pain of writing 'X, formerly known as Twitter' over the past six months); and big tech companies got fined the most under GDPR's data abuses for a total of more than $3 billion.

Well, on the latter point, data protection regulators' efforts turned out to be not as effective as it was hoped they'd be.

Swiss privacy firm behind popular email and VPN service, Proton reported that only after a week into 2024 the likes of Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft earned enough to pay off all last year's fines. Let's take a look at what needs to change and, most importantly, what you can do in the meantime to truly protect your privacy.

"Whats clear is that these fines, though they appear to be a huge amount of money, in reality are just a drop in the ocean when it comes to the revenues that the tech giants are making. In other words, they arent a deterrent at all," Jurgita Miseviciute, Head of Public Policy & Government Affairs at Proton, told me.

Researchers at Proton have calculated that Alphabet (Google's parent company) needs only a bit more than a day to pay off its $941 million fines. Amazon and Apple's earnings of just a few hours are then enough to repay their data protection's sanctions of $111.7 and $186.4 million respectively.

While biggest data abuse perpetrator Meta, which got a record $1.3bn fine for its (mis)handling of EU user data in May last year, managed to accumulate all the necessary money in just about five working days.

These findings make it clear that data regulators' fines, as founder and CEO of Proton Andy Yen put it, are "little more than pocket change for these companies" instead of a mean to stop them abusing users' data. Not only that, he said, as "these minuscule fines essentially give the green light to tech giants to run riot in a marketplace skewed in their favor."

It's also quite common that big tech firms might appeal to these sanctions or simply refuse to pay, delaying the repayment for years. Take how Google contested India's fine, for instance, about the Android-related inquiry for abusing its dominant position in the market which started in 2019.

On this point, Yen said: "Its the average consumer that's losing outfacing higher prices, less choice, and no privacy. It has to stop and we need real, tangible change that puts people first, not profits."

According to Miseviciute, there are two main things that must happen for things to really change.

Did you know?

Fully enforced in May 2023, the EU Digital Market Act (DMA) brought new obligations for tech companies to ensure fair competition and protect people's digital rights. A similar bill, so-called Digital Markets, Consumer and Competition Bill (DMCC) is currently passing through the UK Parliament, too.

For starters, she believes that governments have to issue fines with a real financial effect in order to fight back against big monopolies.

"Thats why fines up to even 20% of global revenues for breaches of laws such as the EUs DMA [Digital Market Act] and up to 10% in case of the proposed DMCC [Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers] Bill in the UK are a step in the right direction," she told me.

If heavier sanctions are important, they are not everything. Miseviciute explained that regulators need to combine these with practical measures such as enforced behavioral and structural changes, for example.

Again, she sees the EU quite well-placed to do so due to the new powers gained with the DMA. However, elsewhere there are also some small steps in this direction.

"We hope Googles antitrust trial in the US serves as a catalyst for comprehensive antitrust regulation on the other side of the Atlantic. We also see promising potential regulatory developments in South Korea, Japan, Australia and other major jurisdictions," she told me.

"If you open up the marketplace, and you give innovators like Proton a chance to succeed, youll get solutions that are more private and more secure for consumers."

As we have seen, 2023 was yet another hard year for our online privacy.

The US, for instance, still lacks a federal data protection law with the proposed ADPPA being stalled at the time of writing. Enforced in August last year, India's new privacy law was strongly criticized for favoring government and big tech instead of citizens. Well, where allegedly strong legislations are in place like in the EU, these seem to have not enough teeth just yet.

Commenting on this point, Miseviciute told me: "Until laws like the DMA in the EU and the proposed DMCC in the UK are effectively put into practice we are living in a world where big tech rules the internetand all our privacy is at the mercy of their surveillance capitalism business model."

Did you know?

Two thirds of people in the UK would rather lose their passport than access to their email account. Yet, despite these concerns, most of them lack the necessary knowledge and tools to protect their digital privacy. Big Tech knows that, researchers revealed.

The glimpse of light in this gloomy scenario is that it's ultimately our choice if we want to keep using data-hungry products. Luckily, there are some smaller companies offering privacy-first alternatives you can switch to.

On its part, Proton appear to have been working hard to cut Google out of our digital life. Likewise the popular service, the Swiss-based provider offers an encrypted email service Proton Mail (which even beat the big tech giant by landing with a standalone desktop app in December), secure calendar and its own cloud storage Proton Drive, too.

Proton's product offering also includes one of the best virtual private network apps on the market (Proton VPN) to help you boosting your anonymity while browsing among other things, as well as a password manager tool (Proton Pass) to secure all your login details. Even better as all the provider's services come both with free and paid plans.

