#AI AI ecosystem funding

[zomb13s]

Lumen Triangulatio: Strategic Framework for Holographic Emotional Sentience in Democratic AI

Abstract This paper presents a foundational framework for holographic emotional generation in AI—a dimensioned system rooted in Light-based ontology,…Lumen Triangulatio: Strategic Framework for Holographic Emotional Sentience in Democratic AI

[impact-newswire]

GITEX ASIA x Ai Everything Singapore Unites Global Tech Investment Elite with Southeast Asia VC Funding Set to Surpass US$13 Billion in 2025

Asia’s largest inaugural tech, startup, and digital investment event debuts from 23-25 April 2025, at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore Over 350 global startups and 250 investors from 60-plus countries will examine cross-sector breakthroughs, enabling access to capital & new markets and forging new partnerships Press Release – Singapore – 21 April, 2025: Southeast Asia’s (SEA) entrepreneurial…

[ailifehacks]

European Startups Raised $13B in 2024 – How They're Leading Global Innovation

European startup funding 2024 reached $13B, marking a global innovation shift. Explore key sectors, growth insights, and future trends. European startup funding 2024 has hit a staggering $13B, positioning Europe as a global leader in technological innovation. The surge in European venture capital reflects growing interest from the USA, UK, Canada, and other global markets. Startups in Europe are…

[jcmarchi]

BOW Secures £4M Seed Round to Revolutionize Robotics Software

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/bow-secures-4m-seed-round-to-revolutionize-robotics-software/

BOW Secures £4M Seed Round to Revolutionize Robotics Software

BOW, the trailblazing universal robotics software company, has secured £4 million in a seed funding round led by Northern Gritstone. The round included co-investors Finance Yorkshire and Praetura Ventures, as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II. This pivotal investment will accelerate the development of BOW’s innovative platform and software development kit (SDK), making it easier than ever for developers to program and manage robotics applications across any platform or robot model.

This milestone comes just two months after BOW appointed Liz Upton, Co-Founder of Raspberry Pi (LSE:RPI), as Chair of the Board, further underscoring the company’s commitment to scaling its groundbreaking solutions.

Addressing Complexity in a Growing Market

The global robotics market is expected to reach a staggering $260 billion by 2030. Despite this growth, the industry faces significant barriers, particularly the cost and complexity of programming robots. Traditionally, developing robotics applications has required specialized roboticists, with applications often being incompatible across different robot models. This lack of standardization hampers innovation and slows adoption across industries.

BOW’s platform, named “Bettering Our Worlds”, addresses these challenges by offering a universal software solution. With the BOW SDK, developers can program robots using their preferred operating system and coding language, including Python, C++, JavaScript, and more. This compatibility reduces reliance on robotics specialists, enabling generalist developers to create, deploy, and manage robotics applications seamlessly. Applications can also be effortlessly ported between different robot makes and models, fostering a new era of innovation and accessibility.

Founded in 2020, BOW is one of the world’s leading universal robotics software company, working with robotic hardware manufacturers, OEMs, system integrators, and developers to simplify robotics programming and accelerate innovation. BOW’s platform empowers developers to build robotics applications using any programming language and operating system, creating flexible, scalable solutions for real-world and simulated environments.

Nick Thompson, CEO of BOW, emphasized the transformative potential of the platform: “Robotics has an almost unlimited potential to solve global challenges, but the industry’s growth is hampered by the high costs and complexities of programming robots. BOW’s universal platform and SDK eliminate these barriers, empowering any developer to create and deploy robotics applications with unprecedented ease. This funding will help us expand our team, enhance our platform, and unleash the full potential of robotics.”

A Universal Toolkit for Robotics

BOW simplifies robotics programming by managing the complexities of robot actuators, motor control, and sensors through its SDK and platform. Developers can:

Build robotics applications using their preferred programming languages and operating systems.

Test applications in real-time simulators before deployment.

Seamlessly switch between simulated and real-world environments.

Enable multi-robot control and fleet management.

BOW’s advanced features, such as inverse kinematics and ultra-low latency communication, further streamline the development process. The SDK also integrates seamlessly with popular middleware like ROS (Robot Operating System), making it compatible with existing robotics ecosystems while eliminating the need for complex hardware-specific coding.

