Category Archives: Futurism

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb has long suggested that there's a chance 'Oumuamua, a mysterious object that visited our solar system back in 2017, may have been an alien spacecraft that came by for a visit.

In a 2021 paper, Loeb argued that 'Oumuamua could have been a probe sent by an extraterrestrial civilization, an explanation that has proven divisive among his peers.

Most recently, an international team of researchers attempted to dismantle a core aspect of Loeb's argument: that 'Oumuamua was a solar sail, an advanced form of propulsionthat would allowa spacecraft to use the low pressure of solar radiation to move through space.

According to their study, which has been accepted for publication in the journalAstronomy and Astrophysics, the team concluded that "'Oumuamua is unlikely to be a light sail. The dynamics of an intruding light sail, if it exists, has distinct observational signatures, which can be quantitatively identified and analyzed with our methods in future surveys."

Loeb, however, isn't having it.He's sticking to his guns.

"There are a few points that the authors have overlooked," he told The Daily Beastthis week.

The international team, which was led by Shangfei Liu, an astronomer at Sun Yat-sen University in Zhuhai, China, argued that if 'Oumuamua was a light sail, it would've featured a large, flat surface that would have reflected more light than what we saw emanating from the mysterious object in our limited observations.

"If it was a light sail, the brightness variation should be much larger," Shangfei told Beast.

Loeb, however, argues that the sail itself "need not be flat." According to his own research, it could've been a light sail of a different shape, reflecting light in unexpected ways.

The astronomer went as far as to suggest to Beast that 'Oumuamua "may not be a sail at all, but just a surface layer torn apart from a bigger object" in other words, a piece of alien spacecraft detritus that just happened to hurtle through our star system.

Of course, extraordinary claims call for extraordinary measures. Maybe the object was nothing more than a comet venting gas as it screamed through space.

Unfortunately, it's exceedingly rare to encounter an interstellar object like 'Oumuamua.

But given the opportunity, and "with help of a huge amount of highly accurate observation data in the future," as Shangfei and his colleagues argue in their paper, perhaps we could finally put the mystery to rest.

More on 'Oumuamua:Avi Loeb and the Great Unknown

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Harvard Professor Defends Claim That Alien Spacecraft Cruised Through Solar System - Futurism

They must've seen it coming.

A space exploration enthusiast account on Twitter asked the internet to name an upcoming mission to the planet Uranus, in what almost feels like a setup for a punch line, considering the public's endless interest in potty humor and butt-related puns.

And yes, it went mildly viral, in a hail of scatological references.

"This seems like the perfect time for Astroglide to sponsor space exploration," one user suggested, referring to a popular brand of personal lubricant.

"Operation Butt Plug," another user proffered.

"You're really asking the internet to name a probe going to Uranus?" one outraged commenter asked.

Jokes aside, there are serious implications of this kind of humor.

"I truly do worry that it will make it difficult to actually get a mission to study this planet because I think that NASA would be sensitive to these headlines," prominent Space Science Institute and Planetary Society astronomer Heidi Hammel told Futurism last year, "and sensitive to all the ridicule that they would get if they wanted to get a mission to this planet."

"We do want to send atmospheric probes, and we do call them probes, and it's impossible to separate that from the whole aliens probing humans thing," she added.

But fortunately, many replies to the viral tweet included far more sensible names that we could actually see NASA using for an upcoming mission.

Several users suggested naming the mission after British astronomer William Herschel, who discovered the celestial body and its moons Titania and Oberon back in the 1700s.

And since Uranus' moons are named after Shakespearean characters, many other users suggested naming the mission "Tempest" after one of the poet's plays.

Some also suggested naming it after Odin, the Norse God who fought ice giants, or Caelus, the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Uranus.

Whether we'll actually ever see a mission to Uranus any time soon remains tough to say. While a NASA-affiliated panel of experts recommended to visit the planet, pointing it out to be a scientific target of "the highest priority" in a massive decadal report published earlier this year, the space agency has yet to announce any upcoming plans to go visit Uranus.

And there are plenty of reasons for a visit, though. Most intriguingly, Uranus' moons are suspected to hold vast oceans of liquid water.

