The Office of Space Commerce defended its proposal for a mission authorization scheme for novel space activities, arguing it would provide certainty for companies while limiting regulatory burdens.
The post Office of Space Commerce makes its case for mission authorization appeared first on SpaceNews.
All the young people the Guardian spoke to disagreed with aspects of the government’s proposed block
Sixteen- and 17-year-olds in Britain are to be encouraged to observe a midnight to 6am social media curfew but will be able to opt out by changing their account settings.
From next spring, they will be urged to refrain from using certain apps, with the block being switched on by default. But the curfew will not be mandatory and can be overridden.
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© Photograph: Cultura/Alamy
© Photograph: Cultura/Alamy
© Photograph: Cultura/Alamy
For months, artists and activists have been calling on the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to act on the AI boom as datacentres pop up around the country. Today he made a major speech at the University of Sydney addressing copyright, the regulation of datacentres and the future of AI in Australia
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© Photograph: The Guardian
© Photograph: The Guardian
© Photograph: The Guardian
PM lays out plan for datacentre development and rejects prospect tech companies will be given free use of Australian data
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Anthony Albanese has promised “the strongest possible protection” for Australian creatives against misuse of their work by artificial intelligence models, warning it would be “theft” if writers, artists and musicians didn’t have control of their work or receive payment for its use.
Amid growing community concern about large energy-intensive datacentres, the federal government will also set strict new rules for the facilities, including where they can be built, that they shouldn’t compete for land with housing, their power and water use, and that they don’t increase electricity prices for consumers.
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© Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images
Erich Hernandez-Baquero, nominated to become the Air Force’s top civilian space acquisition official, and Roger Mason, the administration’s choice to lead the National Reconnaissance Office, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee
The post Space acquisition and NRO picks face SASC appeared first on SpaceNews.
Government to launch campaign to help people cope with events such as weather emergencies or cyber-attacks
The British public should begin taking “small but important steps” to secure and protect water, power supplies and basic phone signal in case of further severe weather emergencies, national crises or cyber-attacks, Downing Street has said.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, told MPs “the risks we face from climate change cannot be underestimated”, and warned of the “significant and prolonged disruption to essential services” extreme weather events could cause.
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© Photograph: Hugh Hastings/Getty Images
© Photograph: Hugh Hastings/Getty Images
© Photograph: Hugh Hastings/Getty Images
The British government is preparing to release a new space strategy that will provide a “whole-of-government” approach for space in the country.
The post U.K. government preparing to release new space strategy appeared first on SpaceNews.
Lobby appeals to prospective PM’s reindustrialisation agenda as it pushes for Rosebank and Jackdaw approval
The UK’s North Sea oil industry has made a last-ditch attempt to curry favour with the Labour government by appealing to Andy Burnham’s reindustrialisation agenda just days before he is expected to become Britain’s next prime minister.
Industry lobbyists have written to more than 400 Labour MPs to call on the government’s new leaders to allow more oil and gas drilling in UK waters to support homegrown energy and show “a commitment to UK manufacturing, industrial capability and the skilled workforce that has powered the nation for generations”.
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© Photograph: Rick Wood Photography/Alamy
© Photograph: Rick Wood Photography/Alamy
© Photograph: Rick Wood Photography/Alamy
Operator brings in independent legal firm to look into whistleblower allegations relating to June heatwave
Great Britain’s grid operator has brought in independent investigators to look into accusations that its staff were involved in a cover-up over the power system being at a greater risk of blackouts during the heatwave.
The government-owned energy system operator will face the scrutiny of an external legal firm after a whistleblower claimed that control room staff were warned against leaving a paper trail relating to efforts to stabilise the power system during record high temperatures in late June.
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© Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
© Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
© Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
Anthony Albanese will deliver a landmark speech on AI this week as MPs are torn between attracting datacentre investment and protecting the rights of creatives
When Anna Funder stood before a pack of journalists at Parliament House this month, she presented herself not just as a writer but also a “victim of crime”.
The Stasiland author was using the analogy to illustrate how technology companies have flagrantly “hoovered up” her literary works for their own profit.
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© Composite: Victoria Hart/AAP/Getty Images
© Composite: Victoria Hart/AAP/Getty Images
© Composite: Victoria Hart/AAP/Getty Images
Political campaigns are increasingly deploying AI and deepfakes to further their messaging, and the scale of spread has experts concerned
From the comfort of his bed, Jonathan Rinaldi, a political candidate for a city council seat in Queens, New York, tinkered away on his iPhone, prompting an artificial intelligence chatbot to mock up fake news hits and endorsements he had never received.
During the campaign last October, Rinaldi shared one of those stories, made to appear real with a CNN logo, on his Facebook and Instagram. It stated that Lynn Schulman, his opponent and an incumbent Democrat, had been “forced to drop out of the race due to a series of critical mistakes”. But Schulman had not quit her campaign, and in November, won by a landslide.