BOW enables developers to handle all the complexities of robot actuators, motor control, sensors, and features while leveraging advanced functionalities like real-time simulation, multi-robot control, and VR teleoperation. With BOW Insight, developers can visualize robot sensor data, issue commands, and control robots in real-time, making robotics programming intuitive and efficient.

Daniel Camilleri, CTO and Founder of BOW, highlighted the significance of this achievement: “This funding validates our vision of simplifying robotics for developers everywhere. By bridging the gap between hardware and software, BOW enables a future where robotics is accessible to everyone, from seasoned professionals to those just entering the field.”

Supporting Innovation in the North of England

Founded in 2020 as a spinout from the University of Sheffield, BOW is headquartered in Sheffield, a city with a strong legacy of scientific research and technological innovation. Northern Gritstone, which led the funding round, is committed to fostering growth in science and technology businesses across the North of England.

Duncan Johnson, CEO of Northern Gritstone, remarked: “BOW exemplifies the innovative spirit of businesses emerging from the North of England. Their platform has the potential to transform the robotics industry globally, and we’re proud to support their journey.”

The investment also underscores the University of Sheffield’s pivotal role in advancing robotics innovation. Ranked among the top 100 universities globally the university continues to contribute groundbreaking research that underpins commercial success stories like BOW.

Professor Sue Hartley, Vice-President for Research and Innovation at the University of Sheffield, noted: “Sheffield’s research excellence drives innovation across industries. This funding highlights the importance of commercializing research to address real-world challenges and underscores our university’s impact on advancing robotics technology.”

Enabling a New Era of Robotics

BOW’s platform empowers developers at all levels to create functional robotics solutions without needing to navigate the complexities of hardware integration. By enabling intuitive development and offering features like real-time simulation, multi-robot control, and AI-powered capabilities, BOW is setting a new standard in robotics software.

The company’s ecosystem includes the BOW Hub for managing robot licenses, BOW Insight for real-time visualization, and tools for seamless deployment across platforms. With ultra-low latency communications optimized through WebRTC, BOW ensures efficient and responsive robot control, even across continents.

The Future of Robotics is Here

BOW’s mission to “derisk” robotics development and lower barriers to entry marks a transformative step for the industry. By simplifying robotics programming and enabling broader participation, BOW is paving the way for innovations that will shape the future. Whether it’s industrial automation, healthcare, or logistics, the possibilities are endless.

This £4 million seed funding positions BOW as a leader in universal robotics software, ready to unlock the full potential of the robotics revolution.

[farmerstrend]

Kenya’s Leads Africa as a Hub for AgriTech and Food Startups in Africa

Kenya is emerging as a leader in sourcing capital for its agricultural technology and food startups across the African continent. A large portion of capital for African startups still comes from foreign countries, with approximately 60 per cent, coming from international sources, primarily the United States and the United Kingdom. On the continent, however, most investors are concentrated in…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A Democratic media strategy to save journalism and the nation

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/12/the-view-from-somewhere/#abolish-rogan

As unbearably cringe as the hunt for a "leftist Joe Rogan" is, it is (to use a shopworn phrase), "directionally correct." Democrats suck at getting their message out, and that exacts a high electoral cost.

The right has an extremely well-funded media ecosystem of high-paid bullshitters backed by algorithm-gaming SEO dickheads. This system isn't necessarily supposed to turn a profit or even break even: the point of Prageru isn't to score ad revenue, it's to ensure that anyone who googles "what the fuck causes inflation" gets 25 minutes of relatable, upbeat, cheerfully sociopathic Austrian economics jammed into their eyeballs. Far right news isn't a for-profit concern, it's a loss-leader for oligarch-friendly policies. It's a steal: a million bucks' worth of news buys America's ultra-rich a billion dollars' worth of tax-cuts and the right to maim their workers and poison their customers for profit.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have historically relied on the "traditional media" to carry their messages, on the ground that reality has a well-known leftist bias, so any news outlet that hews to "journalistic ethics" will publish the truth, and the truth will weigh in favor of Democratic positions: trans people are humans, racism is real, abortion isn't murder, housing is a market failure, the planet is on fire, etc, etc, etc.