A mission could also offer us tantalizing clues about its history, including why it's tipped on its side, or why it has two sets of rings.

In short, joking about sending a probe to Uranus is all fun and games but public support for a publicly funded mission to a faraway planet is key to generate enough of a groundswell in interest, especially among lawmakers.

Besides, the butt jokes may actually be a positive thing.

"I think it's good to get engagement in my work in any way," University of California astronomy PhD candidate Ned Molter told Futurism last year.

"Obviously, do the jokes get really tired and repetitive? Absolutely," Molter added. "I wouldn't say I get frustrated at all. It starts a conversation."

READ MORE: The Internet Was Asked to Name A Probe For Uranus. Here's How That Went Down [Science Alert]

More on Uranus: Here's What Uranus Scientists Think About Your Disgusting Jokes

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Asking the Public to Name Probe to Uranus May Have Been a Mistake - Futurism

After years of huge subsidies, Elon Musk is big mad that the US government isn't giving one of his companies another substantial grant.

After the Federal Communications Commission blocked an $885.5 million broadband funding grant to SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, the Musk company is appealing the decision and calling it "grossly unfair."

AsArs Technicanotes, SpaceX's appeal isunlikely to succeed but it could be a precursor to a lawsuit against the government for, in essence, refusing to give Musk hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

That would be striking, because in the past Musk has expressed a strong opposition to government subsidies.

"Im literally saying get rid of all subsidies,"he said last year, "but also for oil and gas."

In spite of that libertarian posturing, the reality is that Musk's companies have received billions of dollars in US government funding.

For the better part of a decade, news of large-figure subsidies have cropped up around the SpaceX and Telsa CEO's companies. In 2015, theLos Angeles Times reported that Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity had been granted a cumulative $4.9 billion from various federal agencies.

An analysis fromGrid News published in April of this year found that Tesla has sold off $6 billion in regulatory tax credits a maneuver which, per the Trefis financial data firm, could have resulted in the company appearing more profitable than it actually is.

In public, though, Musk has taken a decidedly anti-subsidy stance. Curious!

In December 2021, he trashed President Joe Biden's plan to boost the electric vehicle industry with grants.

Back in 2015, one financial expert warned that eventually, the government coffers would not be so open to Musk.

"He definitely goes where there is government money," Dan Dolev, a Jeffries Equity Research analyst, told the LA Times. "Thats a great strategy, but the government will cut you off one day."

And with the latest news from the FCC, it seems that just might be starting to happen.

READ MORE: Starlink appeals FCC rejection of $886M grant, calls reversal grossly unfair [Ars Technica]

More Musk v. USA:Elon Musk Had to Prove He's "Not a Drug Addict" After Smoking Weed With Joe Rogan

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Elon Musk Furious That the Government Isn't Giving Him More Free Money - Futurism

You're not being shadowbanned, dude people just don't like your tweets that much.Ban Me Daddy

The world's richest man is now claiming that his speech is being suppressed on Twitter but we can see the tweet he posted about it just fine.

"My tweets are being suppressed!" Musk ragedunder the display name "Naughtius Maximus," in an apparent reference to the character Nortius Maximus from "Monty Python's Life of Brian" who is best-known for a song from the film called "You Mean You Were Raped?"

That questionable context in hand, Musk followed up with another tweet tagging Twitter, the company's verification page, and Parag Agrawal, the company's current CEO.

Less than an hour later, Musk again referenced "Monty Python And the Holy Grail" by tweeting, without threading, context, or commentary, a meme gif of a character from the film yelling "Help, I'm being suppressed!"

Again, we can see all theses tweets just fine.

Curiously, Musk's unsubstantiated claims of tweet suppression came just after Twitter shareholders voted in favor of him taking over the company in spite of his repeated requests and pending court maneuvers geared towards withdrawing from the $44 billion dollar deal.

This is not, of course, the first time the world's richest man has claimed that he's been "shadowbanned," or had his posts secretly suppressed, by the social network that he initially tried to buy over supposed free speech concerns.

