Common Dreams | In 'Direct Attack on the First Amendment,' Sessions Declares War on Leaks Common Dreams "Every American should be concerned about the Trump administration's threat to step up its efforts against whistleblowers and journalists," said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/cc). |
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In 'Direct Attack on the First Amendment,' Sessions Declares War on Leaks - Common Dreams
In early June, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The headline moment at the event was a wide-ranging and at times combative interview with Megyn Kelly. But Putin quietly made news in another wayhe signaled an official volte-face on the issue of cryptocurrencies, digital financial instruments such as bitcoin.
As recently as a year ago, the Russian government had threatened to jail users of bitcoin for up to seven years. The Kremlin had also toyed with the idea of creating its own digital currency to compete with bitcoin. Many observers speculated that Russia would then make all other digital currencies illegal to force adoption of its coin.
But sometime last year, something changed. Perhaps the Kremlin realized that creating a proprietary digital ruble defeated the purpose of having a dispersed-ledger digital currency. Possibly they observed the huge sums of money being poured into blockchain technology by Silicon Valley, and resolved to make sure Russia didnt get left behind when the technology became popular. (The blockchain is essentially a ledger with thousands of copies that gets updated every time a transaction takes place.)
Or maybe they just woke up to the vast array of possibilities that cryptocurrencies could offer in the service of money laundering.
Putinand the rest of his oligarch friendshave a problem. The Magnitsky Act, which established strict sanctions on named Russian citizens, and the Russian hacking scandal currently consuming American politics, have woken up governments to the colossal amount of ill-gotten Russian cash being invested within in their borders.
Many countries, including France, Switzerland, Ukraine, and Poland, have launched investigations into Russian money passing through their banking systems, while others, such as Cyprus, Greece, and China seem to still be looking the other way. In March, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project published a study entitled, The Russian Laundromat Exposed, revealing the vast and complex banking mechanisms that oligarchs use to skirt international financial controls.
From Putins perspective, the solution to this dilemma could be cryptocurrencies. And the Ethereum platform (which is based on the blockchain model) appears to be the Russians digital currency framework of choice. Ethereum allows clients to create their own digital smart contracts which can have a multitude of uses that transcend mere currency applications. Using Ethereum, for example, a startup recently raised nearly $4 million in an initial coin offering (think IPO) to begin manufacturing zirconium in Magnitogorsk, Russia. Each ZrCoin, issued by the company represents 1 kilogram of synthetic zirconium.
At a forum in Moscow in April, a Russian politician named Andrei Lugovoi sang the praises of the blockchains versatility. He cited a World Bank study predicting that 10 percent of world GDP would be stored with the help of the blockchain as early as this year. He also said he expected a draft bill in the Russian Duma on regulation of cryptocurrencies would be made public in the second half of 2017.
If Lugovois name sounds familiar, its probably because he was one of two men implicated in the 2006 death of Russian spy Alexander Litvinienko in London, via radioactive polonium-210 poisoning. A former KGB officer himself, Lugovoi is now an MP in the far-right LDPR party. Hes also deputy chairman of the Duma committee on security and anti-corruption.
Last year, Lugovoi told a conference that blockchain-based currencies could become the best way to get around U.S. and EU sanctions. This is is [sic] a rare situation where the sanctions policy of the West gives rise to the opportunity for homegrown business to create something new and allow the national economy to move forward, Lugovoi said, according to Newsweek.
And the Russian blockchain community is indeed growing. A conference held in Moscow in May attracted hundreds of people; another is planned for September. And a group of banks working under the supervision of the Russian Central Bank is currently testing a proprietary Ethereum-based masterchain. Not only that, but Russias largest online retailer, Ulmart, is expected to begin accepting bitcoin in September. And another politician suggested setting up a Crypto Valley on the Crimean Peninsula to raise regional funding in the part of Ukraine that Russia annexed in 2014.
At the St. Petersburg forum, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov enthused that Putin had caught the digital economy bug, and that the president had attended a small closed working group on the subject in which he kept them talking about the technology well past midnight. Putin even met privately with the founder of Ethereum, 23-year-old Canadian-Russian Vitalik Buterin on the margins of the conference.
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Its no surprise Putin is excited. Even Ethereums most ardent supporters will admit that once money is in the cryptocurrency loopthat is, after its been exchanged for fiat moneyits devilishly hard to track, by design. Cryptocurrency transactions are anonymous, dont respect national borders, and are now nearly instantaneous. In theory, at least, its the holy grail of money laundering.
As I write this, the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is still relatively modest, just under $100 billion, approximately what shoe-maker Nike is worth. But the market is growing by leaps and bounds. Ethereums flagship token, the ether, was up 4,000 percent for the year earlier this summer.
Most cryptocurrency transactions are perfectly trackable, thanks to a distributed ledger. (That sort of verification is part the appeal.) But trackable is not attributable. And in order for financial laws to function properly, some level of attribution must be built into the system.
As more governments agree on regulatory regimes to integrate cryptocurrencies into their business, more money will flow into them. Oligarch-sized transactions that would be difficult to impossible now will become more and more possible.
This isnt a problem in countries that operate under the rule of law. The United States and others are already working on laws and regulatory frameworks that will eventually be able to fully accommodate cryptocurrencies and take advantage of their unique properties. For example, its now possible to trade bitcoin and ether as easily as yen and euros.
But what about in kleptocracies like Russia, where laws are bent and molded to facilitate, rather than prevent, corruption? Its not hard to imagine a situation where regulations are either designed to be ignored for the benefit of certain people, or are simply toothless and thus throw the door open to all manner of illicit activity.
The Magnitsky Act has been a thorn in the side of Putin and his cronies for a long time. But as we stand at the threshold of a new era in the world of finance, he may think hes found a way to beat it.
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Why Is the Kremlin Suddenly Obsessed With Cryptocurrencies? - Daily Beast
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Launch comes mid-TGE and well ahead of product roadmap
New York, NY August 4, 2017 investFeed, the social investment network that dropped equities for cryptocurrency, has rolled out the first version of its new platform midway through its Token Generation Event. The beta, initially scheduled to be released within 90 days of its August 7th TGE close, was fast-tracked to give participants and potential users a taste of the unique cryptocurrency-based marketplace and a first-look at live tickers and weighted average price charts. The New York based tech company made the controversial pivot from equities to cryptocurrency due to repeated requests from their users, as well as the explosive growth of the $100 billion USD cryptocurrency industry. Their Token Generation Event, initiated July 23rd, is designed to help fund the development of the new platform, as well as provide users a utility token for accessing popular investing ideas, peer-to-peer price predictions, investor insights and Boosting or promoting individual content.
CEO of investFeed, Ron Chernesky said, Our development team has been working around the clock to roll out the first version of the platform and it looks beautiful; its like Facebook, cryptocurrency and the Bloomberg Terminal met for the very first time. One of our goals was to give mainstream users a simple, aesthetically pleasing UX and remove the technical barriers and complicated language associated with blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Several months ahead of the technical schedule outlined in their white paper, investFeeds new platform, thanks to a newly formed data partnership with market leaders, Bravenewcoin.com (BNC), now showcases a list of 235 high-performing, highly liquid cryptocurrencies and their associated price tickers, channels, pairings and weighted averages in USD. Users can now start messaging each other, post comments and share cryptocurrency market insights, and soon access buy and sell functionality directly within the platform.
Just like we linked every top online stock trading brokerage to our original platform, we will begin to form relationships with digital asset exchanges so that users can link their accounts on investFeed and make informed decisions, using the most accurate market data possible. The end-goal is to become the one-stop shop for everything cryptocurrency, and unite a growing community in one of the most nascent industries of our generation.
BNCs CEO Fran Strajnar stated Were always excited to see top tier teams build fantastic products and look forward to supplying further value add data and analytics as investFeeds users demand grows.
