Category Archives: Futurism

Elon Musk: "I don't do focus groups." Truck of Lemons

If you thought Tesla's Cybertruck looks weird and ungainly, you're not the only one. Apparently, some Tesla staff thought the same of the electric pickup with its sharp angles, futuristic silhouette, and absurdly large windshield wiper according to a new excerpt from Walter Isaacson's blockbuster just-dropped biography on Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Some engineers at the company hated the Cybertruck so much,in fact, that they started to put together a secret alternative design for the Cybertruck in 2019, according to a section of the book highlighted by Insider.

"A majority of the people in this studio hated it," said Tesla design leader Franz von Holzhausen, as quoted in the book. "They were like, 'You can't be serious.' They didn't want to have anything to do with it. It was just too weird."

But that design apparently never gained traction, because the futuristic armored-looking demo Musk had unveiled back in November 2019 hews quite closely to the factory production model that has been recently seen in company-sanctioned photos and on the street.

"I don't do focus groups," Musk is quoted as saying in the book.

The Cybertruck has been plagued with issues such as misalignment of doors and smudgy exterior.

But as silly as you may think the Cybertruck's design, it's a serious venture for Musk and Tesla because they are going after the lucrative light-duty truck market dominated by the likes of Ford, whose F-series is the most popular and best-selling vehicle in the United States.

If Tesla gets it right, just as states like California mandate the sale of zero-emissions vehicles by 2035, and successfully takes a chunk of the market from Ford, which is pumping up their own electric light-duty truck in the market, then that would position Tesla to be a major automaker for years to come.

It's the kind of audacious move that's characteristic of Musk, who bought the social network Twitter last year and renamed it X.

Musk is going for all the marbles in the auto world and beyond but of course, it remains to be seen whether it will all pan out.

More on the Cybertruck: There's an Issue With Cybertrucks: They're Ridiculously Smudgy

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Tesla Engineers Hated the Cybertruck So Much They Started ... - Futurism

The opening exhibition of the europalia georgia festival, The Avant-Garde in Georgia (19001936), will present, for the very first time in Europe, a largely forgotten chapter in the history of avant-garde art. The Georgian avant-garde will be shown and contextualised through a large body of works (paintings, drawings, films, photographs and decors as well as costumes from films and theatre plays) mainly kept in Georgia.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Russian Empire and the October Revolution, in a turbulent world context, Georgia declared its independence in 1918. This brief, enchanted interlude ended with the Soviet invasion of 1921. Nevertheless, it allowed for an abundant and inspiring avant-garde creation to flourish. Artists developed new artistic practices that redefined a general attitude to life, which took many forms and combined Georgian traditions with Eastern and Western influences. They interacted in paintings, drawings, writing, films, photographs, performances, typographic research, books and plays. Movements as diverse as (neo-)Symbolism, Futurism, Dadaism, Zaum, Everythingism, Expressionism, Cubism and Cubo-Futurism coexisted in an unprecedented creative ferment. The year 1936 and the great purges ordered by Stalins regime marked the end of Georgian avant-garde creation, but the ideas persisted down the generations and resurfaced in the 1970s.

With works by, among others, Elene Akhvlediani, Irakli Gamrekeli, Gigo Gabashvili, Nutsa Ghoghoberidze, Lado Gudiashvili, David Kakabadze, Shalva Kikodze, Kote Mikaberidze, Petre Otskheli, Niko Pirosmani, Alexander von Salzmann, Ilia and Kirill Zdanevich.

Also at Bozar, and alsoin the framework of europalia georgia,contemporary artistMeggy RustamovaAdeishvili will present her new filmDeda Ena,which examines her mothers deportation under Stalins regime, during the 1950s, from Tbilisi to Kazakhstan, an echo of the many displacements currently happening in the region and around the world.

A production by europalia.

Curators: Nana Kipiani, Irine Jorjadze and Tea Tabatadze, in collaboration with europalia

Press contacts Sarah-Claire Vermeulen, sarah-claire [at] serenai.eu Laurence Morel de Westgaver, Laurence [at] nakami.be

About europalia georgia.

Arts festival: October 4, 2023January 14, 2024 This autumn, europalia dedicates an arts festival toGeorgia! The starting point for this edition is the countrys fascinating culture and the art scene of its bustling capital, Tbilisi, alongside that of lesser-known cities and regions. Starting October 4, 2023, visitors can enjoy a rich programme of exhibitions, performances, concerts, film, dance and theatre productions and literature across Belgium. Alongside existing work, the festival programme will feature numerous new, interdisciplinary creations, in collaboration with dozens of artists and partners.