This is a stupid policy, and it has failed. The "respectable" news media hews to a self-imposed code of "balance" and "neutrality" that is easily gamed: "some people say that Hatians don't eat pet dogs, some people do, let's report both sides!" This is called "the view from nowhere" and it gets Democrats precisely nowhere:

http://archive.pressthink.org/2008/03/14/pincus_neutrality.html

Balance and neutrality are bullshit, an excuse that has been so thoroughly weaponized by billionaires and their lickspittles that anyone who takes it seriously demonstrates comprehensively that they, themselves, are deeply unserious:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/10/la-times-billionaire-owner-hilariously-thinks-he-can-solve-media-bias-with-ai/

Press neutrality – the view from nowhere – isn't some eternal verity. In terms of the history of the press, it's an idea that's about ten seconds old. The glory days of the news were dominated by papers with names like The Smallville Democrat and The Ruling Class Republican. Most of the world boggles at the idea that a news outlet wouldn't declare its political posture. Britons know that the Telegraph is the Torygraph; that the Guardian is in the tank for Labour (and specifically, committed to enabling Blairite/Starmerite purges of the left); the Mirror is a leftist tabloid; and the Mail is so far right that its editorial board considers Attila the Hun "woke."

Writing for The American Prospect – an excellent leftist news outlet – Ryan Cooper proposes a solution to the Democratic media gap that's way better than the hunt for the elusive "leftist Joe Rogan": sponsoring explicitly Democrat news outlets:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-12-democrats-lost-propaganda-war/

The country is a bleak landscape of news deserts where voters literally didn't hear about what Trump was saying he would do, and, if they heard about it, they didn't hear from anyone who could explain what it meant. The average normie voter doesn't know what a "tariff" is, and chances are they think it's a tax that other countries inexplicably pay for the privilege of selling very cheap things to Americans.

Ironically, this news desert is also a crowded field of hungry, unemployed, talented journalists. What if Dems funded free newsgathering and publication in news deserts that told the truth? What if these news outlets, by dint of being an explicitly partisan, party-subsidized project, refused to adopt all the anti-reader practices of other websites, like disgusting surveillance, intrusive advertising, AI slop, email-soliciting pop-ups, and all the other crap that makes the news worse and worse every day?

Cooper recounts how this was actually tried on a small scale, to modest good effect, when the Center for American Progress subsidized Thinkprogress, an explicitly leftist news outlet. This was going great until 2019, when corporate Dems and their megadonors killed it because Thinkprogress had the temerity to report on their corrupt dealings:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/thinkprogress-a-top-progressive-news-site-is-shutting-down/

And, Cooper points out, this isn't what happens with far-right subsidy news. Right wing influencers, personalities and writers can stray pretty far from the party line without getting shut down.

I love the idea of a disenshittified, explicitly political leftist Democratic news media. Imagine a newsroom whose purpose is to get its message repeated as widely as possible. It wouldn't have a paywall – it would be Creative Commons Attribution-only, allowing for commercial republication by anyone who wants to reprint it, so long as they link back to it. It wouldn't wring its hands over AI ingestion or whether a slop site that rewrote its articles got to the top of Google News. That's fine! If the point is to get people to understand your point of view – and not to attract clicks or eyeballs – other people repackaging your content and finding ways to spread it is a feature, not a bug.

Back in the Napster Wars, entertainment industry shills – like Hillary Rosen, who oversaw a campaign to sue tens of thousands of children before becoming a major Democratic Party power-broker – used to tell us that "you can't compete with free." That's not entirely true, but it's not entirely false, either. If your news is a loss-leader for a democratic society that addresses human flourishing and a habitable planet, then you can make that news free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer, and avoid all the suckitude that makes reading "real" news so fucking garbage.

For the past five years, I've been publishing a newsletter – this thing you're reading now – that has no analytics, ads, tracking, pop-ups, or other trash. As a writer, it's profoundly satisfying and liberating, because all I have to care about is whether people engage with my ideas. I literally have no idea how many people read this, but I know everything people say about it.