In the very near future, more features will be unlocked and added to the new investFeed platform, including instant notifications on user-assigned price alerts, as well as alerts on moves made by peers and high performing traders.
Meanwhile, former top advisor to Ethereum and founding advisor to Lisk, Steven Nerayoff has joined investFeeds advisory board. In 2008, Steve Nerayoff founded Maple Ventures, a venture capital firm primarily focused on emerging technologies including blockchain and cryptocurrency, and is one of the most influential and well-respected advisors in the industry.
###
CEO of investFeed Ron Chernesky is available for interview
About investFeed investFeed is the first incentivized next-generation social investment network for cryptocurrencies. Since the companys inception in 2014, investFeed attracted a community of 15,000+ users, with over 200,000 live feeds, sharing market investing insights. Across Q3 2017, investFeed is pivoting from US equities to cryptocurrencies due to both user demand and the extraordinary growth of blockchain based assets. investFeeds new platform allows the cryptocurrency community to establish professional relationships, promote user content and share rewards-based investing ideas. investFeed is conducting a crowd sale from July 23, 2017 to raise capital for the development of the cryptocurrency-specific platform, and to issue FEED tokens to participants.
Press Contact Email Address justin@investFeed.com Supporting Link https://tokensale.investfeed.com/
This is a paid press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to thepromotedcompanyor any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.
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Bitcoin leaped more than 16 percent Saturday into record territory, significantly strengthening against its offshoot "bitcoin cash" amid a hack on the new currency's network.
Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $3,360.87 Saturday, according to CoinDesk, before paring its gains slightly to hover near $3,303, with a market capitalization of more than $54 billion.
The digital currency has now more than tripled in value for the year, and gained about 15 percent in the first few days of August. Bitcoin has broken free of the trading range it's held ever since reaching its prior record of $3,025 in mid-June.
Ari Paul, CIO of BlockTower Capital, attributed the gains to a relief rally after a "relatively uneventful" split, as well as new investors buying bitcoin.
"With SegWit activation and the hard fork in the rear view mirror, bitcoin buyers see a smooth road ahead for the next two months," he told CNBC in an email, referring to a more popular upgrade proposal called Segregated Witness.
Another digital currency, ethereum, climbed more than 12 percent to $250 Saturday afternoon, according to CoinDesk.
Bitcoin one-week performance
Source: CoinDesk
On Tuesday, Bitcoin split into bitcoin and bitcoin cash when a minority of developers went ahead with an alternative upgrade proposal. Investors holding bitcoin at the time of the split should have received an equal amount of bitcoin cash, and were able to trade it Tuesday. However, some major exchanges only began accepting bitcoin cash deposits Thursday and Friday.
ViaBTC, the Chinese exchange that's been the main proponent for bitcoin cash, tweeted at 4:03 a.m. that it temporarily suspended withdrawals due to a " transaction malleability attack" on the bitcoin cash network.
ViaBTC tweeted at 8:44 a.m. that it resumed withdrawals.
Bitcoin cash plunged nearly 36 percent Friday, falling about 9 percent to overnight to a low of $212. It recovered slightly to $223 Saturday afternoon, according to CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin cash 1-week performance
Source: CoinMarketCap
Bitcoin Magazine pointed out Saturday morning that ViaBTC mining activity which creates more of a digital currency for bitcoin cash dropped to a tenth of what it was in the last few days, while most of the mining activity was concentrated on the original bitcoin.
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In just four hours of early Saturday trading, the price of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin surged over 9% to a new record. At the time of this writing, one Bitcoin is valued at $3,169.90, well above the previous record of $3,000 set in June .
Bitcoin's total market value is now more that $52 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap, and the return on Bitcoin investments made on January 1 st of this year stands at nearly 220%.
Bitcoin will almost certainly remain a highly volatile asset, but its latest high reflects a major positive development. After years of heated debate over how to increase the Bitcoin networks transaction capacity, major players have finally agreed on a compromise solution known as Segwit2x . That accomplishment is reassuring for those who may have begun to doubt the effectiveness of Bitcoins leaderless governance model .
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The Segwit2x solution also seems to have driven Bitcoin's price higher in a less direct way. On Tuesday, a faction who disagreed with the proposal spun off a so-called fork of Bitcoin, known as Bitcoin Cash , which implemented a different fix. All holders of Bitcoin received matching Bitcoin Cash, which now trades as BCH on exchanges, and has a total current value of $3.75 billion.
However, the price of Bitcoin Cash has declined steadily over the last two days as Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies have surged. That suggests investors are cashing out of the upstart fork, which has sparse support from miners and exchanges, and pumping their gains back into older, more trusted, and more widely-adopted cryptocurrencies.
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The price of bitcoin has risen sharply, exceeding the $3,200 level for the first time on the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).
The market advancebegan after 1:00 UTC, when the price of bitcoin climbed above $2,900, market data shows, crossing the $3,000 line around 3:12 UTC.
Markets hit a high of $3,216.02, according to the BPI, and at press time are currently trading at an average of $3,154.94. Per the BPI, bitcoin's price hasn't been above the $3,000 level since June 12.
The price advance also pushed bitcoins collective market capitalization past the $50 billion mark for the first time. According to the BPI, bitcoins market cap is around $52.35 billion at press time.
As might be expected, market volumes jumped along with the price. Data from Bitcoinity showsmore trade volume during the past several hours than at any other point during the past week.
Hot air balloon imagevia Shutterstock
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Have breaking news or a story tip to send to our journalists? Contact us at [emailprotected].
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Bitcoin Price Surges Past $3,200 to Hit All-Time High - CoinDesk - CoinDesk
Ulrich Baumgarten via Getty Images
The world's most popular digital currency exchange, Coinbase, reversed course on Thursday and announced it would accept a new bitcoin offshoot that was issued to every bitcoin owner.
The reversal comes after days of tumult as angry Coinbase customers demanded to know why the company had not released their new currency, called Bitcoin Cash, to them. The exchange rate for the currency, which began trading on August 1, briefly reached $700 on Wednesday and is currently trading around $400 .
Coinbase announced the decision in a blog post, explaining it wanted to first ensure the company could safely support Bitcoin Cash before developing technology to support it. The exchange said it would start supporting Bitcoin Cash begining on Jan. 1, 2018.
Over the last several days, weve examined all of the relevant issues and have decided to work on adding support for bitcoin cash for Coinbase customers. We made this decision based on factors such as the security of the network, customer demand, trading volumes, and regulatory considerations.
We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time.
While the decision to support Bitcoin Cash may placate some Coinbase customers, others are likely to question why the company will take months to do so, even as other digital exchanges support the new currency.
It's also unclear how Coinbase's announcement will affect a campaign by a group of customers who had vowed to file a class action lawsuit if the company did not permit them to withdraw their Bitcoin Cash.
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In the days preceding the arrival of Bitcoin Coin cash, Coinbase made clear it did not intend to support the new currency and advised customers who objected to the policy to withdraw their bitcoins. This position, however, appeared to trigger a stampede of withdrawals, akin to a bank run, that led many customers to complain about long delays in getting access to their funds.
Meanwhile, reports suggest a large percentage of Coinbase's customer base elected to leave prior to August 1, which is when a so-called fork in bitcoin's underlying software took place that gave rise to Bitcoin Cash. A graph published by analytics company BlockSeer suggests customers withdrew over half of the $1 worth billion bitcoins stored in Coinbase's "vault" storage service:
It's unclear how many of the departing Coinbase customers elected to cash out their bitcoins into dollars or instead to transfer it to other digital wallet services where they would be eligible to receive the Bitcoin Cash immediately. One such company, London-based Blockchain, suggested most customers chose the latter course.
"It's been a record week for Blockchain," said a spokesperson for the company.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly suggested customers had withdrawn half of 1 billion bitcoins, not $1 billion worth of bitcoin.