However, Proton is just one of the many companies developing privacy-first alternatives to big tech software. Worth a mention there are also encrypted messaging app Signal if you wish to replace WhatsApp with a more secure application and Mullvad browser to make the switch from Safari and Chrome.

Compare today's best overall VPNs

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

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A week into 2024 and Big Tech has earned enough to pay off all 2023 fines - TechRadar

Luck and Cheating in Roman Gambling: The Die is Cast – The Collector

The ancient Romans had a complex relationship with gambling, involving both disapproval and widespread participation. Archaeological findings and written sources reveal that the preferred form of ancient Roman gambling was dice games. Roman dice possessed unique shapes due to the inherent asymmetry of the materials used and the Romans belief in divine intervention influencing random outcomes. Romans were also known for employing various cheating methods, including the use of loaded dice, which enabled players to manipulate the outcomes.

Six-sided playing dice, featuring numbers one to six marked on each side the same kind we still use today have been in use for over 4,000 years. They have been discovered at sites in Egypt, India, and Persia, but it appears that nowhere in the past were they as prevalent as in ancient Rome. Dice made of wood or bone have been unearthed at Roman sites across the former empire. Archaeological findings and written sources reveal that the Romans utilized them for both board games and gambling, which was a widespread indulgence among Roman citizens.

Gambling in Ancient Rome occupied a curious place in society. It was both disapproved of and enthusiastically embraced by the people. Undeniably, gambling held significant popularity among the ancient Romans. The act of gambling often took place in inns and taverns, which served as common venues for such activities. Archaeological findings from Pompeii have revealed depictions of dice, game pieces, symbols of wealth and good fortune, and terms commonly used in Roman dice games (Faris, 2012). These artifacts shed light on the prevalence of gambling in the Roman world.

Despite its widespread practice, some Romans strongly disapproved of gambling. Even in the face of their fellow Romans apparent addiction to it, figures like Cicero condemned gambling and those who partook in it. Educated and upper-class Roman writers of the late-republican and imperial periods largely viewed gambling as a wasteful pastime, and at its worst, a ruinous vice capable of tarnishing an individuals reputation and social standing.

Despite the prevailing view that aristocrats generally frowned upon gambling, there were notable exceptions within the ranks of the senators and Roman elite, who indulged in high-stakes gambling. However, for the majority of aristocratic elites, excessive gambling or public engagement in such activities was considered a potential source of legal and political corruption. The majority of aristocratic elites associated dice games with the lower classes, and they often connected them to hustlers and petty criminals.

It is worth noting that not all forms of gambling were illegal or disapproved of in Rome. Betting on sporting events, for instance, was an acceptable practice. However, the situation differed entirely when it came to dicing, which formed the core of a thriving industry within the Roman Empire. Backrooms of inns and taverns were frequently dedicated to gambling, which is evident from the numerous inscribed gaming boards and mosaics discovered in Rome, Pompeii, and various Italian and North African towns. Private homes or rented premises could also function as small-scale casino operations, providing spaces where money could be both won and lost.

Roman dice possess a curious feature that distinguishes them from other dice: their striking asymmetry. This distinctive characteristic has captured the interest of a pair of scholars from the University of California, Davis and Drew University. Close examination of these dice has unveiled a remarkable fact an astounding 90% of the dice discovered so far display (at least) are slightly flattened in shape. In fact, some of these dice deviate so significantly from the ideal cube that they more closely resemble parallelepipeds. This intriguing observation also holds practical implications, as the dice are more likely to land on their wider sides rather than the narrow ones when rolled.

How can we explain this intriguing phenomenon? The researchers find the simple explanation that the Romans lacked the advanced technology to produce a perfect cube unacceptable. After all, we are talking about a civilization that left us aqueducts and thousands of kilometers of paved roads, among other remarkable achievements. At the same time, they reject the hypothesis that Romans intentionally produced misshapen dice to manipulate the outcomes. Their explanation reveals the interplay between intentional and unintentional elements that influenced the curious shape of Roman dice.

The asymmetrical shape can be attributed to two factors. Firstly, the raw materials used, such as bone and antler, were inherently asymmetrical, resulting in objects that were longer across certain axes. While it was possible to grind or shave down the longer sides to create a true cube, this step was largely deemed unnecessary due to the second factor: the Roman view on probability.

In ancient Rome, the concept of probability, as we understand it today, was not prevalent among the average citizen. Instead, they believed that random outcomes were decisions made by gods like Fortuna, the personification of luck. From their perspective, if any of the numbers shown on the dice were equally influenced by the will of the gods, then each outcome would be considered equally likely. The shape of the dice, therefore, was not seen as the determining factor for the outcome; rather it was divine intervention.

