SpaceX Mars Prototype Rocket Nails Landing For the First Time, But Explodes On Pad

A SpaceX rocket prototype, known as SN10, soared over South Texas during test flight Wednesday before swooping down to a pinpoint landing near its launch site. Approximately three minutes after landing, however, multiple independent video feeds showed the rocket exploding on its landing pad. CNN reports: SpaceX’s SN10, an early prototype of the company’s Starship Mars rocket, took off around 5:15…

Japan Billionaire Seeks ‘Crew’ For Moon Trip

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on Wednesday launched a search for eight people to join him as the first private passenger on a trip around the moon with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. He had originally planned to invite artists for the weeklong voyage slated for 2023. Reuters reports: The rejigged project will “give more people from around the globe the chance to join…

Bill Gates, Elon Musk Both Warn ‘Don’t Go Too Far with Crypto Speculation’

From a report:
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has an interesting take on who should buy Bitcoins. He being the third richest man in the world said that Bitcoins are not for him because he has less money than Tesla CEO Elon Musk. So basically anybody who has less money than Musk should not invest in Bitcoin… Gates during an interview with Bloomberg…

The First AI-written Play Isn’t Shakespeare – but It Has Its Moments

Science magazine describes what happens when a robot writes a play: The 60-minute production — AI: When a Robot Writes a Play — tells the journey of a character (this time a robot), who goes out into the world to learn about society, human emotions, and even death. The script was created by a widely available artificial intelligence (AI) system called…

Starlink Will Hit 300Mbps and Expand To ‘Most of Earth’ This Year

Starlink broadband speeds will double to 300Mbps “later this year,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter this week. SpaceX has been telling users to expect speeds of 50Mbps to 150Mbps since the beta began a few months ago. From a report: Musk also wrote that “latency will drop to ~20ms later this year.” This is no surprise, as SpaceX promised…

Elon Musk Co-Authors COVID-19 Paper Accepted For Publication In ‘Nature’

Slashdot reader Rei writes: On 15 February, 2021, the paper Discrete SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers track with functional humoral stability was accepted for publication by the prestigious journal Nature — interesting not only for being a large-cohort study on COVID-19 reinfection, but for the presence of one of its coauthors: one Elon Reeve Musk. According to reporting, Musk — concerned in April…

Bill Gates Questions Societal Value of ‘GameStop’ Mania, Argues It’d Be ‘Good to Get Rid of’ Bitcoin

The price of bitcoin — now over $57,000 — has nearly doubled in the last 7 weeks. Even Elon Musk tweeted that its price seems high — though one analyst tells Bloomberg that Tesla has already made a profit of nearly $1 billion from its recent Bitcoin investment, more than it earned selling electric cars in all of 2020. Yet speaking…

Dogecoin Has a Top Dog Worth $2.1 Billion

The dogecoin market has a pack leader. From a report: Records show that a person, or entity, owns about 28% of all of the cryptocurrency in circulation — a stake worth about $2.1 billion at current prices [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. The holder’s identity isn’t known, which is common in the opaque world of digital currencies….

Bill Gates Says We Need More Entrepreneurs Like Elon Musk To Take on Climate Change

Bill Gates said the world needs more entrepreneurs like Elon Musk to take on climate change. In an interview with CNBC, he said: I think what Elon’s done with Tesla is fantastic. It’s, you know, probably the biggest single contribution to showing us that electric cars are part of how we solve climate change. We need a lot of Elon Musks,…

Bitcoin Jumps To $50,000 as Record-Breaking Rally Accelerates

Bitcoin blew through another milestone, surging past $50,000 for the first time as the blistering rally in the largest cryptocurrency continues to captivate investors worldwide. From a report: The world’s largest cryptocurrency jumped as much as 4.9% to $50,548 and is now up about 70% so far this year. Bitcoin pared its gain after setting the record high. Ether, a rival…