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Coinbase to Let Users Withdraw Bitcoin Cash After Outcry - Fortune
As the entire community has been laser-focused on the recent hard fork and Bitcoin network split, many people have forgotten about the Segwit2x plan. Miners who participated in the New York Agreement (NYA) have kept their promise and Segregated Witness will lock-in on the network in roughly two weeks.
Also read:Gwyneth Paltrow Joins Bitcoin Wallet Abra as Advisor
A few more changes are coming to the Bitcoin network in the near future. The Segwit2x plan often referred to as NYA is still following its course towards protocol activation of Segwit. At the time of writing, there are 621 blocks remaining for BIP 141 (Segwit) lock-in, and the plan seems to be running smoothly. The vast majority of miners who agreed to the Segwit2x proposal are still following through with at least half of the plan. The second half of Segwit2x intention involves the 2MB hard fork which is scheduled to occur in November.
However, weeks before the recent hard fork, a large portion of the user-activated soft fork (UASF) supporters, and Core developers have been vehemently opposing the second half of the NYA plan. Now that Bitcoin Cash exists, this has caused quite a few people to start envisioning three bitcoins; one that has Segwit only, one with both Segwit and the 2MB block increase, and the 8MB Bitcoin Cash.
On August 4 one individual wrote about his concerns about this outcome on the subreddit r/btc called, Core Devs: it is imperative that you endorse Segwit2x. If you dont, then we can end up with three Bitcoins. Please, have a little humility, avoid another contentious hard fork.
The person believes that if Core developers and many other others refuse to follow through with the second part of the plan, then there could be another chain split. Doubling the block size of the Bitcoin blockchain is NOT the end of the world, and it will come with many benefits as well, explains the threads author. One of the Core Bitcoin repository contributors, Luke-jr, reveals his opinion regarding the 2MB portion of the NYA plan.
Forget it Segwit2x is not going to happen If you want my support, get the proposal changed to something sane, explains Core developer Luke-jr. Then Luke-jr replied to the statement of how doubling the block size would not be the end of the world. Yes, it is, the developer adds.
Luke-jr is not the only bitcoin developer that wont agree to the next part of the Segwit2x plan. This includes Greg Maxwell, Wladimir van der laan, Jorge Timon, Eric Lombrozo, and many others.
After the birth of Bitcoin Cash, Jeff Garzik, one of the lead maintainers of the Segwit2x code, confirms that Segwit2x is still on schedule. When asked on Twitter whether the compromise was going forward because big blockers got their wish with Bitcoin Cash, Garzik responds saying;
Segwit2x and NYA have successfully met all goals so far, and continue as planned.
After August 1st the playing field is starting to get veryinteresting, and because the UASF and UAHF were planned in advance, many Bitcoiners had a feeling something was going to happen. Quite a few UASF supporters believe the UASF movement is what managed to push Segwit. However, these samesupporters seem to have also caused some blowback as well with the UAHF (Bitcoin Cash) plan following shortly after the movement started.
Now even though Segwit2x has a large majority of miner support and lots of businesses and infrastructure behind it, we could still see another split. Theres over three months left for the Bitcoin community to work this out, but some believe its looking dreary already.
What do you think about the upcoming plans for Segwit2x? Do you think its possible we could see three sets of bitcoins? Let us know in the comments below.
Images via Pixabay, and Coin Dance.
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Segwit2x and the Tale of Three Bitcoins - Bitcoin News (press release)
There area few different companies specializing in Bitcoin blockchain analysis. Every single one of thoseentities seeksto provide law enforcement agencies and other parties with actionable insights on the Bitcoin network. One of these companies isNeutrino, based in Italy. Now would bea good time to check up on what this company provides exactly and how itcould be both a blessing and a curse to Bitcoin users.
It sounds quite interesting if a company claims they can properly analyze the Bitcoin blockchain. Companies such as Neutrino not to be confused with the infamous exploit kit used by criminals specialize in searching for malicious behavior on the Bitcoin network. If criminals were to steal funds or move funds belonging to suspicious addresses, companies like these wouldimmediately track themdown to the best of their abilities.
Contrary to what a lot of people think, Bitcoin is not an anonymous currency. It is true that transactions do not include personal information, but it is a pseudonymous currency which allows anyone to keep tabs on network transactions in real-time. Doing so does not even require specialized software. All it takes is a browser and a mouse to start going through Bitcoin transactions and their histories.
Companies such as Neutrino take this concept one step further. The company uses a proprietary machine learning algorithm known as P-Flow to constantly monitor the Bitcoin blockchain and all activities taking place on it. The software also categorizes money flows and labels risks accordingly. Interestingly enough, P-Flow is apparently capable of analyzing alltransactions, even the obfuscated versions.
Any compliance officer looking to assess risk of Bitcoin operations could certainly benefit from a tool such as P-Flow. It enhances AML/KYC checks and sets up customizable red flag alerts based on a blacklist approach. Users can flag any transaction potentially related to Bitcoin obfuscation as a threat as well. It is even capable of ascertaining whether or not a particular BTC transfer has a link to the darknet. All of this makes for an incredibly powerful solution.
Neutrino was founded back in 2016 with a strong focus on cybersecurity in general. Bitcoin quickly became one of itsareas of expertise, as the companyaspires to develop highly specialized cybersecurity solutions for use by partners and companies. Given the increasing popularity of Bitcoin over these past few years, developing P-Flow made a lot of sense. It is also the companys first project to come to market. Blockchain analytics companies are in high demand these days.
Neutrino is the company responsible for tracking the recent WannaCry Bitcoin funds movements. Itsresearch indicated how these funds were transferred to the ShapeShift exchange and converted to Monero. That statement was later confirmed by ShapeShift themselves, although they never indicatedwhetherall of the remaining WannaCry proceeds were laundered in such a manner. This development highlights the value of Neutrino as a Bitcoin analytics company. Anyone trying to abuse Bitcoin for nefarious purposes will certainly now have a difficult time getting away with it.
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Neutrino Is an Italian Bitcoin Blockchain Analytics Service Provider - The Merkle
According to the company's website, the purpose of the epic interviewing process is to celebrate the 110th anniversary of Charles Grant Gordon introducing Grant's Whisky to the world and to recreate his year-long journey, which will even include some of the applicants staying in the same hotels he stayed in.
"The role goes way beyond being able to make great cocktails," Global Brand Director Oliver Dickson said in a statement. "We're looking for somebody to embody the 'Stand Together' spirit of the brand and who can spearhead Grant's into the next stage of its global journey."
As reported by Travel + Leisure, all applicants must be at least 25 years of age and fluent in English. The ideal candidate will be social media savvy, energetic and have previous experience in the drinks sector, although this isn't required.
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Apply for this dream job and you'll travel the world as part of the interview - CNBC
Barcelonas El Prat airport, where security workers have begun partial strikes. Photograph: Alejandro Garcia/EPA
Soaring temperatures, new security checks and the resumption of industrial action at one of Europes busiest airports are challenging passengers on one of the busiest weekends of the year.
Travellers in many cities were taking heed of advice to arrive early on Saturday in order to allow extra time to pass through security following the introduction in March of European Union regulations in the wake of the Paris and Brussels terror attacks.
The new rules demand both entry and exit checks on passengers from countries including Britain outside the 26-nation border-free Schengen zone.
Delays have been particularly bad at Barcelonas El Prat airport, where passengers missed flights on Friday as security workers checking carry-on luggage began partial strikes at the beginning of one of Spains peak summer holiday weekends.
There were no strikes on Saturday, but passengers were still reporting long waits. Luke Hansell, who was travelling to Birmingham with his mother, said they had been prompted by news reports to arrive four hours before their morning flight.
He said: The queue for security was around 90 minutes to pass. It was functioning but seemed like there wasnt many staff. There were far more manning the security at Birmingham airport for example.
His experience of passport control was better than expected though, with little sign that the new checks were causing staff to take longer when checking documentation.
