Hey guys. It’s been a while and I hope you can all forgive me for my absence. I’d been fairly busy this past month. But without further ado, here are the 4 future-oriented stories I’ve had my eyes on these past 7 days.
🤖Have autonomous robots started killing in war?: There’s a general sense that military technology has always been the guidepost for general tech adoption. But that comes with a caveat in the form of the introduction of many morally dubious ways of ending someone’s life. Recently the UN put out a report implying that an autonomous robot may have killed people in battle. If true it would have been the first instance of such an occurrence. As usual, the novelty that such an occurrence had taken place had the media putting out pieces that had dismissed the nuance of “possibility” of occurrence and instead implying that it had most definitely occurred. That said the media’s desire to sensationalize this doesn’t overshadow the fact that we are seeing a subtle but revolutionary transition into a world in which warfare is largely dominated by autonomous machines far more efficient and deadly than we ever could be.(1949 words)
💿Ultra-high-density hard drives made with graphene store ten times more data: Many a techie will remark on the significant upgrades we’ve collectively gotten with regard to computational power. The guiding computers of the space crafts of the 1960s had but a fraction of the computational power we have in our smartphones today. Many times the tiny breakthroughs that have led to the increases and cost-effectiveness of various technologies go unacknowledged. We find ourselves upon one more of such a revolution with graphene—the miracle material with unlimited use cases whose IRL use cases never seem to come to fruition— potentially gives us the ability to store 10 times more information in Hard Disk Drives than we do today. Usually, a protective coating overlay on the plates of HDDs drastically reduces the amount of storage one could gain from said HDD. A graphene coating would theoretically allow us to protect the HDD plates while dramatically increasing potential storage space. As with all graphene breakthroughs, however, it’s worth asking if we’ll ever see it applied on a wider scale.(529 words)
🇳🇬Twitter blocked in Nigeria after deleting a tweet by its president: We often take the general accessibility and reach that social media platforms provide us for granted, that is until these companies show themselves quintessential in the maintenance of the freedoms of various people everywhere. This freedom of free expression is under threat amidst the ban of Twitter by Nigeria’s president who threatened secessionist activists in a tweet that violated Twitter’s policies. The government then further threatened those who would bypass the national ban of Twitter through other means such as VPN. It’s a truly dark time for a country whose youth present vast creative potential. (434 words)
🛫United Airlines is buying 15 supersonic aircraft from Boom Supersonic: These are however exciting times for aviation enthusiasts as United Airlines plans on bringing supersonic flight back into the mainstream. The last of said commercial supersonic flights was about 18 years ago with Concorde being retired due to the fact that it consumed vast amounts of fuel and was a general money loser. Boom Supersonic, the company designing said aircraft, hopes to overcome the technical limitations that had grounded the Concorde. If their planes pass safety testing, United Airlines hopes to buy up to 50 of said supersonic planes, renewing the age of supersonic flight. (667 words)
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