Lifeboat Foundation

As the US government begins to consider some of the legal implications for copyright in connection with the development and deployment of artificial intelligence, it is important to first step back to ensure that we are properly guided by context and a proper understanding of our goals — grounded in an informed grasp of the relationship of copyright to the development of AI, and a fair observation of the state of legal developments around the world. Far too many observers have oversimplified how various countries have addressed the relationship between copyright and AI. The reality is that all who have done so have rejected the notion that copyright is not implicated, and have developed legal norms which carefully limit the scope of any exceptions with an eye towards facilitating licensing, even when they seek to expand the development of AI as a national economic imperative.

I have written about the approach taken by the EU in the updated Copyright Directive, and note here that despite claims about Japan’s legislation, even their provisions — as manifested in the 2018 amendments, are designed to avoid conflict with the legitimate interests of copyright owners. While I don’t necessarily agree with Japan’s approach, it is important to highlight that even its exceptions, as I understand them: recognize that text and data mining/machine learning does in fact implicate copyright; apply only to materials that have been lawfully acquired; require that the use of each work is “minor” relative to the TDM effort; and provide that license terms must be honored. While it remains unclear to me that Japan’s goal of respecting copyright as required by international law has been achieved, it is important to understand that claims that Japan has removed copyright as an issue that must be addressed in the development of AI are inaccurate.

On the morning of November 10, an Atlas V rocket launched JPSS-2, NOAA’s newest environmental satellite into orbit. Hitching a ride on the rocket was NASA

Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.” Its core values are “safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion.”

Hyderabad-based private space startup, Skyroot Aerospace, is set to launch its, and India’s first private rocket between November 12 and 16 from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Sriharikota launchpad. The rocket, named Vikram-S, will be the first space launch vehicle manufactured and operated entirely by a private company in the country — making this the first launch of its kind since the union government opened up the space sector for private industry participation in June 2020.

The final date of the launch mission will be confirmed depending on the prevalent weather conditions during the mentioned launch window. Naga Bharath Daka, chief operating officer of Skyroot, confirmed in a statement that the launch mission will be a suborbital spaceflight, and will carry three customer payloads to the intended orbit.

Typically, a suborbital spaceflight refers to a height of around 100km from the Earth surface, and is done at a lower altitude than an orbital flight, which reaches at least a low-Earth orbit — between around 200km to 2,000km from Earth.

China gave up on their SLS clone, deciding that building a giant rocket that blows up with every mission is a bad idea. Maybe Congress, who is forcing NASA to build the SLS, could learn from this.

When China started to get serious about sending its astronauts to the Moon in the middle of the last decade, the country’s senior rocket scientists began to plan a large booster to do the job.

In 2016 the country’s state-owned rocket developer, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, began designing the “Long March 9” rocket. It looked more or less like the large heavy lifter NASA was designing at the time, the Space Launch System. Like NASA’s large rocket, the Long March 9 had a core stage and boosters and was intended to be fully expendable.

Continue reading “China is scrapping plans for an SLS-like rocket in favor of reusable booster” »

Meta, Twitter employees, and eagles all appear to be in the same boat.

Drone-hunting eagles have reportedly been laid-off by the Swiss government due to concerns about the welfare of the birds, which awkwardly follows the recent tech industry layoffs, including Meta’s announcement on November 9 to let go of more than 11,000 employees.

The anticipated 2022 tech layoffs have not just dug their claws into drone-grounding eagles that were employed to hunt down the technology, but the tech industry itself, according to an article by Gizmodo on Tuesday.

Solar power gathered far away in space, seen here being transmitted wirelessly down to Earth to wherever it is needed. ESA plans to investigate key technologies needed to make Space-Based Solar Power a working reality through its SOLARIS initative. One such technology – wireless power transmission – was recently demonstrated in Germany to an audience of decision makers from business and government.

The demonstration took place at Airbus’ X-Works Innovation Factory in Munich. Using microwave beaming, green energy was transmitted green energy between two points representing ‘Space’ and ‘Earth’ over a distance of 36 metres.

The received power was used to light up a model city, produce green hydrogen by splitting water and even to produce the world’s first wirelessly cooled 0% alcohol beer in a fridge before serving to the watching audience.

face_with_colon_three circa 2016.

Two basic types of encryption schemes are used on the internet today. One, known as symmetric-key cryptography, follows the same pattern that people have been using to send secret messages for thousands of years. If Alice wants to send Bob a secret message, they start by getting together somewhere they can’t be overheard and agree on a secret key; later, when they are separated, they can use this key to send messages that Eve the eavesdropper can’t understand even if she overhears them. This is the sort of encryption used when you set up an online account with your neighborhood bank; you and your bank already know private information about each other, and use that information to set up a secret password to protect your messages.

The second scheme is called public-key cryptography, and it was invented only in the 1970s. As the name suggests, these are systems where Alice and Bob agree on their key, or part of it, by exchanging only public information. This is incredibly useful in modern electronic commerce: if you want to send your credit card number safely over the internet to Amazon, for instance, you don’t want to have to drive to their headquarters to have a secret meeting first. Public-key systems rely on the fact that some mathematical processes seem to be easy to do, but difficult to undo. For example, for Alice to take two large whole numbers and multiply them is relatively easy; for Eve to take the result and recover the original numbers seems much harder.

Continue reading “Quantum Cryptography Is Unbreakable. So Is Human Ingenuity” »

Researchers detail a new malware campaign by Pakistani hackers targeting Indian government organizations, revealing their new tools and techniques.

Coca leaf and cocaine may soon join alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and cannabis as legally regulated drugs.

Colombia’s new government wants to legalize coca leaf and cocaine. So does Peru. And Bolivia has been on that path since 2012.