Robert Emerson, another passenger, said the airport was a mess, with many disgruntled passengers and few or no staff. He had barely reached the departure gate before a 10.30am boarding time following his arrival shortly after 8am, and the aircraft was then left sitting on the runway for an hour due to overbooking, with no passengers willing to get off.
After the failure of mediation on Friday evening, the series of hour-long strikes by staff who operate scanners, search passengers and control the queues at the airport will resume on Sunday. Others are scheduled for Monday, Friday and next Sunday.
A spokesperson for the travel trade organisation, Abta, said its members on the ground had yet to report travellers being adversely impacted by the new security checks, but it was still advising travellers to leave extra time when departing from Schengen countries.
People should also bear in mind that this is a particularly busy weekend and we have record numbers of Britons who are out in Europe at the moment, she said. People do need to factor in time. If they are concerned, then they should speak to their airlines. Certain ones will open check-ins three hours before but at some airports they will only open them two hours beforehand, for example.
In the UK, the Home Office announced that the process of filling in a landing card before arriving in the country will be scrapped for more than 16 million non-EU travellers.
The paper-based system was described as outdated by officials and will be replaced with a digital system. It is hoped the new process will help speed passengers through airports upon arrival while ensuring that security and immigration checks continue to be performed.
Non-European travellers have been required to fill out a landing card with basic information about themselves and their travel since 1971, a process which costs 3.6m a year.
This weekend also marks the start of three weeks of disruption on Britains railway network. Major stations in London, as well as services in Wales and in the north of England, are due to be affected by engineering work.
An 800m revamp to increase the capacity of Britains busiest station, Waterloo in London, is already under way and will result in fewer trains running from this weekend until 28 August. Services in south Wales and in Englands north-west and Midlands are also expected to feel the impact of engineering works this month.
Thick cloud and thunderstorms also led to long flight delays at Londons Gatwick airport on Saturday. A spokesperson said that a departure restriction had been put in place for a short time during the afternoon, which had a knock-on impact. Passengers told of being stuck on planes waiting to take off for up to two hours.
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Air travellers in Europe delayed by security checks and strikes - The Guardian
The Electric City Bombers 14-under travel softball team
The Electric City Bombers 14-under travel softball team
The Miss Shen Thunder 10-Under softball team
The Miss Shen Thunder 10-Under softball team
Softball teams travel to World Series tourneys
The Electric City Bombers 14-under travel softball team finished fourth out of 76 teams in the 14U-B USSSA Eastern World Series in Ocean City, Maryland. Pictured are, from top left: Angelise Montanez of Lansingburgh, Lauren Paul of Guilderland, Tia Snyder of Shaker, Jordan Sayward of Shenendehowa, Haley Earing of Columbia, Keana Guthier of Bennington, Vt. Bottom from left: Irene Dill of Guilderland, Katelyn Waltz of Guilderland, Angeline Montanez of Lansingburgh, Rachael Jones of Bennington, Vt. and Ryleigh Haynes of Troy.
The Miss Shen Thunder 10-Under softball team placed third out of 40 teams at the USSSA World Series in Salisbury, Maryland. Team members include, top row, from left: coaches Maura Kristel, Josh Kean and BJ Jourdanais. Middle row: Morgan Smith, Natalia Colone, Keeley Kristel, Mady Bitter, Emily Baumes, Kelsey Marin, Kayla Kean; front row: Mia Vazquez, Olivia Russell, Ella Kean, Taylor Jourdanais and Emmy Markowski.
Check out the Youth Sports blog at: blog.timesunion.com/youthsports To submit items, contact Joyce Bassett at jbassett@timesunion.com
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Softball teams travel to World Series tourneys - Albany Times Union
The rapid development of so-called NBIC technologies nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science are giving rise to possibilities that have long been the domain of science fiction.
Disease, ageing and even death are all human realities that these technologies seek to end.
They may enable us to enjoy greater morphological freedom we could take on new forms through prosthetics or genetic engineering.
Or advance our cognitive capacities.
We could use brain-computer interfaces to link us to advanced artificial intelligence (AI).
Nanobots could roam our bloodstream to monitor our health and enhance our emotional propensities for joy, love or other emotions.
Advances in one area often raise new possibilities in others, and this convergence may bring about radical changes to our world in the near-future.
Transhumanism is the idea that humans should transcend their current natural state and limitations through the use of technology that we should embrace self-directed human evolution.
If the history of technological progress can be seen as humankinds attempt to tame nature to better serve its needs, transhumanism is the logical continuation: the revision of humankinds nature to better serve its fantasies.
As David Pearce, a leading proponent of transhumanism and co-founder of Humanity+, says:
If we want to live in paradise, we will have to engineer it ourselves.
If we want eternal life, then well need to rewrite our bug-ridden genetic code and become god-like only hi-tech solutions can ever eradicate suffering from the world.
Compassion alone is not enough.
But there is a darker side to the naive faith that Pearce and other proponents have in transhumanism one that is decidedly dystopian.
There is unlikely to be a clear moment when we emerge as transhuman.
Rather technologies will become more intrusive and integrate seamlessly with the human body.
Technology has long been thought of as an extension of the self.
Many aspects of our social world, not least our financial systems, are already largely machine-based.
There is much to learn from these evolving human/machine hybrid systems.
Yet the often Utopian language and expectations that surround and shape our understanding of these developments have been under-interrogated.
The profound changes that lie ahead are often talked about in abstract ways, because evolutionary advancements are deemed so radical that they ignore the reality of current social conditions.
In this way, transhumanism becomes a kind of techno-anthropocentrism, in which transhumanists often underestimate the complexity of our relationship with technology.
They see it as a controllable, malleable tool that, with the correct logic and scientific rigour, can be turned to any end.
In fact, just as technological developments are dependent on and reflective of the environment in which they arise, they in turn feed back into the culture and create new dynamics often imperceptibly.
Situating transhumanism, then, within the broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts within which it emerges is vital to understanding how ethical it is.
Max More and Natasha Vita-More, in their edited volume The Transhumanist Reader, claim the need in transhumanism for inclusivity, plurality and continuous questioning of our knowledge.
Yet these three principles are incompatible with developing transformative technologies within the prevailing system from which they are currently emerging: advanced capitalism.
One problem is that a highly competitive social environment doesnt lend itself to diverse ways of being.
Instead it demands increasingly efficient behaviour.
Take students, for example.
If some have access to pills that allow them to achieve better results, can other students afford not to follow?
This is already a quandary.
Increasing numbers of students reportedly pop performance-enhancing pills.
And if pills become more powerful, or if the enhancements involve genetic engineering or intrusive nanotechnology that offer even stronger competitive advantages, what then?
Rejecting an advanced technological orthodoxy could potentially render someone socially and economically moribund (perhaps evolutionarily so), while everyone with access is effectively forced to participate to keep up.
Going beyond everyday limits is suggestive of some kind of liberation.
However, here it is an imprisoning compulsion to act a certain way.
We literally have to transcend in order to conform (and survive).
The more extreme the transcendence, the more profound the decision to conform and the imperative to do so.
The systemic forces cajoling the individual into being upgraded to remain competitive also play out on a geo-political level.
One area where technology R&D has the greatest transhumanist potential is defence.
DARPA (the US defence department responsible for developing military technologies), which is attempting to create metabolically dominant soldiers, is a clear example of how vested interests of a particular social system could determine the development of radically powerful transformative technologies that have destructive rather than Utopian applications.
The rush to develop super-intelligent AI by globally competitive and mutually distrustful nation states could also become an arms race.
In Radical Evolution, novelist Verner Vinge describes a scenario in which superhuman intelligence is the ultimate weapon.
Ideally, mankind would proceed with the utmost care in developing such a powerful and transformative innovation.
There is quite rightly a huge amount of trepidation around the creation of super-intelligence and the emergence of the singularity the idea that once AI reaches a certain level it will rapidly redesign itself, leading to an explosion of intelligence that will quickly surpass that of humans (something that will happen by 2029 according to futurist Ray Kurzweil).
