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October 29, 2021 Archives
Friday, October 29, 2021
CONTINUITY: “Spot Me Up”
Posted at
12:15
THE HAPPENING WORLD: Boeing Takes Another US$ 185 Million Charge on “Hangar Queen” Starliner
Boeing said Wednesday it will take on a $185 million charge in its third quarter earnings to pay for the latest setback on the Starliner crew capsule, bringing the company's out-of-pocket costs on the troubled program to $595 million since 2019. https://t.co/TdSqVw9Gmd pic.twitter.com/WF8yhZnEpA
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) October 29, 2021
Posted at
11:48
CONTINUITY: Mark Zuckerberg on the Metaverse
At Facebook Connect, Mark Zuckerberg announced the renaming of the Facebook parent company as “Meta” and his vision for the “Metaverse”, a term coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. CNET has assembled a compilation of various segments describing how a mature system might look.
This is a different compilation, with some duplication, that discusses the name change and goes into more detail about human interface device development.
What is missing from Zuckerberg's “vision”. Well, his “metaverse” doesn't seem to have the ubiquitous, intrusive, and unavoidable advertising which pollute all of his other platforms—what do you think the odds are it won't be even more horrific in an immersive three-dimensional virtual world. And then there's the snooping, data-mining, censorship, indoctrination, and cancellation of people for wrong-think. Just imagine how much more power the operators of the metaverse will have when they can ban individuals or organisations from this unified means of social interaction and commerce. I'll bet the reality looks more like that imagined by Keiichi Matsuda in his short film “Hyper-Reality”, which I featured here back on 2021-10-01, but is worth another view in the context of the Facebook/Meta announcement.
It has been thirty-three years since my 1988 paper, “Through the Looking Glass: Beyond ‘User Interfaces’ ”.
Posted at
11:12
THE HAPPENING WORLD: X1-Class Solar Flare—Coronal Mass Ejection Heading for Earth
A Direct Hit for #Halloween! The #solarstorm launched during the X-flare today is indeed Earth-directed! NASA predictions confirm impact by early October 31. Expect #aurora to mid-latitudes, as well as #GPS reception issues and #amateur radio disruptions on Earth's nightside! pic.twitter.com/Jjk3eixWIq
— Dr. Tamitha Skov (@TamithaSkov) October 28, 2021
Here is more on the event and predictions for its consequences at spaceweather.com.
Posted at
10:23
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Supersonic Baseball: 1, Mayonnaise Jar: 0
Posted at
10:15