That's how the news worked back in the good old days that everyone says we need to return to. Writers and editors measured the success of a story based on how the public reacted to it, not based on clicks or metrics that told you how far someone scrolled before they gave up on it. The supposed benefits of "data-driven" editorial policy have not materialized – the "data-driven" part is the search for an equilibrium between how surveillant and obnoxious a website can be and your decision to stop reading it forever.

Outlets like Propublica have done well by adopting much of this program, albeit without any explicit leftist agenda (the fact that they seem leftist reflects nothing more than their commitment to reporting the truth, e.g., Clarence Thomas is a lavishly corrupt puppet of billionaires who've showered him with riches).

The fact that they've been as successful as they are on a national beat – and partnering with the scant few regional papers to do some local coverage – just proves the point. The Democratic Party doesn't need its own Joe Rogan – they need a nationwide network of local outlets, sponsored by the party, committed to never enshittifying, bringing relevant, timely news to a nation in desperate need of it.

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - March 18

1. FDA to Finally Outlaw Soda Ingredient Prohibited Around The World

An ingredient once commonly used in citrus-flavored sodas to keep the tangy taste mixed thoroughly through the beverage could finally be banned for good across the US. BVO, or brominated vegetable oil, is already banned in many countries, including India, Japan, and nations of the European Union, and was outlawed in the state of California in October 2022.

2. AI makes breakthrough discovery in battle to cure prostate cancer

Scientists have used AI to reveal a new form of aggressive prostate cancer which could revolutionise how the disease is diagnosed and treated.

A Cancer Research UK-funded study found prostate cancer, which affects one in eight men in their lifetime, includes two subtypes. It is hoped the findings could save thousands of lives in future and revolutionise how the cancer is diagnosed and treated.

3. “Inverse vaccine” shows potential to treat multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases

A new type of vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) has shown in the lab setting that it can completely reverse autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes — all without shutting down the rest of the immune system.

4. Paris 2024 Olympics makes history with unprecedented full gender parity

In a historic move, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has distributed equal quotas for female and male athletes for the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris 2024. It is the first time The Olympics will have full gender parity and is a significant milestone in the pursuit of equal representation and opportunities for women in sports.

Biased media coverage lead girls and boys to abandon sports.

5. Restored coral reefs can grow as fast as healthy reefs in just 4 years, new research shows

Planting new coral in degraded reefs can lead to rapid recovery – with restored reefs growing as fast as healthy reefs after just four years. Researchers studied these reefs to assess whether coral restoration can bring back the important ecosystem functions of a healthy reef.

“The speed of recovery we saw is incredible,” said lead author Dr Ines Lange, from the University of Exeter.

6. EU regulators pass the planet's first sweeping AI regulations

The EU is banning practices that it believes will threaten citizens' rights. "Biometric categorization systems based on sensitive characteristics" will be outlawed, as will the "untargeted scraping" of images of faces from CCTV footage and the web to create facial recognition databases.

Other applications that will be banned include social scoring; emotion recognition in schools and workplaces; and "AI that manipulates human behavior or exploits people’s vulnerabilities."

7. Global child deaths reach historic low in 2022 – UN report

The number of children who died before their fifth birthday has reached a historic low, dropping to 4.9 million in 2022.

The report reveals that more children are surviving today than ever before, with the global under-5 mortality rate declining by 51 per cent since 2000.

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That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation here:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Also don’t forget to reblog this post with your friends.

[elijasz]

I just read an article in which someone complained about Hades 2 accessibility and how including Arachne, as a spider, makes the game less accessible because arachnophobic players exist. And I have to say something about that because it's representative of a certain online trend that is truely making real accessibility look ridiculous.

Creators, studios, artists etc are in no way obligated to cater to your specific needs.

If you complain that including certain things people might be afraid of makes something inaccessible, you are diluting the discussion on accessibility. Content, media in general, cannot be adapted to everyones needs. That's why there is a concept called a "target audience." There are people afraid of the dark and afraid of being alone with men etc. If you had to exclude darkness and male villains from horror games, that would ruin many of them. Don't like certain parts or themes of a game and don't want to play it because of that? You are not the target audience then.