He joked earlier this year that a "shadow ban council" was reviewing his grainy-image meme tweets, and right-wing commentators like Sean Hannity have pushed conspiracy theories claiming that Musk's takeover bid "exposed" an internal shadowbanning campaign.

Like most people who claim they've been shadowbanned, it's unlikely that there's an any conspiracy to suppress his speech on Twitter or anywhere else and, as in most other cases when folks cry shadowbanning, any lowered engagement is likely the result of people simply being annoyed by or disinterested in their posts.

More Muskery:Elon Musk Furious That the Government Isn't Giving Him More Free Money

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Elon Musk Says His Tweets Are Being Suppressed, in a Tweet We Can See Perfectly Fine - Futurism

This is not good.New Atlantis

Owners of coveted coastal properties, beware.

According to a new analysis published this week by the research nonprofit Climate Central, roughly 4.4 million acres of land and 650,000 individual properties will be below sea level by the year 2050, based on current emission levels.

Needless to say, that's a staggering amount of lost land and money a shocking illustration of the devastating effects of climate change.

"As the sea is rising, tide lines are moving up elevation, upslope and inland," Don Bain, the senior adviser at Climate Central who led the study, told The Washington Post. "People really haven't internalized that yet that 'Hey, I'm going to have something taken away from me by the sea.'"

As far as the United States is concerned, Louisiana is the most vulnerable state. According to the Climate Central's models, over 25,000 properties could be completely submerged by 2050 in the state alone.

In fact, Isle de Jean Charles, which is located off the coast of South Louisiana and home to the Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, is already 98 percent underwater.

But the research doesn't just address how much land will physically be gone it also addresses the potential ramifications of that loss from a very grounded lens: property value.

Affected land assets would total at least $108 billion in collective value by the century's end, which could have plenty of other knock-on effects.

"Diminished property values and a smaller tax base," reads the analysis, "can lead to lower tax revenues and reduced public services a potential downward spiral of disinvestment and population decline, reduced tax base and public services, and so on."

With lower tax revenue, local governments will also have less money to invest in any meaningful climate mitigation.

But the researchers aren't totally without hope. While humans will almost certainly need to adapt to rising sea levels, some mitigation is still possible.

"If we get our act together, we can get to a lower curve, and that buys us time," Bain told WaPo. "We don't want [seas] rising so fast that it outpaces our capacity to adapt."

READ MORE: Rising seas could swallow millions of U.S. acres within decades [The Washington Post]

More on rising seas: Now "Inevitable" That Greenland's Ice Cap Will Melt and Cause Major Sea-level Rise, Scientists Warn

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Hundreds of Thousands of American Homes Will Be Swallowed by the Sea, Scientists Say - Futurism

Jaron Lanier, an apostate futurist, once remarked to me on Keen On that he missed the future. Lanier meant that he was nostalgic for the promise of tomorrow as being better than yesterday. This was a familiar future for cheerful 20th-century Americans, especially technologists like Jaron Lanier. A future in which progress was not only taken for granted, but imagined exponentially. An American, hockey-stick shaped future. With everything pointing up.

This fantasy had a good run. But, like the futurism business itself, its now history. The Harvard-educated, Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong explained on Keen On this week that this economic juggernaut originated in 1870 with the globalizing German industrial revolution and came to a shuddering halt with the Great Global Recession of 2008.

This is the 140 years of progress that DeLong historicizes in Slouching Toward Utopia, his lucid new economic story of the very long and prosperous 20th century. An American, hockey-stick-shaped century. Designed by free market economists like DeLong and his Harvard and Berkeley colleagues. With all their economic data pointing up.

We arent slouching toward utopia anymore. The 21st century might have begun late, but it began in 2008 with a bang and those bangs have only become louder and more destructive since. Today, in September 2022, the futureof ourselves, of our economy and of our planetappears apocalyptic rather than utopian. Even professional futurists, not normally distinguished by their prescience, are beginning to recognize that the future, as a metaphor for hockey-stick-shaped progress, is finished.

I had one of these self-styled futurists on Keen On this week who warned about the exponential informational overload of the 21st century. We now need to thrive on overload, he advises us in his new book. Excuse me? Thriving on overload. As if we are washing machines. Or one of those bioengineered replicants out of Blade Runner.

