Artemis, Returning to the Moon

Artemis, Greek goddess of the Moon, will follow in twin brother Apollo’s footsteps, and return people to the Moon.

Beginning with the Artemis Accords in 2020, NASA and 7 other countries established the foundations to explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Since 2020 there has been much planning, research, and development. They planned the first 5 missions to hopefully begin building a Moon base.

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The Day Computers Stopped

Over night on July 18-19, CrowdStrike quietly pushed out an update to Microsoft computers and servers. By 4 AM CDT, Help Desk Central at Texas A&M University was on alert of a problem campus wide. It seemed computers were stuck in a Blue Screen (of Death) restart loop, and Windows and Azure (cloud) servers were shutting down. Since nearly every Windows computer on campus – including classroom computers – were affected, the University’s President cancelled classes, and the IT professionals got to work identifying and fixing every computer they could find with the problem.

The CrowdStrike IT outage forced Texas A&M University to cancel classes Friday as IT professionals manually fixed thousands of impacted devices.

Source: KBTX.com

CrowdStrike is a global corporation, and their security software is in millions of computers world wide.

The global computer outage affecting airports, banks and other businesses on Friday appears to stem at least partly from a software update issued by major US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, experts told CNN.

Source: CNN.com

How could such a small update do so much damage? That is the billion dollar question!

I used AI to generate a poem, this is what I got

I’m not the first to test multiple AI search (text) engines.

Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, soon followed with Bing Chat, which uses ChatGPT technology. And then, last week, Google began letting a limited number of people access Google Bard, which is based on Google’s own technology, LaMDA, short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications.

Source: WIRED

My premise was “write a poem about an elemental elephant with a titanium trunk guarding a blessing of unicorns.”

ChatGPT came back with…

In lands where magic whispers, a tale unfolds,
Of an elemental elephant, mighty and bold.
With a titanium trunk, gleaming and grand,
Guarding a blessing, a mythical band.
A guardian of wonders, both gentle and strong,
This majestic creature, where legends belong.
Born of ancient forces, earth, fire, and air,
An embodiment of nature, beyond compare.
With steps like thunder, it roams the terrain,
A gentle giant, with a heart untamed.
In its presence, harmony finds its home,
A sanctuary where unicorns freely roam.
Its trunk, crafted of titanium's might,
An enchanted conduit, a beacon of light.
It weaves through the realms, a bridge to unite,
Elements and creatures, both day and night.
With eyes like diamonds, reflecting pure grace,
It gazes upon the unicorns in this sacred place.
Their silvery manes shimmer with ethereal glow,
A blessing of enchantment, for all to know.
As the sun sets, painting skies with gold,
The elephant stands tall, resolute and bold.
Guiding the unicorns through shadows and strife,
Protecting their essence, the essence of life.
Through forests and meadows, they journey afar,
Under the watchful eye of the elephant star.
Together, they dance, a celestial display,
A symphony of magic, as night turns to day.
In the heart of this realm, where dreams come alive,
The elemental elephant and unicorns thrive.
A testament to wonder, a tale to be told,
Of a guardian so noble, with a heart of pure gold.

Bing Chat came back with…

An elemental elephant with titanium trunk,
Guarding a blessing of unicorns,
The elephant's eyes are bright and clear,
And its skin is tough as iron.
The unicorns are pure and white,
With manes that shimmer in the light,
They dance and play around the beast,
And never stray too far from its feet.
The elephant stands tall and proud,
Its trunk a weapon, strong and loud,
It guards the unicorns with all its might,
And keeps them safe both day and night.
So if you ever see this sight,
An elemental elephant with titanium trunk,
Guarding a blessing of unicorns,
You'll know that everything is right.

Google Bard came back with…

Sure, here is a poem about an elemental elephant with a titanium trunk guarding a blessing of unicorns:

The Elemental Elephant

With a trunk of titanium and eyes of fire, The elemental elephant stands guard. He protects the blessing of unicorns, Whose magic is pure and their hearts are kind.
The unicorns are gentle and wise, And their horns can grant any wish. But they are also very vulnerable, And the elemental elephant knows this.
That is why he guards them so fiercely, With his strength and his courage and his might. He will never let anything harm them, Not while he still has breath to fight.
The elemental elephant is a symbol of hope, And a reminder that good always triumphs over evil. He is a guardian of the innocent, And a defender of the weak.
He is the elemental elephant, And he will never give up.

So, they are what they are. People claim AI chat bots can make them money, write code for them, write news stories for them, etc… But, I think they look and behave like an amalgamation of complete sentence results of just another search engine.

With manned Mars missions on the horizon, nuclear-powered rockets are finally getting reconsidered

I was a sophomore in high school when someone asked me, “what do you want to do when you graduate college?” To which I promptly replied, “make nuclear rockets.”

Nuclear-Powered Rockets Could Be The Best Option For Bringing Humans To Mars

Source: NPR

Finally, nuclear-powered rockets for space travel are getting some recognition.