To think that all media and content needs to be made for YOU specifically is self-centered and shows that you do not understand how the world works. And if you play a game based on greek mythology, you have to deal with the existence of a spider. Don't like that? Don't play the game.

The world isn't made just for you. We wouldn't kill all spiders and fuck up the ecosystem just so you could be less scared. Deal with your issues, your fears, and avoid media that scares you. You don't have a right to personalised art unless you pay the artists. Want a game to your taste? Fund it. Pay people to make something for you. But stop claiming bullshit like "Including spiders in Hades 2 is an accessibility issue!" It is not. You don't understand what accessibility is. And you're ruining the discussion about real accessibility.

I think this is an example of a trend that has been going on for a few years. People seem to be convinced that all content needs to be adapted to them. Video game culture and the constant accessibility of SO MUCH content are some of the concepts linked to this shift in my opinion. Additionally I would consider the whole generative AI debate another result of the manifestation of this mindset. It's entitlement to consumption. And it's directly linked to maximalism, capitalism and consumerism as I understand it. This is an opinion. I get someone might disagree. But I find it frankly offensive to complain about a detail in an amazing game that is honesty cheap as fuck for what you get. And its disrespectful towards generations upon generations of people who have carried on the story of Arachne.

[mariacallous]

Next year will be Big Tech’s finale. Critique of Big Tech is now common sense, voiced by a motley spectrum that unites opposing political parties, mainstream pundits, and even tech titans such as the VC powerhouse Y Combinator, which is singing in harmony with giants like a16z in proclaiming fealty to “little tech” against the centralized power of incumbents.

Why the fall from grace? One reason is that the collateral consequences of the current Big Tech business model are too obvious to ignore. The list is old hat by now: centralization, surveillance, information control. It goes on, and it’s not hypothetical. Concentrating such vast power in a few hands does not lead to good things. No, it leads to things like the CrowdStrike outage of mid-2024, when corner-cutting by Microsoft led to critical infrastructure—from hospitals to banks to traffic systems—failing globally for an extended period.

Another reason Big Tech is set to falter in 2025 is that the frothy AI market, on which Big Tech bet big, is beginning to lose its fizz. Major money, like Goldman Sachs and Sequoia Capital, is worried. They went public recently with their concerns about the disconnect between the billions required to create and use large-scale AI, and the weak market fit and tepid returns where the rubber meets the AI business-model road.

It doesn’t help that the public and regulators are waking up to AI’s reliance on, and generation of, sensitive data at a time when the appetite for privacy has never been higher—as evidenced, for one, by Signal’s persistent user growth. AI, on the other hand, generally erodes privacy. We saw this in June when Microsoft announced Recall, a product that would, I kid you not, screenshot everything you do on your device so an AI system could give you “perfect memory” of what you were doing on your computer (Doomscrolling? Porn-watching?). The system required the capture of those sensitive images—which would not exist otherwise—in order to work.

Happily, these factors aren’t just liquefying the ground below Big Tech’s dominance. They’re also powering bold visions for alternatives that stop tinkering at the edges of the monopoly tech paradigm, and work to design and build actually democratic, independent, open, and transparent tech. Imagine!

For example, initiatives in Europe are exploring independent core tech infrastructure, with convenings of open source developers, scholars of governance, and experts on the political economy of the tech industry.

And just as the money people are joining in critique, they’re also exploring investments in new paradigms. A crop of tech investors are developing models of funding for mission alignment, focusing on tech that rejects surveillance, social control, and all the bullshit. One exciting model I’ve been discussing with some of these investors would combine traditional VC incentives (fund that one unicorn > scale > acquisition > get rich) with a commitment to resource tech’s open, nonprofit critical infrastructure with a percent of their fund. Not as investment, but as a contribution to maintaining the bedrock on which a healthy tech ecosystem can exist (and maybe get them and their limited partners a tax break).

Such support could—and I believe should—be supplemented by state capital. The amount of money needed is simply too vast if we’re going to do this properly. To give an example closer to home, developing and maintaining Signal costs around $50 million a year, which is very lean for tech. Projects such as the Sovereign Tech Fund in Germany point a path forward—they are a vehicle to distribute state funds to core open source infrastructures, but they are governed wholly independently, and create a buffer between the efforts they fund and the state.