If the world takes the shape of whatever the most powerful AI is programmed (or reprograms itself) to desire, it even opens the possibility of evolution taking a turn for the entirely banal could an AI destroy humankind from a desire to produce the most paperclips for example?
Its also difficult to conceive of any aspect of humanity that could not be improved by being made more efficient at satisfying the demands of a competitive system. It is the system, then, that determines humanitys evolution without taking any view on what humans are or what they should be.
One of the ways in which advanced capitalism proves extremely dynamic is in its ideology of moral and metaphysical neutrality.
As philosopher Michael Sandel says: markets dont wag fingers.
In advanced capitalism, maximising ones spending power maximises ones ability to flourish hence shopping could be said to be a primary moral imperative of the individual.
Philosopher Bob Doede rightly suggests it is this banal logic of the market that will dominate:
If biotech has rendered human nature entirely revisable, then it has no grain to direct or constrain our designs on it.
And so whose designs will our successor post-human artefacts likely bear?
I have little doubt that in our vastly consumerist, media-saturated capitalist economy, market forces will have their way.
So the commercial imperative would be the true architect of the future human.
Whether the evolutionary process is determined by a super-intelligent AI or advanced capitalism, we may be compelled to conform to a perpetual transcendence that only makes us more efficient at activities demanded by the most powerful system.
The end point is predictably an entirely nonhuman though very efficient technological entity derived from humanity that doesnt necessarily serve a purpose that a modern-day human would value in any way.
The ability to serve the system effectively will be the driving force.
This is also true of natural evolution technology is not a simple tool that allows us to engineer ourselves out of this conundrum.
But transhumanism could amplify the speed and least desirable aspects of the process.
For bioethicist Julian Savulescu, the main reason humans must be enhanced is for our species to survive.
He says we face a Bermuda Triangle of extinction: radical technological power, liberal democracy and our moral nature.
As a transhumanist, Savulescu extols technological progress, also deeming it inevitable and unstoppable.
It is liberal democracy and particularly our moral nature that should alter.
The failings of humankind to deal with global problems are increasingly obvious.
But Savulescu neglects to situate our moral failings within their wider cultural, political and economic context, instead believing that solutions lie within our biological make up.
Yet how would Savulescus morality-enhancing technologies be disseminated, prescribed and potentially enforced to address the moral failings they seek to cure?
This would likely reside in the power structures that may well bear much of the responsibility for these failings in the first place.
Hes also quickly drawn into revealing how relative and contestable the concept of morality is:
We will need to relax our commitment to maximum protection of privacy.
Were seeing an increase in the surveillance of individuals and that will be necessary if we are to avert the threats that those with antisocial personality disorder, fanaticism, represent through their access to radically enhanced technology.
Such surveillance allows corporations and governments to access and make use of extremely valuable information.
In Who Owns the Future, internet pioneer Jaron Lanier explains:
Troves of dossiers on the private lives and inner beings of ordinary people, collected over digital networks, are packaged into a new private form of elite money
It is a new kind of security the rich trade in, and the value is naturally driven up. It becomes a giant-scale levee inaccessible to ordinary people.
Crucially, this levee is also invisible to most people.
Its impacts extend beyond skewing the economic system towards elites to significantly altering the very conception of liberty, because the authority of power is both radically more effective and dispersed.
Foucaults notion that we live in a panoptic society one in which the sense of being perpetually watched instils discipline is now stretched to the point where todays incessant machinery has been called a superpanopticon.
The knowledge and information that transhumanist technologies will tend to create could strengthen existing power structures that cement the inherent logic of the system in which the knowledge arises.
This is in part evident in the tendency of algorithms toward race and gender bias, which reflects our already existing social failings.
Information technology tends to interpret the world in defined ways: it privileges information that is easily measurable, such as GDP, at the expense of unquantifiable information such as human happiness or well-being.
As invasive technologies provide ever more granular data about us, this data may in a very real sense come to define the world and intangible information may not maintain its rightful place in human affairs.
Existing inequities will surely be magnified with the introduction of highly effective psycho-pharmaceuticals, genetic modification, super intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, nanotechnology, robotic prosthetics, and the possible development of life expansion.
They are all fundamentally inegalitarian, based on a notion of limitlessness rather than a standard level of physical and mental well-being weve come to assume in healthcare.
Its not easy to conceive of a way in which these potentialities can be enjoyed by all.
Sociologist Saskia Sassen talks of the new logics of expulsion, that capture the pathologies of todays global capitalism.
The expelled include the more than 60,000 migrants who have lost their lives on fatal journeys in the past 20 years, and the victims of the racially skewed profile of the increasing prison population.
In Britain, they include the 30,000 people whose deaths in 2015 were linked to health and social care cuts and the many who perished in the Grenfell Tower fire.
Their deaths can be said to have resulted from systematic marginalisation.
Unprecedented acute concentration of wealth happens alongside these expulsions.
Advanced economic and technical achievements enable this wealth and the expulsion of surplus groups.
At the same time, Sassen writes, they create a kind of nebulous centrelessness as the locus of power:
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Transhumanism could lead to immortality for the elite - Gears Of Biz
Transhumanism has received significant media attention in recent times not in the least because the one of the movements leaders, Zoltan Istvan, ran for president in 2016 US elections.
But a British PhD candidate has warned of the darker side of a transhumanist future.
Sociologist Alex Thomas of East London University believes that transhumanism will further enforce a societal obsession with progress and efficiency at the expense of social justice and environmental sustainability. In an article published this week in The Conversation, Thomas argues that unbridled technological progress, in which technology become more intrusive and integrate seamlessly with the human body, could lead to a loss of basic societal values such as compassion and a concern for the environment.
Thomas interweaves examples ranging from new military technologies to powerful enhancement medications, arguing that, rather than assisting humanity, these technologies could potentially lead to a mechanisation of humanity and facilitate a subtle form of authoritarian control.
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A team of scientists from the UNC School of Medicine and North Carolina State University (NCSU), U.S. have developed promising research towards possible stem cell treatment for several lung conditions, such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and cystic fibrosis, all of which are known to be fatal conditions. In the journal Respiratory Research, the scientists demonstrated that they could harvest lung stem cells from people using a relatively non-invasive, doctors office technique. They were then able to multiply the harvested lung cells in the lab to yield enough cells sufficient for human therapy.
In a second study, published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine, the team showed that in rodents they could use the same type of lung cell to successfully treat a model of IPF a chronic, irreversible, and ultimately fatal disease characterised by a progressive decline in lung function. These diseases of the lung involve the build-up of fibrous, scar-like tissue, typically due to chronic lung inflammation. As this fibrous tissue replaces working lung tissue, the lungs become less able to transfer oxygen to the blood. Patients ultimately are at risk of early death from respiratory failure. In the case of IPF, which has been linked to smoking, most patients live for fewer than five years after diagnosis.
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A novel strung together by themes of impermanence, immortality, human savagery and injustice against the backdrop of Lahore, Takshashila, Tilla Jogian and other cities
Reviewing a novel, a poem or an artwork is a kind of subjective process. To state at the outset, a work of literature or art is aesthetically felt felt as the emotional reactions it evokes emphatically impact our psychological and emotional state.
The aesthetic experience transforms not only our emotional being but also affects our visual cognition. New channels of vision are opened up, and we are compelled to change, in the words of John Berger, what we look at because to look is an act of choice. The altered ways of seeing, eventually, align our placement in the immediate environment. For instance, hierarchies are displaced or built anew and heroes become villains and the once-villains turn into new heroes.
So, engagement with an artistic work ushers in an alchemical presence; but story-telling, in particular, wields a magical quality, a tilism, which Scheherazade, a young Iranian queen married to King Shaharyar, breathtakingly employed to avert the prospect of impending death, night after night. Till after 1,000 nights and 1,000 stories, the king whose heart had turned hard against the fairer sex after the betrayal of his wife and who had ordered the killing of his new wife after a nights tryst was healed, his grief redeemed, and he fell in love with his story-spinning queen.
