Gadgets
Meet the 4 Members of SpaceX’s First All-Civilian Space Mission
SpaceX had made an initial announcement about the mission in March this year. But last week, it said it was targeting September 15 as the launch date. Over the past six months, the crew has focused extensively on training and preparations. This focus was essential to ready themselves as a team to become the first commercial crew to orbit the Earth, the company said.
The crew
The Inspiration4 website says the four crew members represent “the mission pillars of leadership, hope, generosity, and prosperity”. The Inspiration4 crew consists of Mission Commander Jared Isaacman, Mission Pilot Dr. Sian Proctor, Medical Officer Hayley Arceneaux, and Mission Specialist Chris Sembroski, as per a press release. They are scheduled to arrive in Florida on September 9 to begin the final preparations for their mission.
Jared Isaacman, the “commander and benefactor”, is the founder and CEO of a fintech company. After starting the company at the age of 16 from a basement, he has built it into an industry-leading payments technology firm. An accomplished jet pilot, he is rated to fly commercial and military aircraft. He has flown in over 100 airshows. In 2011, Isaacman co-founded Draken International to train pilots for the US Armed Forces.
Hayley Arceneaux represents Hope. When Hayley was 10 years old, she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. She underwent treatment, which included chemotherapy and limb-saving surgery. She obtained her Physician Assistant degree in 2016 and works at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – the very place that saved her life.
Chris Sembroski, a data engineer and Air Force veteran, represents Generosity. After growing up with a natural curiosity about outer space, Sembroski volunteered with a grassroots lobbying effort as a college student and promoted legislation to help open space travel. He has conducted simulated space shuttle missions as a US Space Counselor and then served in the US Air Force, maintaining a fleet of ICBMs before leaving active duty in 2007. Sembroski has a B.S. in Professional Aeronautics.
Dr. Sian Proctor (Prosperity) is a geoscientist and science communication specialist. Her father worked at the NASA tracking station during the Apollo missions. She’s an analog astronaut (a person who conducts activities in simulated space conditions) and encourages people to use their unique strengths to inspire others. Dr. Proctor was a finalist for the 2009 NASA Astronaut Programme. She has been a geoscience professor for over 20 years at a college in Phoenix, Arizona. She has a B.S. in Environmental Science, an M.S. in Geology, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction: Science Education.
The lives of the crew will be explored in Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission To Space, a Netflix documentary series that will cover the liftoff in near real-time. It will premiere in five parts leading up to and following the mission.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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