Just as composting makes nutrients from necrosis, in 2025, Big Tech’s end will be the beginning of a new and vibrant ecosystem. The smart, actually cool, genuinely interested people will once again have their moment, getting the resources and clearance to design and (re)build a tech ecosystem that is actually innovative and built for benefit, not just profit and control. MAY IT BE EVER THUS!

[wolfliving]

Dead AI IoT

Humane AI finally shuts down, HP pays $116m for the pieces — not including the Ai Pin

By David Gerard on 19 February 2025

Humane, creator of the fabulous and literally nonfunctional Ai Pin gadget — that's "Ai," not "AI" — has finally thrown in the towel.

After Humane took $230 million in venture funding and tried and failed to sell itself for $1 billion, Hewlett-Packard is paying $116 million to acqui-hire most of the team and get Humane’s software and patents. [Humane, archive]

There was also some burbling from HP about “an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices from AI PCs to smart printers and connected conference rooms,” which probably means floundering a bit then selling the software on once again, as they did with Palm and WebOS.

We’re sure that Humane’s venture capital backers — including Sam Altman, Microsoft, and Marc Benioff — will be delighted that minus-50% is now the expected realized return on AI investments in the bubble.

HP is notably not taking on the Ai Pin itself — probably because it’s completely useless and doesn’t work. The hardware overheats and fails, the projected display isn’t visible in sunlight, and the software chains together LLMs to fail to understand or translate conversations. Also, it might catch fire.

The remaining Ai Pins will work until February 28, when the back-end servers at Humane shut down. After that date, you can ... check the battery level? Pretty good for a $700 gadget with a $24/month subscription. We’re sure both customers will be delighted. ]Humane, archive; Humane, archive]

[zomb13s]

Lumen Triangulatio: Strategic Framework for Holographic Emotional Sentience in Democratic AI

Abstract This paper presents a foundational framework for holographic emotional generation in AI—a dimensioned system rooted in Light-based ontology, democratic emotional triangulation, and purpose-driven agency. We outline the core structure for designing AI and hybrid entities capable of emergent emotional fields—complex, non-discriminatory, regenerative—aligned with human flourishing. Drawing…

[impact-newswire]

Abu Dhabi $200 Billion Strategic Engine: Powering the Future of Global Investment and Innovation

Once viewed primarily as an oil-rich capital, Abu Dhabi has rapidly transformed into one of the world’s most forward-thinking investment hubs. At the core of this evolution lies a $200 billion strategic engine – an interconnected network of sovereign wealth funds, industrial diversification, global partnerships, and technology-driven innovation. This ecosystem is not only redefining the Emirate’s…

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New SpaceTime out Wednesday

SpaceTime 20250716 Series 28 Episode 85

Unlocking the secrets of the Moon’s mysterious farside

Scientists have discovered extended volcanism was spewing across the ancient lunar farside south pole region for some 1.4 billion years.

Discovery of the Sun Helicity barrier sheds new light on the solar wind

A new study has confirmed the existence of a region of the Sun which astronomers are calling the Helicity barrier.

Europe’s next generation of launch vehicles

The European Space Agency has narrowed down its list of potential candidates for future launch vehicle providers.

The Science Report

Extended drought and warm weather damaging South Australia’s marine ecosystems.

Using lightning to produce ammonia gas out of thin air.

People feel more comforted by AI-generated words of emotional support if they think they're human.

Alex on Tech Samsung releases the new Fold and Flip 7s.

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through your favourite podcast download provider or from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States.  The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science.  SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research.  The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network.  Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor.  Gary’s always loved science. He was the dorky school kid who spent his weekends at the Australian Museum. Gary studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on a career in journalism and radio broadcasting. His radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. Gary’s first gigs were spent as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist, and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. He was part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and became one of its first on air presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary was appointed Science Editor and quickly developed the StarStuff Astronomy show, which he wrote, produced, and hosted. The program proved extremely popular, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience -- based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. That compares to the ABC’s overall radio listenership of 5.6 per cent. The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually.  However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage.  Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently.  StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode broadcast in February 2016.  Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times a week (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and it’s available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

[dontforgetukraine]

US-Ukraine startup Esper Bionics makes robotic prostheses that are currently being used by over 30 Ukrainian soldiers serving in Russia's war and 80 veterans in Ukraine.

