From the Article

>The rapid expansion of commercial space activity, as well as its integration into key government programs and services, represents a leap into uncharted waters. The rise of entrepreneurial “New Space” companies will challenge the capacity of both individual states and the international community to regulate and coordinate private space activity effectively. As the cost of placing payloads in space declines, the political and strategic importance of commercial space flight will only grow. Ensuring space is governed responsibly will be essential.

From the Article

>There are many, many other examples, but the point of nearly all of them is that you’ll have much better dating prospects if you’re forklift certified.
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>But I have bad news for the guys out there in that oh-so-exclusive club of certified operators who are never lonely on Friday night. A recent press release from BMW shows us that the machines want in on the action. Not only are they going to steal your lucrative forklift job at the local warehouse, but they’re probably going to steal your ladies, too.
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>BMW i Ventures has announced its lead investment in Fox Robotics, the world’s first intelligent forklift that can autonomously unload pallets from the trailer to the receiving dock. The oversubscribed funding round raised a total of $20 million from new and existing investors. New investors include Zebra Technologies, Japan Airlines & Translink Innovation Fund, and Foothill Ventures. Existing investors Menlo Ventures, ENIAC Ventures, and SignalFire also participated in the round.

From the Article

>"This launch will put the satellite on a trajectory that will take about three months to reach its science orbit," said John Baker, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Then Lunar Flashlight will try to find water ice on the surface of the Moon in places that nobody else has been able to look."

From the Article

>A team from the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy created the new audit tool to evaluate “compliance with the law and national guidance” around issues such as privacy, equality, and freedom of expression and assembly.
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>Based on the findings, published in a new report, the experts are joining calls for a ban on police use of facial recognition in public spaces.

From the Article

>The moon is a lifeless rock, but despite no living thing ever having been found on its desolate surface, some forms of Earth life might be able to make it.

In collaboration with start-up Lunaria One, scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) want to grow plants on the moon by 2025. The Australian Lunar Experiment Promoting Horticulture (ALEPH-1) payload will launch aboard SpaceIL's Beresheet 2 lander, a project Israel announced shortly after its first moon mission failed in 2020.

Also from the Article

>Nothing has ever been grown directly on the moon before. While the ALEPH-1 plants and seeds will be contained in a protective chamber, they will still face plenty of challenges. On the moon, water will be unimaginably valuable, gravity will be weaker, day and night will each last seven Earth days and no atmosphere will protect the surface from harmful solar radiation.

Now should this venture prove to be successful, how soon are we to see farms up in the Moon?

From the Article

>It’s still too early to tell whether this new wave of apps will end up costing artists and illustrators their jobs. What seems clear, though, is that these tools are already being put to use in creative industries.
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>Recently, I spoke to five creative-class professionals about how they’re using A.I.-generated art in their jobs.

Which leads to an interesting question, will AI be utilized as a tool for artists or be used as a catalyst to displace the creative class?

From the Article

>Looking back, Gosvener says it's clear why the rates of automation and warehouse injuries appear to be rising hand in hand. It's not so much that robots are running into humans and causing mayhem, he said, but rather a consequence of what the robots' arrival portends: an accelerating, ever-more-unforgiving pace of work and workplace culture.
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>"We have what's called 'time off task.' Your time is being measured, right down to the very minute," he said of Amazon's controversial time-tracking policy, in which workers have slivers of time a week to use the restroom or do other personal tasks. In the kind of partially automated warehouses that are becoming so common, Gosvener said, the tasks left to human workers are the ones that slow down the operations, which puts extra pressure on people to use every second productively. "And if you're going to go to the bathroom, you better make it quick, because time off task could mean your job is going to be threatened," he added.

From the Article

>Self-driving truck startup Kodiak Robotics said that it has begun a pilot program with IKEA in Texas.
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>A semitruck equipped with Kodiak’s autonomous driving system is making daily delivery runs from an IKEA warehouse near Houston to a store close to Dallas, roughly 300 miles away.
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>The trucks have human safety drivers on board, but they’re being driven by Kodiak’s autonomous-driving system.

Since we're about to enter a new economic downturn are we going to see more of these self driving systems and robots come into the labor market?

From the Article

>While the Netherlands and Estonia may be leading the charge with armed robot vehicle testing within the NATO alliance, the United States isn’t far behind. For the last several years, the U.S. Army has been testing light, medium and large variations of the so-called Robotic Combat Vehicle outfitted with remote weapons stations bristling with XM813 Bushmaster chain gun, .50 caliber machine guns, and FGM-148 Javelin missile launchers.
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>As recently as this past February, Green Berets with the 1st Special Forces Group used RCVs armed with M240s, .50 cal M2 machine guns, and MK19 automatic grenade launchers to “make initial contact with adversaries and mask operators’ movements towards the objective” during a two-week experiment at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, as Breaking Defense reported at the time.

From the Article

>The uncrewed Artemis I mission would mark the debut of the SLS and Orion capsule, for what would be a more than monthlong journey around the moon. It kicks off NASA’s long-awaited return to the moon’s surface, the first mission in the Artemis lunar program. Tentatively, the plan is to land the agency’s astronauts on the moon by its third Artemis mission in 2025.