Reading Osama Siddiques novel Snuffing Out the Moon has that transformative quality, for I felt that I was entering into different thresholds manifesting manifold illusions: From Mohenjo Daro to Takshashila to the subah of Punjab to the British-administered Punjab (1857) to contemporary Lahore (2009) to the futuristic Water conglomerate (2084); the crossovers undulate forward and backward, as if you are swinging on the roots of an old Banyan tree.
The illusions of different epochs either change or in many instances remain constant and vary from Mohenjo Daros chiselled beads, deemed as a symbol of the city of bricks brilliant craftsmanship, to the Mughal Emperor Jehangirs grandiose tiles the World-Seizer to his equally grandiloquent dream of a permanent empire to the ever-elusive justice for Rafiya Begum.
Interestingly, the narrative structure of Snuffing Out the Moon cannot be fitted neatly into our traditional understanding of the genre of novel. In a conventional structure, as the plot unfolds, the characters expand through intensification of conflict and their subsequent resolutions. Not only is Snuffing Out the Moon without an overarching storyline, even various sub-plots of myriad historical ages do not gel with each other because of different characters and narrative episodes.
I entered into different thresholds manifesting manifold illusions: From Mohenjo Daro to Takshashila to the subah of Punjab to the British-administered Punjab (1857) to contemporary Lahore (2009) to the futuristic Water conglomerate (2084).
The novel is strung together by the recurring themes of dread of impermanence, desire for immortality, human savagery unleashed against nature as well as fellow human beings, and injustice. However, certain locales, such as Lahore, Takshashila and Tilla Jogian provide a steady background for contemplation and acting out of the themes. And, with a few exceptions, the characters emerge tentatively, almost like fleeting scenery observed from a moving train in more than one epoch.
Mahmood Ali, a young revolutionary in the British-administered Lahore, helps out fellow revolutionaries like Mir Sahib, a dastango, who after Oudhs annexation to British India by the East India Company, settles in a relatively less-restive Lahore, and earns the ire of Lahores gora administrators for his message of uprising, embedded within the fabled mysteries of Tilism-e-Hoshruba. Mahmood Ali aids Mir Sahib to escape from Lahore and later, in the contemporary setting of Lahore, an old woman, Rafiya Begum, discovers his grave in the Miani Sahib graveyard.
Gradually, as the tenuous hope of finding justice eludes Rafiya Begum, visits to his grave become a solace for her disconsolate heart: She developed a strange affinity for that placid patch of earth where the remains of the young man had lain for some 150 years. Similarly, Buddhamitra, the wise monk of Takshishala, who teaches his disciple how to observe the empirical reality to untangle the webs of optical illusions and use the insights for spiritual enlightenment or the minds eye leaves behind scrolls at Tilla Jogian his gift for posterity.
Essentially it is omens, nightmares and visions dwelling in the harassed minds of characters, from Prkaa to Buddhamitra to Billa the meter that coagulate the novel. Not only do omens/visions give impetus to the narrative flow and intensify conflict, they also provide the much-needed structural fluidity to the sprawling narrative. The serpents dance of death and survival, witnessed by Prkaa from a tree-top, as a recourse against inundation of the reptiles hilly habitat as a result of human degradation of environment stands as a metaphor for what catastrophes can accrue when a spanner is thrown in the working of forces of nature. Not only the exploited but exploitive, too, become victims of their fury. Again, the act of witnessing of hissing serpents is transformative and portends the calamities that fall in different historical epochs.
As a consequence of climatic uncertainty, wars, and predatory instincts of the ruling classes, Prkaa of Mohenjo Daro, Buddhamitra of Takshashila, Rafiya Begum of Lahore and Prashanto Adam Farooqui of the Water Conglomerate become exiles or pariahs. They refuse to conform to established ways of thinking and prefer to live outside the confines of society, not only physically in jungles, caves, and graveyards but also because of their seer-like intuitions to sift illusion from reality.
Seers they might be, but they still lack the roundedness which the characters can grow into when their peculiarities, idiosyncrasies and limitations are unravelled. To a considerable extent, the void of three-dimensional characters is filled by tricksters and cheaters like Sikander-i-Sani, Altaf Gulfam Amerzada, Billa the meter, Amin-ud-din Ameerzada inimitable, endearing and providing the much-needed comic relief. While seers contemplate, tricksters are men of action who invent different stratagems to make fortune and increase their clout and power.
Snuffing Out the Moon, whose title is drawn from one of Faiz Ahmed Faizs poems, is a book of journeys, cross-overs and breaching of frontiers across space and time till we abide in timeless time. The very thought that the moon, which warms the hearts of lovers in Faizs poem, can be snuffed out is horrifying, and the overall mood of the novel is melancholic. In T.S. Eliots style, it is declared this is an unloved city that we live in now. Still the scrolls of Buddhamitra and history books of Alexander Al-Murtaza Afaqi, which dont erase human history to construct self-serving versions, hold hope howsoever bleak for humanity.
Snuffing Out the Moon Author: Osama Siddique Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Year: 2017 Pages: 599 Price: Rs1,075
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The International Space Station is a unique scientific platform enabling researchers from around the world to develop experiments that could not be performed on Earth. A line of unpiloted resupply spacecraft keeps this work going, supporting efforts to enable future human and robotic exploration of destinations well beyond low-Earth orbit.
The next mission to the space station will be the 12th commercial resupply services flight for SpaceX. Liftoff is targeted for Aug. 13 at approximately 12:56 p.m., from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This underscores the center's role as a premier, multi-user spaceport as this will be the ninth SpaceX rocket to take off from the launch pad, all this year. Pad 39A's history includes 11 Apollo flights, the launch of the Skylab space station in 1973, and 82 space shuttle missions.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will boost a Dragon spacecraft filled with almost 6,000 pounds of supplies. The payloads include crucial materials to directly support dozens of the more than 250 science and research investigations that will occur during Expeditions 52 and 53.
About 10 minutes after launch, Dragon will reach its preliminary orbit and deploy its solar arrays. A carefully choreographed series of thruster firings are scheduled to allow the spacecraft to rendezvous with the space station.
NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli will grapple Dragon using the space station's robotic arm and install it on the station's Harmony module.
The station crew will unpack the Dragon and begin working with the experiments that include plant pillows containing seeds for NASA's Veggie plant growth system experiment. The plant pillows were prepared in Kennedy's Space Station Processing Facility.
Veggie, like most of the research taking place on the space station, is demonstrating how the research benefits life on Earth as it advances NASA's plans to send humans to Mars.
The Dragon spacecraft will spend approximately one month attached to the space station. It will remain until mid-September when the spacecraft will return to Earth with results of earlier experiments, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California.
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Dragon to be packed with new experiments for International Space Station - Space Daily
A heavy-duty crane towering over launch pad 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in recent weeks has removed several large sections of a disused structure once needed to install satellites and space station modules into space shuttle cargo bays.
A demolition crew hired by SpaceX, the launch pads current tenant, has plucked pieces of the rotating service structure and lowered them to the ground since the facility hosted its most recent launch July 5. Officials took advantage of a quiet period in SpaceXs launch schedule to make progress on disassembling the structure, which is not required for Falcon rocket flights.
SpaceX said the rotating service structure is on track to be completely gone by the end of the year. NASA retains ownership of the historic launch complex, and will sell scrap metal from the demolition work, which started in minor form last year and has accelerated in recent weeks.
NASA added the moveable gantry at pad 39A in the late 1970s before the first space shuttle mission blasted off from the site in 1981. After a space shuttle rolled out to the pad from the space centers Vehicle Assembly Building, the rotating structure would wheel into position to cocoon the orbiter, giving workers the ability to load cargo into the shuttles bus-sized payload bay and pump maneuvering fuel into the ships propellant tanks.