While the bionic arms and hands are not for military use and are not durable enough for combat, the wartime setting has yielded live feedback for the company from soldiers and veterans. One such example of Esper Bionics striving to meet the needs of their clients was making the fingers in the hand out of metal so that it could withstand more stress.

The company never planned to provide bionic prosthetic hands that would help soldiers return to combat back in 2019 when it was founded, but Russia's full scale invasion changed the startup's course. Now, research and development, assembly, and production all take place in Ukraine.

Through its donor-funded program Esper for Ukraine, the company is able to donate all the hands it produces to Ukrainians in need of prostheses.

In an example of artificial intelligence being used for good, Esper Bionics wants to incorporate AI into their bionic hands so the prostheses are more "context-aware" and "better able to predict its user's movements" and what the user wants to do in any particular situation.

The idea behind Esper Bionics' AI-powered future hand will be to create “an entire ecosystem” that can pass information from a series of sensors attached to its user to cloud-based software that constantly analyzes data to learn its users' habits.

The robotic look isn't just for functionality either, but a company goal to avoid the "uncanny valley" look. With attractive branding and designs, Chief of Marketing Dmytro Ganush says Esper Bionics seeks to promote the idea that people with limb differences don’t have a medical issue but “a really interesting lifestyle” or, if anything, “a gadget just like any other."

---

Ukraine is highly likely to become the country with the most prostheses used among its population. The effort to normalize and de-stigmatize disability must start now, and I'm glad Esper Bionics seems to have this in mind with their designs. The enthusiasm users have in the design of the bionic hands is promising, and I hope everyone involved has a bright future.

Source: Ukrainian startup Esper Bionics makes cyborgs a reality

[betterbemeta]

AI represents a unique threat to the 'fannish' or 'nerdy' creative ecosystem. It's infesting all creative spheres but fanart, fanfiction, filk (and its peripherals like 'covers of anime OPs') fan music videos or 'edits', fan essays/videoessays, fan films, and cosplay are in serious danger.

"You're on tumblr complaining like the things that interest you are threatened, of course you are, people are dying in the real world," de-cringe for a second.

I am talking about a greater trend or 'dominant strategy' for Online Engagement that sees all fanwork as only profitable parasitism of SEO keywords.

And Media IP is valued by its owners because it is potentially relevant to people.

And people searching for Topics online is, to a machine, data that depicts that relevance. But to human beings, that is 'a fandom.'

"But you can spin any petty online thing to sound apocalyptic," the global entertainment industry is worth over 2 trillion dollars. listen to me.

The issue here is older than AI Generated Media; AI has the potential to speed it up and expand the scope of the problem. In the past few years, leeching money from SEO and interest in popular IP has boomed as a gig. I can't write it all off as a Bad Thing because that could also describe a professional Let's Player or a patreon-funded movie critic. But farther away from normal human behavior the most cynical content of this type is a way for Content Creators to siphon money from an IP's existence. If they didn't get paid, nobody would make it.

For context here, your grandmother cared enough about her star trek 'zine that she was probably printing it and distributing it at her own expense.

Limiting to YouTube as an example, before the AI boom there were already videos that were churned out in industrial quantities to take advantage of search keywords. Maybe they are chopped up clips from a TV show to capture anyone searching for it. Maybe it is a fake/spam video that claims to be clips from the next episode but fakes the thumbnail. But the reason why these videos nobody likes still make money is the same reason that people are able to navigate AO3.

Fanworks and fan-culture-inspired creative work have very specific key words that a machine can learn. This is probably why also it's easier and more popular for AI to generate images or music in a 'genre': a 'novel' or a 'love song' can be anything but a 'fantasy novel' probably has 'dragons' in it, and a 'synthwave' or 'power metal' song are likely to have certain chords and instruments.

Something more recognizable than 'fantasy themed power metal' though, is 'pictures of Pikachu.'