About europalia Every two years, europalia compiles a diverse artistic programme focusing on a country or a theme. For four months, in Belgium and its neighbouring countries, europalia, in collaboration with a wide network of cultural partners, presents a biennial with a myriad of artistic and socio-cultural projects that bring together visual arts, performing arts, film, music, literature and debate to stimulate an exchange of ideas. Newly commissioned projects and artistic residencies hold a central place in the programme, which engenders a unique interaction between heritage and art.

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The Avant-Garde in Georgia (19001936) - Announcements - E-Flux

Anything you'd care to share, guys? Helicopter Parents

In the months since FTX's spectacular implosion last fall, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, Stanford law professors and parents of the now-defunct crypto exchange's disgraced and currently incarcerated ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, have maintained that they had minimal involvement with the crypto company. As the company line generally went: Fried never worked for FTX, and though Bankman did work for the company briefly, his stint was short-lived and mostly dealt with philanthropy.

But thatcharacterization of Bankman and Fried's roles with the firm may be pretty far from the truth. According to new reporting from Bloomberg, former employees and partners of the exchange paint a very different picture of the couple's involvement, while legal filings show their influence and connections were instrumental to the company's meteoric success.

Perhaps most damningly, according to Bloomberg, those court documents also show that Bankman and Fried profited greatly from FTX, gleaning a cool $26 million in cash and real estate investments in 2022 alone. That's a lot of money, especially for two people who claim to have been generally hands-off from the venture.

Per the report, sources who worked at or with the firm viewed Bankman and Fried as regular office fixtures. Bankman-Fried wasn't exactly a people person; his dad, though, often reportedly functioned as Bankman-Fried's go-between for staffers and business partners. Fried reportedly made more appearances at dinners, but often played a similar role as a "mediator" between her son and his employees, according to Bloomberg.

Sources also told Bloomberg that Bankman played an "instrumental" role in the firm's choice to relocate to the Bahamas from Hong Kong, and that Bankman-Fried often consulted his father before making any major decisions.

And then, of course, there's the money.

Per the report, Bankman and Fried visited FTX's Bahamas headquarters quite frequently, staying in a $16 million beachfront condo when they did. And though they've continued to argue that the property was "temporary housing" for Bankman to work from when in town, public records for the house make no mention of FTX. It's in Bankman and Fried's name, and it's listed as their "vacation home." Elsewhere, court documents say that Bankman-Fried used FTX funds to give his parents a $10 million cash gift. This was never given back, with Bankman and Fried arguing that they would need it to pay their son's legal bills.

Still, Bankman and Fried's most quintessential role in FTX's rise may have simply been their reputations. Their legitimacy helped bolster that of their Palo Alto-raised son, whose elite background helped to sell the unkempt wunderkind persona that the founder so famously once projected. Lessons learned.

More on FTX developments: Sam Bankman-fried Complains That the Wi-Fi Is Bad in Jail

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Sam Bankman-Fried's Parents May Have Been More Involved in ... - Futurism

Archaeologists were affronted to discover that billionaire Richard Bransonhad sent ancient hominin bones up on a commercial space flight, with some suggesting that the stunt reeks of colonialism.

AsNature notes, the remains weren't even launched for terribly long as they soared aboard the Unity spacecraft, operated by Branson's Virgin Galactic, just above Earth before returning groundward. But the trip, which featured six living humans and the bones of two human ancestors, has nonetheless drawn intense criticism from the paleontology community.

"To treat ancestral remains in such a callous, unethical way to blast them into space just because you can theres no scientific merit in this," Robyn Pickering, a geologist at South Africa's University of Cape Town, toldNature.

Though various fossils have gone to space since the 1980s, when NASA astronauts took some bone bits from the lizard-like Maiasaura peeblesorumup on the Skylab 2 mission, this Virgin Galactic mission marks the first time that the remains of hominin (that is, human ancestors) have been sent up on a spacecraft, Nature reports.

The bones aboard, asLive Science notes, belonged to the roughly two million year old Australopithecus sedibaand the 250,000-year-old Homo naledi, both of which were found near Johannesburg, South Africa by National Geographic's Lee Berger, who played a huge hand in the discovery of both species.

Berger, who is also South African, selected the fragments himself and had them carried by Timothy Nash, a South African-born entrepreneur and space tourist who, as Virgin Galactic points out, also happens to sit on the board of The National Geographic Society.

As one might imagine, the selection of bones from South Africa by white scientists has ruffled some feathers as well.

