The Planet on, and off.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday announced the creation of a new military command that would be dedicated to building and providing autonomous and robotic capabilities across the U.S. military. The command, which Hegseth said would be called “Autonomous Warfare Command,” highlights the rapidly changing nature of warfare and Read more…
Every year, the night sky is becoming 10% brighter. Eighty percent of people live under light-polluted skies. And while the UN declared a healthy environment — clean air, clean water — to be a human right, I believe we also all have a right to darkness as well. This doesn’t Read more…
SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time, successfully deploying 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites after overcoming an early Raptor 3 engine shutdown during ascent. SpaceX plans to eventually deploy 100,000 upgraded Starlink V3s to expand the company’s wireless satellite internet services. SpaceX has decided to return Starship from orbit Read more…
NorthPoint Development wants to build a data center on 1,300 acres in the Pocono foothills, near Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. As well as seeking to charm the local government with various funding packages, it has proposed paying checks of $10,000 per household. Despite the Pennsylvania town’s median income of $60,000, the Read more…
More than 200,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste were stored on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean between 1949 and 1982. Whatever happened to those barrels? Scientists have descended to the wreckage in a crewed submersible to investigate — and found many of the barrels corroded and degraded, their contents Read more…
U.S. military intelligence received an inaccurate report this spring that a Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. “The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode.” Armed members of the US Read more…
A former Google DeepMind employee “became the latest AI researcher to warn that the technology could ‘kill all humans’, saying time could be running out to avoid the outcome: Public alarm about the potential danger posed by AI is growing, after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said last week he had Read more…