Paul Marks
@paulmarks12.bsky.social
Journalist writing on technology, aviation & spaceflight ✍🏻 New Scientist, Economist, BBC Future, Aerospace America, ACM News, Guardian🎙️📺 BBCR4, NPR, SkyNews, Richard&Judy, OneShow. Woodland conservation volunteer. authory.com/PaulMarks
On August 5, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is predicted to crash onto the Moon. What has crashed on the Moon before? The very first human object to touch the Moon - Luna 2 in 1959. A probe, 3 bombs, and a rocket body! 🧪 🔭
1959: Luna 2 (USSR)
YouTube video by International Astronautical Federation
m.youtube.com
NEW: Trump's gross Aliens.gov site claims to map where immigrants have been taken into custody, but it includes more 83 spots where Americans alone were arrested. Over 700 locations include citizen arrests. The counter is fake. The music was ripped. And Puerto Rico is listed as a foreign country.
The White House’s Aliens.gov Site Brags That ICE Arrested More Than 700 US Citizens
The website, which compares human beings to extraterrestrials, touts arrest numbers from the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. But some of its details are really out there.
wired.com
How we could miss spotting an incoming killer asteroid: space images are being increasingly fogged by megaconstellation satellite trails.
Michael Busch@michael-w-busch.bsky.social · 2mo agoIt remains way past time to stop letting corporations unilaterally make a mess of the sky. And, no, we cannot avoid the problem by putting telescopes in space. Borlaff et al. 2026, "SPHEREx confirms predictions for artificial satellite trail pollution in Low Earth Orbit" - arxiv.org/abs/2605.27501
The YouGov poll of Labour members is quite interesting. Members mood is quite different than the febrile reporting from inside Westminster. Surprisingly good for Starmer, Reeves and the project. No open revolt, no burn it all down yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
Just goes to show, gameplay is independent of snazzy graphics and audio ... Eye Spy, anyone?
Emilia@lazerwalker.com · 4mo agoIt’s absolutely incredible that one of the largest Japanese-run Go servers, which has been running since 1992, is still accessed entirely via Telnet. And while most players use GUI clients that use Telnet under the hood, you can still connect manually and get ASCII graphics streamed to you
The White House is completely silent as BBC confirms a consistent pattern of massive financial spikes occurring just minutes before Donald Trump makes market moving announcements. The administration is facing severe allegations of illegally profiteering off inside knowledge.
Remember those micrometeorite impact flashes the #NASA #ArtemisII crew saw on the lunar near-side last week? They won't be good for lunar habs ... but it's AI to the rescue. aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/this-ai-pred...
This very straight news piece buried deep within the FT never uses words like corruption or insider dealing but every detail is quietly devastating. Why is the FT virtually alone in the UK media in covering this important story?
FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?
Anthropic: We lost a contract because we refuse to build Skynet. OpenAI: We'll do it
Mike Masnick@masnick.com · 5mo agoMy goodness.
Dutch research teams are developing artificial human hearts based on soft robotics technology - which might be biocompatible, have a natural pulsatile heartbeat and even overcome the infection, clotting and rejection risks of today’s metal artificial hearts. My story: cacm.acm.org/news/can-sof...
NASA probe Lunar Trailblazer died after pointing its solar panels 180-degrees away from the sun, an NPR FOIA request reveals. Why sign errors bedevil spaceflight: cacm.acm.org/news/in-spac...
NPR@npr.org · 5mo agoWhy did a $72 million mission to study water on the moon fail so soon after launch? A new NASA report has the answer. n.pr/4rOtLEH
My latest at Aerospace America: how moon rock can be converted into breathable air, and more. aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/departments/...
Obviously. And authors and writers. Every book says "not for storage in a data retrieval system" or somesuch - and deepnet weights are merely thinly-disguised data.
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 9mo agoChatGPT violated copyright law by harvesting musicians’ lyrics, German court rules
Turing Award laureate Rich Sutton now critiques pure LLMs—echoing @garymarcus.bsky.social . Time to move beyond science fiction and refocus on scientific rigour. #AI #LLM #Neurosymbolic #RichSutton #GaryMarcus garymarcus.substack.com/p/game-over-...
Game over for pure LLMs. Even Turing Award Winner Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus.
One by one, all the big names have turned around. What should we do next?
garymarcus.substack.com
The BBC has posted about 50 episodes of its much-missed arts series, Arena, on iPlayer - including this paean to @forduk's most-stolen-car of the 60s, the Ford Cortina. Includes Alexei Sayle on Mastermind - with some terribly tough Cortina questioning. 🥸 www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
Arena - The Private Life of the Ford Cortina
This programme looks at the history of the Ford Cortina, Britain's most popular, most stolen and most misunderstood car.
bbc.co.uk
someone check on Gregg’s’ cyber security, we got lucky with M&S
Tony Tassell@tonytassell.bsky.social · 10mo agoJapan is just a few days away from running out of Asahi Super Dry as the producer of the nation’s most popular beer wrestles with a devastating cyber attack that has shut down its domestic breweries www.ft.com/content/bb86...
Just to be clear: - Paracetamol does not cause autism. - Sadiq Khan is not introducing Sharia law in the UK - We do not have a massive free speech problem here. - Britain is not on the verge of civil war. These are not controversial subjects or contested, they're just not true.
www.linkedin.com/posts/paulma...
TRANQUILITY NO MORE: THE LUNAR MODULE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING If I have any kind of church in London it is the Science Museum, where two exhibits in particular always stop me in my geeky tracks. The… |...
TRANQUILITY NO MORE: THE LUNAR MODULE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING If I have any kind of church in London it is the Science Museum, where two exhibits in particular always stop me in my geeky tracks. The fi...
linkedin.com
Brain food KLAXON ...
Canongate@canongate.co.uk · 11mo agoPush the boundaries of your thoughts – we're enjoying listening to @jomarchant.bsky.social's Where The Wild Thoughts Are; a science podcast that encourages you to think differently about how you see the world, from cosmology and quantum physics to neuroscience, archaeology, ecology, it's got it all:
Brain food KLAXON ...
Canongate@canongate.co.uk · 11mo agoPush the boundaries of your thoughts – we're enjoying listening to @jomarchant.bsky.social's Where The Wild Thoughts Are; a science podcast that encourages you to think differently about how you see the world, from cosmology and quantum physics to neuroscience, archaeology, ecology, it's got it all:
This is a deeper dive than my brief NewScientist op-ed into the RAeS conference on the dangerous idea of cockpit AI replacing airliner copilots. Kicked into the long grass for now, unions worry the cost-cutting idea will be back.
Centre for Society, Technology and Values @uofwaterloo@cstv-uw.bsky.social · last yr.The #aviation industry would like to test flights with only one pilot, assisted by an #AI copilot, which would decrease costs but might degrade performance in unusual situations or ones calling for social judgment, explains @paulmarks12.bsky.social cacm.acm.org/news/can-ai-...
So long, Elon: the cuts didn’t go to plan, but you completely shredded your reputation | Marina Hyde
So long, Elon: the cuts didn’t go to plan, but you completely shredded your reputation | Marina Hyde
Judging by Musk’s approval ratings, Tesla investors won’t be the only ones happy to see the dethroning of the king of Doge, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde
theguardian.com
Another destructive (i.e. no recovery) rocket test imminent: booster and second stage will be ditched in the Gulf of Mexico and Indian Ocean respectively. Two holds so far.