"As someone who is African and who is based in an African institution, this is basically a perpetuation of the past, very ugly aspects of palaeoanthropological research," Yonatan Sahle, also of Cape Town University, toldNature.

Though everything about the bones' inclusion in the Virgin Galactic mission was above board, one of Berger's fellow scientists was surprised the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) granted the NatGeo luminary's application to temporarily export the bones to New Mexico, where Virgin Galactic's mission took off from, in the first place.

Rachel King, an archaeologist at the University College London who specializes in cultural heritage policies, said that South Africa has generally been very protective of its artifacts, which makes the inclusion of theA. sediba andH. naledi bones on the Unity mission all the stranger.

"What are regulators for, if theyre going to let someone do this?" King mused. "Its potentially a pretty big thing, and a pretty big shift."

SAHRA and South Africa's University of Witwatersrand, which stores the bones, insisted in press statements that the risks involved in taking ancient remains to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere were outweighed by the benefits.

In a media statement viewed by Nature, SAHRA representative Ben Mwasinga said that the agency was "satisfied that the promotional benefit derived was appropriately weighted against the inherent risk of travel of this nature," and Witwatersrand said that because the bones were selected in part because they had been extensively 3D scanned and photographed a characterization that King scoffed at.

"If I document one of South Africas World Heritage Sites," the British archaeologist said, "could we then bulldoze it and put up a shopping mall?"

More on hominins: Scientists Puzzled by Human-Like Skull That Matches No Known Species

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Paleontologists Furious When Ancient Human Fossils Blasted to ... - Futurism

In a leaked internal memo, a Google exec expressed serious fears about losing the ongoing AI arms race but the competition that the exec fears most, according to an NBC report, might be a little unexpected.

"We've done a lot of looking over our shoulders at OpenAI," reads the memo, which a Google spokesperson confirmed as authentic to NBC but cautioned were only the thoughts of one person at the company. "But the uncomfortable truth is, we arent positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI."

"I'm talking, of course, about open source. Plainly put, they are lapping us," it continued. "While our models still hold a slight edge in terms of quality, the gap is closing astonishingly quickly."

In other words, according to this exec, though Google and its Silicon Valley competitors like Microsoft-slash-OpenAI and Meta still have a narrow upper hand, open-source models are quickly catching up.

And that, per the memo, is reason for concern.

The Google exec makes a pretty good case. Aided in large part by a major leak of Meta's advanced language model, LLaMa, small and scrappy open-source models like AutoGPT have made major strides in recent months.

And to that end, it's one thing to have visible, tangible competition like Meta and Microsoft-slash-OpenAI. Fighting an arms race against what's effectively the open web, where users can learn and borrow from each other and tailor development to their personal needs, is another beast entirely.

"I don't think I need something as powerful as GPT-4 for a lot of things that I want to do," Simon Willison, a programmer and tech analyst and blogger, told NBC.

"The open question I have right now is, how small can the model be while still being useful?" he added. "That's something which the open source community is figuring out really, really quickly."

"Largely, I think people are trying to do good with these things, make people more productive or are making experiences better," added Mark Riedl, a computer scientist and professor at Georgia Tech. "You don't want a monopoly, or even a small set of companies kind of controlling everything. And I think youll see a greater level of creativity by putting these tools into the hands of more people."

But while there might be some merits to a decentralized approach to AI, there are also some dangers. In addition to a number of more philosophical ethical questions, AI poses a lot of very real threats, and in the hands of theoretically unlimited bad actors, systems built by way of open-source channels may well do a lot of harm.

"It really now becomes the question of what are people going to use these things for," Riedl told NBC. "There's really no restrictions on making specialized versions of models that are designed specifically to create toxic material, or misinformation, or to spread hate on the internet."

More on Google: Google Staff Warned Its AI Was a "Pathological Liar" Before They Released It Anyway

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Leaked Google Memo Shows Fear of Losing the AI Race, But Not to ... - Futurism

Our Spider-Senses are tingling.Doctor Octavius

A Japanese robotics company called Jizai has come up with a strange robotic limb contraption called, appropriately, Arms that can give the wearer extra sets of arms like Marvel's iconic Spider-Man villain Doctor Octopus well, sort of.

An artfully shot promotional video shows two models demonstrating the system's capabilities by dancing to some classical music, allowing the appendages to mimic the movements of their human arms.

It's a beautiful exploration of human augmentation that takes a considerable step back from the conventional approach to developing cyborg appendages, most of which have a concrete use case in mind, like allowing those with limited mobility to make use of robotic arms.

Jizai's stated goals are quite a bit more abstract than simply having the arms pick up objects.