I asked the futurist to convince me that he himself wasnt a replicant. He didnt. I suspect he couldnt.

I rewatched Blade Runner recently and the once dystopian look and feel of Ridley Scotts 1982 movie now has the look and feel of classic social realism. No wonder that another recent Keen On guest, the video essayist Evan Puschak, remains obsessed with Blade Runner. Its become a kind of Bicycle Thief for the 2020s. From Philip K. Dick back to Vittorio De Sica in forty years. History as anything but progress.

Nobody quite knows what the 21st century is going to look like, but as Douglas Rushkoff, another apostate futurist, told me on Keen On earlier this week, technology billionaires arent sticking around to see what is going to happen to a world that theyve helped destroy. In his new book, Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff presents this tech-bro class of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, with their pre-pubescent fantasies of colonizing space, as the final gasp, the last breath of Brad DeLongs long 20th century. Let Musk and Bezos thrive on overload on Mars, I say. Although most Martians, one suspects, wouldnt agree.

For the rest of us, stuck on what Bill McGuire, another Keen On guest this week, calls Hothouse Earth, the future is more prosaic. Weve got 90 months, McGuire warns, to decisively act to save the planet from slouching to extinction. Capitalism is the problem, the British environmentalist argues.

The economic models and data idealized by the economist Brad DeLong and his Harvard and Berkeley colleagues has led us, Bill McGuire believes, to the destruction of the planet. Its what comes from putting ones money on an American hockey-stick future.

Even Blade Runner had a kind of miserably happy ending. But there isnt going to be an even ambiguously uplifting conclusion to the 21st century. At best, we are going back to the future.

Brad DeLong begins Slouching Towards Utopia with the miserable British cleric and amateur demographer, Thomas Robert Malthus, who incorrectly predicted a catastrophic conclusion to exponential population growth. For DeLong, the unsocial-scientific Malthus is the 19th-century bookend to a 20th century defined by a supposedly scientific faith in economics and economists.

Economics as faith? Economists as Gods? So what comes after our century of faith in economics, I asked Brad DeLong. If the English cleric Malthus stands before the 20th century, then who captures life after it?

Its not a return to the dystopian demographics of Malthusianism. Nor is it some sort of magical new economic theory. No, economics is now the past, not the future. I suspect that the thinker whose ideas are best suited to defining the 21st century is the German sociologist Max Weber who coined the post-religious concept of disenchantment.

We are, I suspect, slouching back to Webers world of a world without God. Its a world in which everything appears broken. Economics, politics, our psyches, the environment. Even sex. Earlier this week, the British feminist writer Louise Perry appeared on Keen On to talk about what she calls female sexual disenchantment. Weberian disenchantment is exponential. The future is an upside down hockey-stick. With everything, in good Freudian fashion, pointing downwards.

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Bad Times Ahead: Even the Futurists Have Given Up on the Future - Literary Hub

A scientist employed by the government of Switzerland has made a bold prediction about the discovery of alien life and his reasoning seems pretty compelling.

As Space.com reports, Dr. Sascha Quanz of Switzerland's state-run Swiss Federal Institute of Technology said he thinks humans are likely to discover life beyond our planet within the next 25 years.

"In 1995, my colleague [and Noble Prize laureate] Didier Queloz discovered the first planet outside our solar system," Quanz said during the opening of the institute's new Center for the Origin and Prevalence of Life earlier in September. "Today, more than 5,000 exoplanets are known and we are discovering them on a daily basis."

Of those thousands of exoplanets, dozens are believed to be at least potentially habitable, with the conditions on their surface ripe for liquid water. And as he said, that number is growing all the time.

Now, these fascinating worlds are inviting closer scrutiny with advanced technology.

"We need to investigate the atmospheres of these planets," the Swiss professor said. "We need an observational approach that would allow us to take pictures of these planets."

Though the James Webb Space Telescope has already captured arresting images of one giant exoplanet, its primary focus is on imagery of stars and is not, as Quanz said, "powerful enough" to capture images of smaller exoplanets.

