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Comment Maths (Score 1) 222

by AnotherBlackHat (#64374750) Attached to: Biden Takes Aim At SpaceX's Tax-Free Ride In American Airspace

I'm trying to figure out what SpaceX's share of that $18 billion is.

Seems like they launch once a week and when they do they block out a 1000 square miles for an hour.
There are 168 hours in a week, and 3 million square miles in the US, so that's (1/168) * (1000/3,000,000) * $18 billion per year = $35.7k per year.

Do I do that right?
Is the government really complaining about that tiny an amount of money?

Submission + - How a Micro-Budget Student Film Changed Sci-Fi Forever (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the early 70s, young filmmakers John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon created a spaceship tale for a graduation project – little knowing it would influence Alien and many other works. Made for $60,000 by film school students, horror maestro John Carpenter's directorial debut Dark Star is now regarded as a sci-fi cult classic. Having just turned 50 years old, it's a world away from much of the sci-fi that came before it and would come after, neither space odyssey nor space opera, rather a bleak, downbeat and often absurd portrait of a group of people cooped together in a malfunctioning interstellar tin can. Arguably its most famous scene consists of an existential debate between an astronaut and a sentient bomb. Dark Star was a collaboration between Carpenter, who directed and scored the film, and Dan O'Bannon, who in addition to co-writing the script, acted as editor, production designer, and visual effects supervisor, as well as playing the volatile, paranoid Sergeant Pinback. They met as budding filmmakers at the University of Southern California. "While [Carpenter and O'Bannon] couldn't be more dissimilar in personality, they were both very energetic and focused," says Daniel Griffiths, director of Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star (2010), the definitive documentary about the making of the film.

The sci-fi films of this period tended to be bleak and dystopian, explains John Kenneth Muir, author of The Films of John Carpenter – films like Silent Running (1972), in which all plant life on Earth is extinct, or George Lucas's 1971 debut THX-1138, in which human emotion is suppressed. "Dark Star arrived in this world of dark, hopeless imaginings, but took the darkness one step further into absurd nihilism." Carpenter and O'Bannon set out to make the "ultimate riff on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey," says Griffiths. While Kubrick's 1968 film, explains Muir, was one "in which viewers sought meaning in the stars about the nature of humanity, there is no meaning to life in Dark Star". Rather, says Muir, it parodies 2001 "with its own sense of man's irrelevance in the scheme of things". Where Kubrick scored his film with classical music, Dark Star opens with a country song, Benson, Arizona. (A road in the real-life Benson is named in honour of the film). The film was even released with the tagline "the spaced-out odyssey." Dark Star captured the mood of the time in which it was made, says Muir, the atmosphere of Nixon's America. "The 1960s was all about utopian dreaming and bringing change to America in the counterculture. The 1970s represent what writer Johnny Byrne called 'The wake-up from the hippie dream', a reckoning with the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same." [...]

When Dark Star premiered at the FILMEX expo in 1974, the audience response was largely positive. "They recognised the film's absurdist humour and celebrated its student film roots," says Griffiths. It had a limited theatrical release in 1975, but it was not a commercial success. "The film met with negative reviews from critics, and general disinterest from audiences," says Muir. "Both Carpenter and O'Bannon realised that all the struggles they endured to make the film did not matter to audiences, they only cared about the finished product. I think they were discouraged," says Griffiths. The growth of the VHS market, however, helped it find its audience and propelled it towards cult status. Its influence can still be felt, perhaps most directly in Ridley Scott's Alien, for which O'Bannon, who died in 2009, wrote the screenplay. The two films share DNA. Alien is also set on a grotty working vessel with a bickering crew, only this time the alien wasn't played for laughs.

Comment Since when? (Score 2) 19

by NewtonsLaw (#64370624) Attached to: YouTube Says OpenAI Training Sora With Its Videos Would Break Rules

YouTube doesn't seem to enforce its ban on downloads at all. I see *many* YT videos which include footage from other YT videos and the only way they got that was to download the video so as to include it in their own. One only has to look at they myriad of compilation "FAIL" videos to see this happening.

Even when the original creator files a DMCA claim against such videos, YT will often consider it "fair use" and not penalize the person who has clearly downloaded and then used that footage.

For YT to then come out claiming that it's against their TOS if AI systems do it is a bit rich.

Submission + - Boeing finally gets working on a 737 replacement (crankyflier.com) 2

Submitted by s122604
s122604 writes: After milking the 737 design for all that it is worth (or maybe, more than its worth), Boeing announces that development of its replacement, the 797, is well underway.
It looks like this will be the end of the iconic flat-bottomed nacelle, and other 737 eccentricities.
Ad speak to follow:
"The 797 delivers enhanced efficiency, improved environmental performance and increased passenger comfort to the single-aisle market. Incorporating advanced technology winglets and efficient engines, the 797 offers excellent economics, reducing fuel use and emissions by 20 percent over the NG while producing a 50 percent smaller noise footprint. Additionally, the 797 offers up to 14 percent lower airframe maintenance costs than the competition. Passengers will enjoy the Boeing Sky Interior, highlighted by modern sculpted sidewalls and window reveals, LED lighting that enhances the sense of spaciousness and larger pivoting overhead storage bins."

Comment Because of course the best era to simulate is now? (Score 4, Insightful) 185

by ghostlibrary (#64360808) Attached to: 'Yes, We're All Trapped in the Matrix Now'

The problem with the 'we are in a simulation' is that, of all the eras to mimic, why the 2020s? Is this really the best the VR writers could come up with? There are so many more interesting decades to loop us over.

Bonus points if the simulation was as we imagined things, not as they were. Why not put us into Bridgerton? Or the SCA's version of medieval? If we have to stick to history, why not loop over the dot-com era?

If you go with the matrix idea of utopias made the captives unsatisfied and such, there's still a much wider choice than the current rise of fascism etc. Unless the current negatitivity is the intentional backplot for a really interesting culminating storyline. Still, if this is a simulation, they need to fire the writers and start over.

Comment Re:Oh Now. Those dark arges are coming back.. (Score 1) 159

I had both. University link in the late 80s/early 90s, 14.4 Linelink E modem. Was just a lot more fun and a lot less corporate. Yes trolls existed but there were less or could be controlled with kill files in Usenet. Netiquette was still a useful word. Was just more fun.

Submission + - Tennessee Becomes First State To Protect Musicians, Other Artists Against AI (npr.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tennessee made history on Thursday, becoming the first U.S. state to sign off on legislation to protect musicians from unauthorized artificial intelligence impersonation. "Tennessee (sic) is the music capital of the world, & we're leading the nation with historic protections for TN artists & songwriters against emerging AI technology," Gov. Bill Lee announced on social media. The Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, or ELVIS Act, is an updated version of the state's old right of publicity law. While the old law protected an artist's name, photograph or likeness, the new legislation includes AI-specific protections. Once the law takes effect on July 1, people will be prohibited from using AI to mimic an artist's voice without permission.

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