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Sky鈥檚 the limit
With almost every corner of Earth now saturated with adverts, companies are advancing on the final frontier to get us to notice their products. Elon Musk was the first to boldly go where no advertiser has gone before, sending his Tesla Roadster into orbit around the sun last year 鈥� perhaps to test the car鈥檚 autopilot function in an environment where there are fewer objects to collide with.
Now the Russian company StartRocket plans to launch clusters of cubesats to create 鈥渙rbital billboards鈥� by reflecting sunlight, forming shiny logos that would be visible in the sky at dawn and dusk. According to the website Futurism, food and drink firm PepsiCo this service to promote a 鈥渃ampaign against stereotypes and unjustified prejudices against gamers鈥� on behalf of an energy drink called Adrenaline Rush.
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However, it appears that PepsiCo has . Astronomers are among those pleased that the billboard won鈥檛 go ahead. Feedback is inclined to agree, while wondering whether we have missed a valuable opportunity to test the hypothesis that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Astrology 2.0
快猫短视频 readers may be forgiven for thinking astrology, like religion, cash and printed magazines, would face a struggle to survive in the 21st-century economy. Not so 鈥� in fact, it is a $2.1 billion industry just waiting to be disrupted by digital technology.
The New York Times reports that witch vibes, and those vibes are very popular with millennial women鈥�. Spotting an opportunity to make money, venture capitalists have invested millions in apps like Co-Star, which lets users compare their birth charts with those of their friends or enemies to help them understand conflicts.
For those doubting the science behind them, Co-Star鈥檚 horoscopes are algorithmically generated and based on data from NASA. So that鈥檚 all right then. It must be galling for professional astrologers to be usurped by artificial intelligence, but they must have seen it coming.
快猫短视频 for the unenthused
快猫短视频readers could be next in line to lose their jobs to automation. Readers may recall the story of a dancing robot described by Russia-24 TV as the most advanced in the world, which turned out to be a man in a robot suit (5 January).
The mishap has apparently not dented the Russian media鈥檚 passion for technology. The same broadcaster has now employed a humanoid robot to read the news following a high-level robotics conference. This time, there was no doubt that the droid in question was mechanical in nature. Nevertheless, the reaction from viewers was less than enthusiastic.
鈥淔rom the headpiece, I thought [actor] Dmitry Pevtsov was stung by bees and then got drunk. But it was a robot. Horrible,鈥� .
鈥淭he first few seconds only provoke a gag reflex. It鈥檚 frozen with a gaze through the centuries like a drug addict鈥檚,鈥� another wrote. 鈥淚t feels like a dead thing.鈥� With the news screens that Feedback is watching stuck on a seemingly never-ending Brexit loop, this seems like just the ticket.
Living the high life
With increasing numbers of graduates struggling to find work after finishing university and complaining that their degrees haven鈥檛 given them the skills they need for the workplace, we need teachers that can create a buzz around learning. We assume this was the motivation behind Japanese professor Tatsunori Iwamura鈥檚 .
Iwamura is now being investigated by drug enforcement officers and could face up to 10 years in prison, according to news reports. Feedback hopes the authorities show leniency in light of his outstanding contribution to higher education.
Pornography leak
The UK government is pressing ahead with its plans to implement age-verification checks on pornography sites, with the law now set to come into force on 15 July. As 快猫短视频 previously reported, the move will create databases of pornography users in the UK held by private firms (30 March, p 20). Critics warn this will be a huge target for blackmailers.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which is responsible for the legislation, failed to assuage doubts about its commitment to online privacy when it issued a press release announcing the new date for the scheme鈥檚 implementation. The email was sent to more than 300 journalists with their addresses visible to everyone on the mailing list. 鈥淚t was an error and we鈥檙e evaluating at the moment whether that was a breach of data protection law,鈥� .
In the meantime, the scheme seems leaky in other ways. Social media sites that allow sexually explicit images, such as Twitter and Reddit, won鈥檛 have to administer the age-check scheme as more than a third of a site鈥檚 content must be pornographic to qualify. This suggests an easy way for pornography sites to skirt the new requirements: simply post two videos of puppies for every one of pornography.
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