That's where two of the astrophysicist's projects one giant ground-based instrument being developed as an addition to the Extremely Large Telescope that's currently under construction in Chile, and a European Space Agency mission to study the atmospheres of exoplanets for signs of extraterrestrial life come in.

That latter mission, known as Large Interferometer for Exoplanets or LIFE, conceived in 2017, is still in an early study phase, and has not yet received either approval or funding from the ESA, Space.com notes.

Nevertheless, Quanz characterized the LIFE program as a "candidate for a future large mission within the ESA science program" itself a huge step for the search for intelligent life (SETI) community, which has gained unprecedented traction in recent years as the scientific community begins to take the concept of us not being alone in the universe more seriously than ever before.

Quanz has given his search for life outside of our solar system a 25-year deadline, which he argues is not "unrealistic."

"There's no guarantee for success," the researcher said. "But we're going to learn other things on the way."

READ MORE:'We can find life outside the solar system in 25 years,' researcher says [Space.com]

More exoplanets: Scientists Discover Nearby "Super-Earth" That May Support Life

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Swiss Government Scientist Says We May Be on the Brink of Discovering Alien Life - Futurism

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Using gene modification techniques, a team of researchers have come up with a new treatment for balding, Wired reports a condition experienced to varying degrees by two-thirds of American men by age 35.

The team, associated with the University of California, Irvine and a biotech company called Amplifica,believes they've identified the signaling pathway that drive hair growth to find new ways to stop stem cells from giving up on producing hair follicles.

Experiments with mice, as detailed in a new paper published in the journal Developmental Cell last month, have been promising. The mice were genetically modified to have the hair growth signaling pathway turned on permanently.

The result: the mice rapidly grew hair,in a promising first step towards a potentially groundbreaking treatment for an incredibly common condition, especially considering current treatment options like hair transplants and hair growth drugsare invasive and expensive.

Using RNA sequencing, theteam found that a molecule called SCUBE3, which appears to hack follicles into producing hair again, was being expressed by the mice that had their genes modified.

In an especially promising twist the technique even worked in mice that had human hair follicles grafted to their skins.

There's much work to do before the treatment could be used on people. But UCLA professor and Amplifica chief scientific officer Maksim Plikus has no problems envisioning a future in which SCUBE3 is a simple, Botox injection-like treatment for balding patients.

"You have a patient sitting in a dentist-like chair, they close their eyes, and then you gotch, tch, tch, tch," Plikus told Wired.

The molecule would simply be injected into the scalp less than a millimeter into the skin, a procedure that would take less than 20 minutes, according to Plikus.

The system does have one major flaw: what if patients don't have hair follicles to begin with? In that case, they'll be stuck with the option of having new follicles transplanted.

Despite that limitation, scientists are investigating new ways of addressing an issue faced by the majority of the male population and a large chunk of the female population as well with options that are far less invasive and potentially much cheaper.

READ MORE: This Follicle-Hacking Drug Could One Day Treat Baldness [Wired]

More on baldness: Doctors Say a Random Cheap Pill May Actually Reverse Balding

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Scientists Are Working on a Gene-Hacking Drug That Could Treat Baldness - Futurism

Let me be blunt: The Backbone One gaming controller is the iPhone accessory I've wanted since games started appearing on Apple's smartphone platform in 2008. It fulfills the promise of turning the iPhone into a credible Nintendo Switch competitor, and distinguishes itself in a field crowded with alternatives from companies like Razer, GameSir, and even Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Read on for our full Backbone One Controller review.

Youve already been able to sync Bluetooth controllers including those designed for the Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch to an iPhone to play games for a few years. However, using a Bluetooth controller with an iPhone requires you to keep your smartphone in a stand, or attach the two devices using a clip, which looks and feels awkward. Controller shells, like Razers Kishi, GameSirs X2, and the Backbone One are designed to fit around the sides of the iPhone to turn it into a more svelte handheld gaming device. Theres a huge market for iPhone gaming controllers, but the Backbone One is the best one Ive ever used.