"The system was designed to enable social interaction between multiple wearers, such as an exchange of arm(s), and explore possible interactions between digital cyborgs in a cyborg society," reads the company's website.

The team was inspired by a 1963 short story written by Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabatain which a girl decides to lend her suitor one of her arms for the night.

"This novel is obviously a work of fiction, yet, half a century since its writing, emerging human-machine integration technologies have begun to allow us to physically experience Kawabatas world," the team wrote in a recently published paper about the system.

"From our role-playing sessions, we found that our bodies could precisely sense the attachment/detachment of arms, and we especially felt a strong impact when detaching or reducing the number of robotic arms worn," it continues.

In short, while we're still far away from having a mad scientist using robotic appendages to take on Spider-Man, scientists are already exploring what it means to augment the human body. And heck, we're intrigued.

More on cyborg arms: Scientists Working on Third Arm You Control Using Your Brain

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God Help Us! They Built Real Doctor Octopus Arms - Futurism

"It was not clear to me how the United States, at that level of technological development of the 60s of the last century, did what they still cannot do now?"Rogozin a Stink

Dmitry Rogozin, the former head of Russia's space corporation Roscosmos, is no stranger to making head-scratching remarks.

The outspoken politician, who was sacked from his post as the director of the country's space program last year, is now taking to Telegram to cast doubt on the fact that NASA landed a dozen astronauts on the Moon over half a century ago, as spotted by Ars Technica.

According to his post, Rogozin asked Roscosmos during his tenure to provide him with "documentary evidence of the Americans' stay on the Moon."

Despite his best efforts, he says, he found no evidence at the time.

"It was not clear to me how the United States, at that level of technological development of the 60s of the last century, did what they still cannot do now?" he wrote.

Rogozin's comments are characteristically evocative and brazen, and demonstrate denialist conspiracy theories surrounding NASA's Apollo Moon landings that persist to this day.

Ironically, the Soviet Union even had a spacecraft of its own in orbit around the Moon while NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their historic first steps back in 1969, Ars points out, meaning that Russia has plenty of detailed data to corroborate the Moon landings, which are incredibly well documented overall.

That mountain of evidence clearly has not made enough of an impression on this particular member of Putin's inner circle, though.

Rogozin has made plenty of enemies over the years. Last year, he famouslyseemed to threaten to crash the International Space Station into the US.

During his tenure, he also maintained that Russia would soon abandon the station, despite the fact that the country later agreed to cooperate with its international partners until the station's demise in 2030.

He has also butted heads with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on a number of occasions.

"If I die under mysterious circumstances, it's been nice knowin ya," Musk tweeted last year after Rogozin told him he'd be held accountable for providing Ukrainian forces with Starlink internet terminals.

Now that Rogozin has been deployed to the front lines of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he's no longer in charge of the country's space program which, given these latest remarks, is probably for the best.

More on Rogozin: Retired NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly Dishes on Ukraine, Russia, and Moon Mission

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Former Roscosmos Head Refuses to Believe NASA Landed on the ... - Futurism

"It has the capability to go to locations where other robots cant go."EELS Pit

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is testing out a snake-like robot that is meant to one day climb into the icy vents of Saturn's moon Enceladus and take a dip into its subsurface ocean below to look for signs of life.

Before it can travel all the way to Saturn's moon, the team at JPL is hoping to deploy the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor(EELS, get it?) robotin other hard-to-access locations on Earth, the Moon, and beyond.

The team's aim is to create the ultimate jack-of-all-trades with a unique wheels-coming-off approach to robot building.

"It has the capability to go to locations where other robots cant go," said JPLs Matthew Robinson, EELS project manager, in a statement. "Though some robots are better at one particular type of terrain or other, the idea for EELS is the ability to do it all."

In a new video, the robot can be seen slithering across a variety of surfaces, including an iceskating rink, a snowy mountainside, and a beach. They even put it through its paces at the JPL's Mars Yard, a simulated Martianlandscape.

The 13-foot robot moves by rotating its ten identical segments, which are outfitted with threads that allow it to propel itself forward. These individual segments can even act as propellers, allowing EELS to explore its surroundings underwater.

That's important, as JPL is hoping to have the robot eventually explore the habitable subsurface oceans of Saturn's moon Enceladus. To get to this ocean, the robot will have to snake itself through one of the many icy geysers that erupt from the moon's surface before dropping into the depths below.

It will also have to do all of this entirely on its own.

"Imagine a car driving autonomously, but there are no stop signs, no traffic signals, not even any roads," said the projects autonomy lead, Rohan Thakker, in the statement. "The robot has to figure out what the road is and try to follow it."

