Are the TikTok deepfake videos of Tom Cruise doing magic and playing golf a threat to global democracy? Not exactly. “[T]he reality is that they took a lot of time, technical expertise, and the skilled performance of a real actor,” reports VICE News. “Rather than predicting a dark future of disinformation for the masses, they’re simply another example of what can…
Tag: Cruise
Tom Cruise deepfake is sign of things to come
A series of extremely convincing deepfake clips of Tom Cruise have raised both concern and intrigue. Fake news and misleading headlines are already a … Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/344190/tom-cruise-deepfake-is-sign-of-things-to-come…
FBI Confirms Report of ‘Long, Cylindrical’ UFO ‘Moving Really Fast’ Over New Mex
An anonymous reader shares a PopularMechanics report: An American Airlines flight crew encountered an unidentified flying object over New Mexico on February 21. American Airlines has confirmed the strange incident, during which a “long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile” zipped over the Airbus A320, according to a pilot’s transmission obtained by The War Zone. American Airlines Flight…
SoftBank Expects Mass Production of Driverless Cars in Two Years
SoftBank Group Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said on Friday he expects mass production of self-driving vehicles to start in two years. From a report: While in the first year the production of units won’t be in millions, in the next several years the cost per mile in fully autonomous cars will become very cheap, Son said, speaking at a virtual meeting…
Microsoft Joins $2 Billion Deal With GM To Roll Out Self-Driving Cars
Microsoft is joining GM, Honda and others in a $2 billion investment round in Cruise to help commercialize its self-driving cars. The deal bumps Cruise’s valuation to $30 billion, from $19 billion last year. From a report: The investment is part of a broader commitment by GM and Cruise to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing platform across their companies, especially as they…
America Creates a 770-Mile Corridor for Testing Supersonic Aircraft Up to Mach 3
America’s Federal Aviation Agency signed an agreement with the state of Kansas’s department of transportation to establish a 770-nautical mile Kansas Supersonic Transportation Corridor for testing aircraft up to Mach 3, reports Aviation International News:
The agreement would provide a critical testing site for the emerging group of supersonic aircraft as civil supersonic flight remains banned over land. Flight testing for models…
The World’s Most Loathed Industry Gave Us a Vaccine in Record Time
An anonymous reader shares a feature report: At the end of 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic started, the two best-known faces of the pharmaceutical business were the imprisoned Martin Shkreli and the lawsuit-laden opioid makers at Purdue Pharma. The rest of the industry was perhaps best known for the skyrocketing prices of its medicines. In a Gallup Poll of the public’s…
How the Nature Conservancy, the World’s Biggest Environmental Group, Became a Dealer of Meaningless Carbon Offsets
An anonymous reader shares a report: At first glance, big corporations appear to be protecting great swaths of U.S. forests in the fight against climate change. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has paid almost $1 million to preserve forestland in eastern Pennsylvania. Forty miles away, Walt Disney has spent hundreds of thousands to keep the city of Bethlehem, Pa., from aggressively harvesting…
Cruise Begins Driverless Testing In San Francisco
Cruise Automation, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, has started testing what it describes as fully driverless vehicles on public roads in San Francisco, the first milestone required to secure a permit to launch a shared, commercial service that can charge for rides. TechCrunch reports: The…
US Navy’s huge uncrewed robot ship has journeyed through Panama Canal
An uncrewed vessel that can carry 540 tonnes of cargo and cruise at 65 kilometres per hour has just become the first robotic vessel to pass through the Panama Canal Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2260008-us-navys-huge-uncrewed-robot-ship-has-journeyed-through-panama-canal/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…