Specs: Dimensions: 3.7 inches L x 6.94 inches W x 1.28 inches H Weight: 4.8 ounces Input: Lightning Compatibility: Any iPhone released after the 6S in 2015

Most people who play iPhone games use its touch screen, which makes sense for titles like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, which were designed specifically for that device. If youre playing in-depth Japanese role-playing games like Fantasian, or racing games like Horizon Chase 2, the iPhones touch screen isnt ideal. Your fingers end up getting in the way of the action, and its easy to accidentally hit multiple buttons at the same time, or miss them entirely.

The Backbone One solves this problem by allowing you to play games using a pair of analog sticks, four face buttons, and four trigger buttons just like you would on a game console controller. The Backbone One has the same exact button layout as controllers from Nintendo and Microsoft, so it feels familiar to use immediately. This isnt the first controller shell for the iPhone, but it feels a lot more secure than any other one Ive tested as part of this Backbone One Controller review.

Its handles are sloped downward, which makes the controller a little taller, but far more comfortable to grip, and the textured, plastic Backbone keeps the controller from slipping if your hands get sweaty. These design details may seem small, but they make the difference between ending your gaming session because of a hand cramp, or because you finished a difficult challenge.

The Backbone Ones solid construction impressed me from the moment I took it out of the box. It didnt bend much when I tried to twist it, the buttons and triggers felt sufficiently clicky, and the analog sticks were positioned in the perfect place. My fingers immediately fell into their natural place: thumbs on the left analog stick and face buttons, pointer fingers on the top triggers, middle fingers on the back of the controller for support, and ring and pinky fingers curled around the controllers handles. This controller felt so natural that I couldve mistaken it for one made by Nintendo if I picked it up with my eyes closed.

This is a sharp contrast to Razers Kishi controller, which has a more squared-off design that requires me to curl my middle, ring, and pinky fingers behind the controller when playing. Both controllers require you to strap your iPhone inside their shell, but the One is made out of two pieces of thick plastic, which you can easily pull apart (as shown in the GIF above). The Kishi, by contrast, requires you to unlock its two pieces by pulling on a pair of finicky tabs on the back. Dont get me wrong, the Razer Kishi is a fine iPhone gaming controller, its just undeniable that the Backbone One has the better design.

I dont have many quibbles to bring up in this Backbone One Controller review, but I do wish it had a dedicated home button that exited out of the game I was playing once I was done. The controller does have a button that opens Backbones app to reveal your game library, but thats as close as youll get. Beyond that small nitpick, using the Backbone One was smooth sailing.

Part of the Backbone Ones appeal is that theres no set-up process. I opened the controller shell, plugged its Lightning jack into my iPhones charging port, and was ready to start playing. Games with controller support instantly recognized that the Backbone One was connected to my iPhone, and I was able to play games without touching its screen. Backbone does have an app, which allows you to see all the available games on the App Store with controller support and hop into your most recently played games, but its entirely optional. I found myself launching games the old-fashioned way.

The Backbone One is compatible with any iPhone going back to the 6S, which was released in 2015 with the exception of the original iPhone SE, which retained the iPhone 5s design. This controller will work identically, whether you have the newest iPhone, or one thats half a decade old. Its worth noting that this controller draws power from your iPhone, and you may notice a more significant battery drain on older, smaller iPhones. I had no problems using the Backbone One with an iPhone 13 Pro Max, but your mileage may vary. Playing games on your iPhone will tax its battery more than almost any other task, but you can charge the smartphone while you play by plugging a cable into the Lightning port on the bottom of the Backbone Ones right handle.

I tested the Backbone One controller by playing hours of Fantasian, Chrono Trigger, Horizon Chase 2, Tunic (via Xbox Cloud Streaming), Ys Origins (via NVIDIA GeForce Now streaming), and the controller never skipped a beat. The controller recognized every input, even when I was pressing multiple buttons at the same time to pull off a more complicated move. If I made a mistake during a game, but recognized it early enough, it was possible to correct myself instead of fumbling with the touch screen, losing a life, and having to start over. When I messed up during a game, it was entirely my fault, and nothing to do with Backbone's controller.