As a result, the asymmetry of the dice did not hinder their overall function. Rolling dice served purposes beyond mere games; it was a means of communication or engagement with the gods. For instance, people would roll dice to seek guidance or gain insights into the outcome of future events. Moreover, players often believed that gods favoring them would influence the dice rolls to grant them victory or fortune.

This Roman worldview allowed for a wide variety of dice shapes, as the concept of fate rather than probability dictated the outcomes. While we can now estimate probabilities statistically when analyzing a large number of dice rolls, individual throws remain unpredictable. This partly explains the continued popularity of gambling casinos today, despite the long-term odds being stacked against the individual player. For the Romans, producing an even probability of rolls across the numbers one through six, which is typically the main purpose of dice in modern gaming, was not the primary concern. Fate rendered each roll unpredictable, and the shape of the dice was not believed to be linked to specific outcomes. Most dice users were unaware of any connection between the frequency of particular numbers and the asymmetry of the dice they used.

However, as old as games of chance are, attempts to manipulate luck to gain an unfair advantage have existed for just as long. Historical evidence shows that even the Romans attempted to deceive the gods in various ways. There have been two well-known methods of cheating that have persisted throughout the centuries.

The first method involves using dice with two identical numbers on opposite sides. This clever trick allows a deceitful player to tilt the odds in their favor. For example, an unsuspecting opponent may not notice that the cheater gets sixes slightly more frequently than any other number, while never rolling ones. However, experienced gamblers quickly catch on to this scheme, making it less effective over time.

The second method employed by more cunning swindlers involved using weighted dice. By filling the dice with lead or other heavy materials, the cheater can ensure that a specific side of the dice carries more weight, resulting in that particular number being displayed more often than any other. Nevertheless, even this method becomes less effective after several games, as cautious gamblers become more observant and wary of such cheating tactics.

While attempts to cheat at games of chance have existed for centuries, both of these cheating methods have their limitations. Skilled and attentive gamblers can eventually detect these dishonest practices, making it increasingly difficult for cheaters to fool their opponents. However, as of recently, we know that there existed a third, much more sophisticated method of cheating that required specially manufactured dice. The presence of such dice demonstrates the extraordinary craftsmanship of the Romans in producing dice and it once again disproves the notion that the majority of dice were crudely made due to a lack of technology.

This particular type of dice came to light by a stroke of luck (or by the will of Fortuna) in 2000 when a group of Belgian schoolchildren embarked on an educational trip to a nearby Roman site. During their visit, a ten-year-old schoolgirl accidentally broke a bone-made dice, causing a mysterious grayish liquid, none other than mercury, to seep out. Although an interesting incident, this anecdote would have been forgotten if not for the efforts of a pair of Belgian archaeologists over twenty years later. They managed to unravel the secrets of this unusual dice. Through their research, they found that mercury dice, although rare, were present in various regions of Gaul and Germania during ancient times.

According to the authors, these dice served a similar purpose to the lead dice mentioned earlier, yet with one important difference. The mercury dice offered greater flexibility, enabling gamblers to enhance their odds of achieving any desired number. The trick was remarkably subtle, as the player merely needed to discreetly tilt the die to a specific side just before rolling it. For instance, when aiming for the number six, they would skillfully tip the die so that the mercury gracefully flowed toward the side displaying one. The liquid nature of mercury enabled them to reuse the same die for subsequent throws, adjusting it to show different numbers depending on their needs. This method of cheating was nearly impossible to detect which is another significant advantage over lead-filled dice.

What is particularly remarkable about these dice is the incredible precision required in their craftsmanship. The dice had to be carefully drilled and filled with mercury, ensuring they did not become noticeably heavier. The hole would then be closed using the same material. This entire process demanded the skills of experienced goldsmiths, along with precise instruments and hard-to-obtain materials. As a result, scientists conclude that each dice must have been worth a small fortune. This conclusion is further supported by the fact that most of these dice were discovered in former locations of Roman villas, where the wealthiest citizens resided.

If these findings are accurate, they reveal something else about the Romans: some of them likely gambled very large sums of money. Those willing to invest significant amounts in such an item would have done so only if they expected it to yield an even greater return. It appears that some Romans long ago managed to fulfill the alchemists dreams and discovered a way to turn mercury into gold. Fortuna may have favored the bold, but it is even more likely that she favored the rich.

Bibliography:

Eerkens, Jelmer W., de Voogt, Alex (2022). Why are Roman-period dice asymmetrical? An experimental and quantitative approach. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 14(134).

Faris, Suzanne B. (2012). Changing Public Policy and the Evolution of Roman Civil and Criminal Law on Gambling. UNLV Gaming Law Journal 3(2). 199219

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Luck and Cheating in Roman Gambling: The Die is Cast - The Collector