"Then it needs to go down a 100-foot drop and not fall," he added. The team is hoping to send EELS down a vertical shaft, or a crevasse, in the Canadian Rockies later this year, which will act as an analog for Enceladus' vents.

It's an immense engineering challenge, especially given how little we know about the icy moon's environment.

"When youre going places where you dont know what youll find, you want to send a versatile, risk-aware robot thats prepared for uncertainty," Robinson said, "and can make decisions on its own."

More on JPL's robots: NASA Shows Off Transforming Rover for Exploring Steep Cliffs on Mars

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NASA Tests Snake Robot Designed to Look for Alien Life on Icy ... - Futurism

"He doesn't take the limelight from Elon."CFO in Chief

Tesla CEO Elon Musk might still be the public face of Tesla but according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Musk isn't actually the person who's really running the show.

Per the report, the person who's really in charge is Zach Kirkhorn, who was named chief financial officer of the EV maker roughly four years ago.

When Kirkhorn became CFO, Tesla was valued at about $50 billion. Today, it's worth over $500 billion.

Tesla's successes are privately being credited to Kirkhorn, according to the report, who has learned to connect with Musk without stealing his thunder a winning strategy that could explain the carmaker's rise, despite Musk's chaotic management style.

Though he's kept a very low profile since his appointment Kirkhorn only has 63 followers on Twitter and keeps his account private the elusive CFO has apparently been instrumental in implementing a number of manufacturing efficiencies, which have, as the WSJ put it, "helped the company deliver 15 consecutive profitable quarters and amass a $22 billion war chest."

That's no small accomplishment and it's even more impressive when you consider Kirkhorn has had to deal with Musk all this time which, presumably, has been a particularly difficult job as of late.

Musk is currently in charge of a number of companies, which means he has to split his time among them all. Last year, following his disastrous acquisition of Twitter in particular, Tesla investors accused him of abandoning his duties at Tesla.

Per the report, Kirkhorn has become exceptionally good at serving as a mediator between Musk and other staffers.

"He doesn't take the limelight from Elon," Kurt Kelty, a vice president at battery-materials company Sila and former senior director of battery technology at Tesla, told the WSJ.

Perhaps most importantly, Kirkhornh is reportedly good at balancing Musk's more absurd and grandiose requests and can break down any "seemingly unattainable demand," as the WSJ put it, into smaller and achievable steps.

Despite Kirkhorn's considerable contributions,Musk is still very much the CEO of Tesla, and any of Tesla's successes are still widely attributed to him.

And considering how things are going over at Twitter, we're not exactly shocked to learn that someone else has had their hand on the proverbial wheel or steering yoke, if you will.

For one, we're sure the stockholders are grateful.

More on Tesla: Tesla Hit with Lawsuit over Reports about Employees Watching Car Cameras

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The Guy Really Running Tesla Isn't Elon Musk, Report Claims - Futurism

"Hey, how ya doing guy?"This Guy!

During what would have otherwise been a normal kayaking trip, podcaster and hobby botanist Joey Santore spotted something incredible on the Chicago River an absolutely massive snapping turtle enjoying the day.

Last week, Santore posted a video to Twitter of the "Chicago River Snapper aka Chonkasaurus," providing a running commentary of the encounter as he filmed.

"Look at this guy!" Santore exclaimed. "Look at the size of that fucking thing!"

The podcaster told local news radio station WBBM thathe thinks the specimen weighs at least 60 pounds.

"Hey, how ya doing guy?" Santore continued in his thick Chicago accent. "You look good."

In an interview with local TV station WGN-TV, Santore conceded that the giant turtle was likely not a "guy" at all, but was more likely a pregnant female.

"In a way, it was posed so eloquently with the rusty chains," he told the broadcaster. "It was like an art piece."

The uniqueness and beauty of the situation were not lost on Chris Anchor, a wildlife biologist with Cook County's Forest Preserve District who told the Associated Press that it's rare to see a snapping turtle out in the open like that, especially considering its size.

"My guess is that this animal had crawled out of the river to try and gather as much heat as it could in the sunshine," Anchor said, estimating it to be around 40 or 50 years old.

However, as cool as the sighting was, the wildlife specialist warned not to get too close to a snapping turtle like "Chonkasaurus."

"Turtles this big will consume anything they can get their mouth around," Anchor said. "Enjoy it. Leave it alone."

More on animals:Strange Creature Appears at Historic Rocket Launch

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Internet Stunned by Colossal Chonkasaurus Turtle Spotted in River - Futurism