The gantry would then rotate around 120 degrees on a vertical hinge into liftoff position in the final 24 hours before a shuttle launch.
The rotating service structure stood at a maximum height of 189 feet (57 meters) above the surface at pad 39A before the demolition started. The structure itself, which looms over the pad deck, extended 130 feet (39 meters) tall.
Originally built in the 1960s for the Apollo moon program, pad 39A hosted 12 Saturn 5 rocket flights including Apollo 11 and 82 shuttle missions departed from the seaside launch complex.
NASA decided it no longer needed pad 39A after the shuttles retirement. Nearby launch pad 39B, also built for Apollo and shuttle flights, will be home to NASAs Space Launch System, a government-owned heavy-lift rocket that will launch astronaut crews on deep space expeditions.
The shuttle-era structures at pad 39B were dismantled in 2010 and 2011.
SpaceX signed a 20-year lease agreement with NASA in 2014 to take over pad 39A, which re-entered service in February with a Falcon 9 launch to resupply the International Space Station. Eight SpaceX missions have lifted off from pad 39A so far this year.
The next Falcon 9 rocket launch is scheduled for Aug. 13, again from pad 39A, on another station cargo run.
SpaceX says Falcon 9 flights from Florida will move to nearby pad 40 later this year, once repairs of that facility are completed after a rocket explosion last year. That will free up pad 39A for more extensive renovations and upgrades for the inaugural flight of SpaceXs Falcon Heavy rocket, a triple-body booster designed to heave massive payloads into space.
Elon Musk, SpaceXs founder and CEO, said last month that the first Falcon Heavy test flight is scheduled for November.
The taller fixed service structure will remain in place at pad 39A. It is not needed for Falcon flights with satellites and robotic payloads, but SpaceX will connect an access arm and white room to the tower to allow astronauts to board human-rated Dragon capsules.
Along with Boeing, SpaceX has a crew transportation contract with NASA to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and end U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for the job. The latest schedule calls for the first two astronauts to fly on a Crew Dragon spaceship no earlier than June 2018, and officials said the crew access arm should be added to the fixed tower at pad 39A in late fall.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
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Shuttle-era structure dismantled piece-by-piece at pad 39A - Spaceflight Now
Laurel Kornfeld
August 4th, 2017
Artists impression of NASAs New Horizons spacecraft, en route to a January 2019 encounter with Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI
New Horizons second target Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) 2014 MU69 may actually be a binary system composed of two objects that either touch one another or orbit very close together, according to observations conducted by mission scientists when the KBO passed in front of a star on July 17, 2017.
Members of the New Horizons team observed the occultation by deploying a network of telescopes along the path of MU69s shadow in a remote part of Argentina.
Their goal was to capture its shadow, thereby obtaining data about the KBOs size, shape, orbit, and environment as well as information that will enable accurate refining of the spacecrafts trajectory.
MU69 is thesecond targetof NASAs New Horizons spacecraft and part of its approved extended mission by the space agency. It will be the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft.
The probe famously flew by the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, obtaining a plethora of images and data about the binary Pluto-Charon and their four small moons.
The July 17, 2017, occultation was the third of three such events this year, all of which were carefully observed by mission scientists after they used both the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agencys (ESA) Gaia satellite to pinpoint exactly where MU69s shadow would fall on Earth each time.
Based on data collected during the first occultation in June, mission scientists raised the possibility that MU69, located a billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto and more than four billion miles (6.5 billion kilometers) from Earth, might actually be a swarm of many small objects rather than a single object.
However, observations conducted during the third occultation indicate the object is either two objects closely orbiting each other, a contact binary in which the two objects actually touch one another, or a single, strangely shaped object missing a large chunk of material.
Mission scientists think it or both objects may be shaped like a skinny football a shape formally described as an extreme prolate spheroid.
LEFT: An artists concept of Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69, the next flyby target for NASAs New Horizons mission. This binary concept is based on telescope observations made at Patagonia, Argentina, on July 17, 2017, when MU69 passed in front of a star. New Horizons scientists theorize that it could be a single body with a large chunk taken out of it, or two bodies that are close together or even touching. RIGHT: Another artists concept of Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69, which is the next flyby target for NASAs New Horizons mission. Scientists speculate that the Kuiper Belt object could be a single body with a large chunk taken out of it, or two bodies that are close together or even touching. Images & Captions Credit: NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI / Alex Parker
Two of Plutos small moons, Kerberos and Hydra, as well as Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko, are single objects composed of two lobes.
This new finding is simply spectacular. The shape of MU69 is truly provocative, and could mean another first for New Horizons going to a binary object in the Kuiper Belt, said mission Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. I could not be happier with the occultation results, which promise a scientific bonanza for the flyby.
New Horizons will fly by MU69 on January 1, 2019.
From observations of the third occultation, scientists now have a better handle on MU69s size, which they estimate to be no longer than 20 miles (30 kilometers) if the KBO is a single object.
If MU69 is a binary composed of two objects, each one is estimated to have a diameter of nine to twelve miles (1520 kilometers).
Stern credited the successes of the occultation observations to the Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia Observatory, which provided crucial information about the path of MU69s shadow on Earth on all three occasions.
Occultation data and images are available on New Horizons KBO Chasers site.
Tagged: KBO 2014 MU69 Kuiper Belt Object NASA New Horizons The Range
Laurel Kornfeld is an amateur astronomer and freelance writer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science from Swinburne Universitys Astronomy Online program. Her writings have been published online in The Atlantic, Astronomy magazines guest blog section, the UK Space Conference, the 2009 IAU General Assembly newspaper, The Space Reporter, and newsletters of various astronomy clubs. She is a member of the Cranford, NJ-based Amateur Astronomers, Inc. Especially interested in the outer solar system, Laurel gave a brief presentation at the 2008 Great Planet Debate held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD.
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New Horizons' KBO target may be a binary - SpaceFlight Insider - SpaceFlight Insider
Last week Jeff Bezos, the head honcho at Amazon, briefly ousted Bill Gates from his spot as the richest man in the world. His arrival at the top also marks the rise of a new generation of billionaires whose investment portfolios look like something out of a science fiction novel. Once upon a time, the worlds mega-rich spent their money on getting richer, or gifted it, like Bill Gates, to humanitarian causes such as saving the world from Aids. Now their projects sound as if they have been ripped from the pages of a Bond villain manual. Tesla founder, Elon Musk, for example, wants to colonise Mars and save us from destruction by intelligent robots. Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, meanwhile, wants to create libertarian utopian societies on artificial islands in the sea. The fusion of human and artificial intelligence, the creation of utopian societies on sea or in space, and immortality, are the obsessions of these men - and they are all men incidentally. Todays billionaires want to live forever and fly us to Mars.
Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel (net worth 2 billion) has long been developing a reputation for investing in outlandish projects: reintroducing the woolly mammoth, the creation of small countries on the sea, life extension therapies. Thiel even donated to the Donald Trump election campaign, making him one of the few tech entrepreneurs to have backed the current US President.
An openly gay, evangelical Christian, Thiel has expressed some startling views and philosophies, including an affinity for hardcore libertarianism and support of anti-democratic capitalism. Its not surprising therefore that some of the projects he funds are about creating escape from current society. To this end, in 2011 he pledged $125 million to the Seasteading Institute, an organization dedicated to launching small countries on oil-rig-type platforms in international waters. These he believes are the only option to create new societies on Earth the libertarian utopias of his dreams.
But Thiel is not just interested in alternative societies. He also hopes to escape death. He has channelled millions into biotech start-ups to cure diseases and spent significant time and energy in researching life-extending therapies for his own use. On Bloomberg TV in 2014, Thiel explained that he was taking human-growth hormone pills as part of his plan to live for 120 years. He has even expressed an interest in parabiosis the transfusion of blood from the young into the old as a form of therapy. Its one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the 1950s, he said, and then it got dropped altogether. I think there are a lot of these things that have been strangely under-explored. He also sponsored the longevity studies of the SENS Research Foundation, run by controversial biomedical gerontologist and anti-ager Aubrey de Grey.