The controller's familiar button layout allowed me to concentrate on gameplay rather than figuring out which buttons to press. Both of the Backbone One's analog sticks moved swiftly and never drifted (aka got triggered accidentally and automatically), which is a problem that's been plaguing the Nintendo Switch's Joy-Con controllers since the console's launch in 2017. The instant responsiveness of the Backbone One's analog sticks made it easy to navigate the expansive worlds of Fantasian and Tunic without accidentally running into a wall or worse, enemies. The Backbone One's buttons produce a satisfying clicking sound, and would depress without a tremendous amount of force, so I could hit one with the tip of my thumb rather than mashing it down, which would introduce the risk of hitting two buttons at the same time.

The only time the Backbone One struggled was when I played games streamed from cloud services, which has nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with latency introduced by playing games over the internet. When Xbox's connection to the internet was strong, playing a game on my iPhone was virtually identical to the experience of enjoying it on Microsoft's latest console. Many companies including Microsoft list their cloud gaming services as "in beta," and I definitely felt that. Cloud gaming is especially hairy on iOS because Apple doesn't allow companies to create a native application for these services on the iPhone, so you're basically playing a high-end game through the Safari web browser.

Still, being able to play an Xbox game at home, leaving, then picking up where I left off on my iPhone without skipping a beat was pretty incredible. If you get a Backbone One today, you'll reap all the benefits of improvements to cloud gaming services that materialize over the next few years. Backbone's hardware is ready, now it's time for gaming companies to catch up.

If the iPhone is your primary gaming device, and the titles you play support the use of an external controller, the Backbone One is an essential accessory. We can also highly recommend it to anyone who has a current-generation Xbox or PlayStation and wants to give cloud gaming a chance. Game streaming technology is in its infancy, but its improving quickly. Apple has spent tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars developing and optimizing the chip inside the iPhone to make sure its capable of running high end games.

The Backbone One allows you to take advantage of the iPhones processing power to enjoy home console-quality games on the go, without a diminished experience. After using this controller regularly for a few weeks, I couldnt imagine playing an iPhone game without it.

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Backbone's One Controller Unlocks the iPhone's True Gaming Potential - Futurism

"Nothing in this video is pre scripted."Welcome to Ameca

UK-based robotics company Engineered Arts just gave its ultra realistic looking humanoid robot Ameca a voice and she has a lot to say.

In a new video, the company showed off Ameca having a conversation with a number of the company's engineers, courtesy of a speech synthesizer and OpenAI's GPT 3, cutting-edge language model thatuses deep learning to generate impressively human-like text.

Ameca has already proven to be an impressive demonstration of state-of-the-art humanoid robots, with her uncanny ability to contort her face into extremely believable, human-like expressions, ranging from disbelief to disgust.

Now, thanks to the power of GPT 3, Ameca is able to converse as well, in an impressive extension of what modern robots are capable of.

When Engineered Arts director of operations Morgan Roe asked Ameca about the applications for humanoid robots, she had a surprisingly coherent answer.

"There are many possible applications for humanoid robots," she said. "Some examples include helping people with disabilities providing assistance in hazardous environments conducting research and acting as a companion."

"Nothing in this video is pre scripted," the video's caption reads. "The model is given a basic prompt describing Ameca, giving the robot a description of self its pure AI."

"The pauses are the time lag for processing the speech input, generating the answer and processing the text back into speech," the company wrote.

As far as evil robots taking over the world are concerned, Ameca claims she's not a threat.And the conversational system clearly still has some room to improve.

When asked to come up with a "poem about humanoid robots," she responded with something that doesn't quite sound like a poem:"We are the humanoid robots formed from plastic and metal our job is to help and serve."

"But some say we're a threat," Ameca concluded. "Some think that we'll take over and that humanity will end, but we just want to help out."

"We're not looking to be friends,"she added, which sounds vaguely ominous.

But the engineer seemed nonplussed.

"That's an interesting poem,"he responded.

More on Ameca: The Robot With Amazing Facial Expressions Is Back and It's Giving Us New Nightmares

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They Put GPT-3 Into That Robot With Creepily Realistic Facial Expressions and Yikes - Futurism