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© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
Experts say cuts have hindered the response to DRC’s Ebola outbreak and resulted in ‘significant numbers’ of deaths
Elon Musk has an Ebola problem. SpaceX stock dropped precipitously after its initial public offering, and Tesla faces a wave of lawsuits. But instead of focusing on his companies, Musk has posted frequently on X about the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which he helped dismantle – or, in his words, feed into the woodchipper – last year.
“Elon’s USAID crash-out over the past week has been a thing to behold,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former top USAID official who oversaw the agency’s Ebola response in 2014-2015 and the president of Refugees International. “In a way, it’s helpful that Elon is doing this, because it’s putting attention back on the issue of what he did last year.”
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© Photograph: Dieudonne Dirole/EPA
© Photograph: Dieudonne Dirole/EPA
© Photograph: Dieudonne Dirole/EPA
Manny Rutinel’s House campaign draws millions from big tech as pro- and anti-AI factions spar over regulation
Political groups funded by top tech executives have been homing in on one local race in Colorado, as the state’s Democratic primary vote gets under way on Tuesday. Democrat Manny Rutinel, who’s running in the competitive eighth congressional district for a seat in the House, has seen his campaign boosted with at least $2m in donations from committees led by the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen.
Rutinel is a progressive candidate running against former state representative and centrist Democrat Shannon Bird. During his campaign, he has focused on his Latino heritage and centered his platform around affordability and regulating Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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© Photograph: Brice Tucker/The Greeley Tribune/AP
© Photograph: Brice Tucker/The Greeley Tribune/AP
© Photograph: Brice Tucker/The Greeley Tribune/AP
They suck up energy and water, and blast out heat. Just who is better off from all this investment – aside from tech bros?
The two great existential threats of our time – the climate crisis and AI – come hurtling together in the explosion of datacentres across Australia and around the world.
You can hardly avoid hearing about them these days, either with awed reverence of the promised benefits to humankind or with fear and anger given the implications for the climate, inflation, jobs and even housing affordability.
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© Photograph: Jono Searle/AAP
© Photograph: Jono Searle/AAP
© Photograph: Jono Searle/AAP
There are far better ways to tackle climate breakdown, but successive governments have chosen to listen to the fossil fuel companies instead
The new prime minister will be looking for money? Well, here’s £21.7bn lying on the ground. The government could cancel its deranged, disastrous carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme at no cost to public welfare: in fact, it would greatly reduce the harm we will suffer.
Sorry, did I say £21.7bn? That’s the figure the government has been putting in its press releases for spending on this programme between now and 2050. But this covers only the first phase of the project. The climate experts Dr Andrew Boswell and Simon Oldridge worked through the data produced by the government’s Climate Change Committee, which was scattered across different spreadsheets, and discovered that the projected cost of the full CCS programme between now and 2050 is £264bn.
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© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian
© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian
© Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian
Workers proud of their efforts to grow renewable energy say US president pursuing ‘personal vendetta’ at their expense
Donald Trump has blamed everything – from “national security” issues, the deaths of birds and whales, and cancer – in his decades-long campaign against windfarms. But as the Trump administration continues to undermine the industry, what worries workers most are their jobs.
Since taking office for a second term, Trump has issued an executive order aiming to halt all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted to issue stop-work orders on wind projects under construction, and paid more than $2.6bn in settlements to buy out wind energy leases. And hundreds of workers have been affected.
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© Photograph: Al Drago/Getty Images
© Photograph: Al Drago/Getty Images
© Photograph: Al Drago/Getty Images
Suspicions grow in Lanarkshire that local people have been misled on supposed benefits of the huge development
Revealed: landmark Scottish AI project has no prospect of meeting renewables promise
What are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’?
The promise was that a Scottish community would be transformed by massive investment and empowered to chase “the jobs of the future”. Instead, local people in Lanarkshire fear they may have to sell their properties and lose green belt land because of the errors of a badly planned AI datacentre complex, even as those jobs and investments never arrive.
Late last year, representatives of Oakes Energy Services began to knock on doors in Newarthill, a village east of Glasgow. In letters reviewed by the Guardian, they invited residents to individual meetings. They told them about plans for a solar farm, say local people, and made offers: free solar panels, tree planting, or even cash for their properties.
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© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
© Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Exclusive: Government and developers privately acknowledged Lanarkshire datacentre site had power provision ‘issue’
‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentre
What are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’?
A landmark AI development billed as delivering jobs and prosperity has misrepresented its plans to channel a nuclear reactor’s worth of power to a site in rural Scotland, a Guardian investigation has found.
When it was announced in January, the government promised that an £8.2bn AI datacentre complex in Lanarkshire – built by the US firm CoreWeave and the Scottish company DataVita – would be powered entirely from on-site renewables and built by 2030.
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© Composite: Guardian Design/Reuters
© Composite: Guardian Design/Reuters
© Composite: Guardian Design/Reuters
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