In a more banal, though sinister effort, he put $10 million into helping to bankrupt Gawker Media through litigation, a project which he told the New York Times, he felt was one of my greater philanthropic things that Ive done.
He says: I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual.
Jeff Bezos
Back in 2016, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO with a net worth around 65 billion, joked that he wanted to send Donald Trump into space and created the hashtag #SendDonaldToSpace. He even quipped: I have a rocket company, so the capability is there.
Briefly, for about four hours last week, Jeff Bezos was the richest man on the planet, ousting Microsoft's Bill Gates from the number one spot before shares in Amazon plummeted and he slipped back down to third again. Some of this extraordinary wealth is being put into extraordinary schemes, and, naturally, some of these involve space. Bezos is behind Blue Origin, a space tourism company that is creating reusable rockets and plans to send its first passengers into space next year.
What he wants to create is an Amazon-like shipment service for the moon that would deliver gear for experiments, cargo and habitats by mid-2020, and help to enable "future human settlement". And Bezos is a real space nerd, who grew up with space exploration as his childhood obsession and dream. Such is his personal interest that he also funds, and participates in a project that combs the oceans for the discarded historic NASA rocket ships which fell down into the sea and were never traced. One of his teams even found the Apollo 11 rocket.
Space, however, is just one of Bezoss interests. He owns the Washington Post. He has donated 32 million and part of his land in Texas to the construction of The Clock Of The Long Now, an underground timepiece designed to work for 10,000 years and tick only once a year.
He says: People will visit Mars, they will settle Mars, and we should because it's cool.
Elon Musk
The 21st century has brought a new space race, not between countries, but between tech entrepreneurs, and if it could be measured by the size and power, of the funders respective rockets, it would be a tight competition between Amazons Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Bezos, has, in New Glen, created the bigger rocket, but Musks Falcon Heavy, reportedly, has more thrust. It's all very 'mine is bigger than yours'.
But also Musk, the Tesla founder who has driven the electric car revolution, has with SpaceX, and his plans to colonise Mars, for many years owned space in the public imagination. Hes been going at it for longer SpaceX was founded in 2002, and was the first private space company to create plans for reusable rockets, and then propose Mars colonisation. Hes also a key idol for many a tech geek.
Musk views space travel as a matter of species survival. He has claimed that there are two fundamental paths for humanity. "One is that we stay on Earth forever and then there will be an inevitable extinction event...the alternative is to become a space-faring civilisation, and a multi-planetary species."
SpaceX has already become the first private company to deliver cargo and dock at the International Space Station, and earlier this year Musk announced that SpaceX will fly two tourists around the Moon in 2018. He said that the passengers will "travel faster and further into the solar system than any before them."
And space isnt Musks only frontier. The eccentric billionaire (net worth around 11 billion) has become one of the most vocal doomsayers regarding artificial intelligence. He has described AI as humanitys biggest existential threat, and has talked of his fears that we will create a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind. His solution? Some sort of merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence, or what he has called a neural lace, through which our brains will connect to the web, or cloud, enhancing our own intelligence. To this end, he has created Neuralink, a company launched in March, dedicated to creating such a brain-computer interface.
He says: I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.
Igor Ashurbeyli
As billionaire plans go, you cant really get more theatrically megalomaniac than the project Russian billionaire scientist, Igor Ashurbeyli has put his wealth behind that of the creation of the very first space state, dubbed Asgardia. Last autumn, the former head of Russia's military-industrial corporation, Almaz-Antey, made a video announcement to the world: Hello Asgardians. Igor Ashurbeyli, the founding father of Asgardia, welcomes you to his office in Moscow.
Naturally, Ashurbeyli is the head of nation of this state, to which half a million people have signed up as citizens. Asgardia, ultimately, according to plans, will be a permanent space station that will house space tourists, run asteroid mining missions, and provide defence for Earth against meteorites, space debris, and other serious threats. It will be a nation that exists outside current earthly political and legal restraints. Some speculate that it could be a data haven and tax haven.
But right now, it's something much smaller. This year, Asgardia plans to send its first envoy up into space, in the form of a small satellite, piggybacking on a supply mission to the International Space Station. That satellite will carry and store data for the nation's newly selected citizens and will represent the first bit of Asgardia in space.
He says: Greetings to over half a million Earthlings from over 100 Earth countries who have joined Asgardia!
Dmitry Itskov
Within the next 35 years Im going to make sure we can all live forever. This was how Russian internet billionaire Dmitry Itskov introduced himself in the documentary, The Immortalist. Itskov had, in 2013, funded a conference in New York with the aim of seeing if a system could be created to allow him to become immortal. Without such help, he has said, he expects not to be alive in 35 years time. Hence, in order to outpace death, he has founded the 2045 initiative, which aims by that year not only to have devised the technology to map the brain, but to be able to transfer the human mind and personality onto computer, and from there into a robot body.
As preparation for his eternal life and transferral into other bodies, Itskov is now focused on developing a higher consciousness and spends several hours a day devoted to doing yoga or breathing exercises.
He says: In an ancient text, I read that whatever we have in our mind, in our consciousness, whatever we intend to achieve, we will achieve. It depends when, and it depends on the internal certainty."
Robert Mercer
This super-secretive computer scientist Robert Mercer was an early developer of artificial intelligence who is so rich he spent around $2.6million on the construction of a model railroad at his mansion in Long Island before suing the builder saying he had been overcharged by around $1.9 million.
The American is also a billionaire hedge fund manager who became the biggest single donor to the Republican Party during Donald Trumps presidential election campaign, handing over a reported $23.5 million.
Mercer, who is also a major donor to the hard-rightwing Breitbart News Network, funnelled the money to fuel the presidents political ambitions using a so-called super PAC (political action committee) which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money advocating for or opposing political candidates but cannot directly donate money to their favoured candidate.
The hedge fund manager was initially the main donor to the super PAC 'Keep the Promise 1' which was supporting Trumps rival Ted Cruz but when Cruz dropped out of the race the super PAC was rebranded 'Make America Number 1' and focused on highlighting the corruption of the Clinton machine as Mercer threw his support behind Trump. The PAC also goes by the name 'Defeat Crooked Hilary' - one of the Trump campaigns mantras.
Mercer, 71, from New Mexico, is a long-time friend of Nigel Farage and became a backer of Brexit during the EU referendum. He directed the data analytics firm his family funds to provide expert advice to the Leave campaign on how to target swing voters via Facebook.
Mercer and his wife Diana live in New York and have three daughters. As well as train sets, Mercer enjoys competitive poker, spending time on his 200-feet yacht named Sea Owl, and guns. He is a part owner of Centre Firearms, a company that claims to have the countrys largest private cache of machine guns, as well as a weapon that Arnold Schwarzenegger wielded in The Terminator.
He says: We've no idea what he says as he's so secretive.
Clive Palmer
Australian mining industry tycoon Clive Palmer has a taste for bizarre investments and his five private jets and collection of dinosaur fossils are only the start of it. Among his biggest extravagances have been the, not yet completed, rebuilding of the Titanic, equipped to take 2,435 passengers and planned to actually take to the oceans in 2018, and the Palmer Coolum Resort Dinosaur Park, the biggest robotic dinosaur theme park in the world. When asked if his Titanic II could sink, he said: Anything will sink if you put a hole in it.
He says: "I dont want to die wondering. Ive always wondered can we build another Titanic?"
Donald Trump
An elderly house-builder worth an estimated $3.5 billion. Currently President of the United States. Interests include: p***y-grabbing, spray-tans, wall-building, Russia, nepotism, the possible destruction of America as a global power, the definite destruction of truth, and casual racism.
He says: "Bigly Covfefe."
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