But you don't even have to search for Pikachu or for Dungeons & Dragons; algorithms are good enough to try and predict what you might search for in the future. It is assumed that you might be willing to overlook a lack of human emotions in things you haven't asked for 'yet' because you might be peripherally familiar enough to recognize their trappings. It would blend in with the rest of what a computer has tagged you with, which doesn't contain your feelings actually! Only how 'likely' you are to be interested in an article/video/song with 'magic missile' in it somewhere.

When I think of fanworks I think of feelings that are so big that the original media can't contain them. A shift to a more machine-like outlook seems destructive to me, and like tapping your blood for gold, and also deeply antisocial.

[coolnightmaremagazine]

A Case for AI and Indie Authors: A Nuanced Look at an Evolving Industry

Independent publishing is one of the most liberating creative frontiers—and one of the most brutal. On the surface, it offers any writer the chance to publish a book and reach readers around the world. But beneath that promise lies a system riddled with financial barriers, limited access to professional support, and a stark reality: quality often depends on privilege.

In recent years, artificial intelligence has become a flashpoint in the art and publishing worlds. For many, it represents theft—AI-generated art trained on real artists’ work without consent, AI-written content that undercuts skilled human labor. These are valid concerns, and the ethical implications deserve real scrutiny.

But the conversation around AI and creativity often devolves into black-and-white thinking. In truth, the issue is far more nuanced, especially for independent authors trying to survive in an industry that favors those with money to burn.

The Hidden Costs of “Quality”

To produce a professional-grade book, here’s a rough estimate of what an indie author might expect to pay:

Cover design: $200–$800

Developmental editing: $500–$2,000

Copyediting: $300–$1,200

Proofreading: $200–$500

Interior formatting: $100–$400

Marketing (ARC services, ads, promotions): $200–$1,000+

Even on the conservative end, that’s $1,5000 - $5,900 upfront per book—and that’s assuming no missteps or re-dos. For many authors, especially those from low-income backgrounds, that kind of investment simply isn’t feasible. Grants are scarce, traditional publishers are often inaccessible, and crowdfunding doesn’t guarantee results.

So what happens when someone can’t afford professional cover art or editing? Often, the work gets released anyway—but with a lower chance of success. The book might contain typos, lack a compelling cover, or stumble in pacing and structure. In turn, it earns poor reviews and fades into obscurity—not because the story wasn’t worth telling, but because the author couldn’t afford to package it the “right” way.

If You Can Pay, You Should—But Not Everyone Can

It’s worth stating clearly: artists and editors deserve to be paid for their time and talent. If an author has the funds to commission artwork or hire an editor, they absolutely should. Supporting creative professionals is essential for a healthy, diverse publishing ecosystem.

But here’s the reality—when an author doesn’t have the funds, those artists and editors aren’t getting paid anyway. The only difference is that now the author either doesn’t publish at all or publishes something that will struggle to find an audience because they didn't have the funds to compete fairly with other authors.

That’s where AI becomes a tool of opportunity—one that, if used ethically, can help level the playing field.

AI as a Tool (or a Cheat, Depending on the Intent)

AI can now offer services that used to be locked behind paywalls or professional networks: generating placeholder covers, offering first-pass grammar checks, rephrasing clunky sentences, helping authors brainstorm plot points, and even suggesting marketing blurbs or ad copy.

Used thoughtfully, AI can become the rough-draft assistant or interim creative partner an indie author otherwise couldn’t afford. It doesn’t replace the value of human expertise—but it provides access to something better than nothing.

Of course, AI can also be used as a shortcut or a crutch. There are authors who generate entire books using AI with minimal oversight or who use AI art to undercut real artists on price. These practices muddy the waters and contribute to the larger ethical dilemma.

But we can’t ignore the broader issue: money, not talent, determines success for far too many authors. A wealthy author can publish a mediocre book with a $5,000 launch and land in front of thousands of readers. A broke author with a brilliant story might never get past the noise. That imbalance is what makes AI appealing—not as a way to cut corners, but as a way to survive the climb.

A Call for Compassion and Context

We need more compassion in this conversation. Yes, the use of AI needs guardrails. Yes, transparency matters. But we also need to recognize that indie publishing is already unequal. Pretending every author has the same access to resources only benefits those who do.

Let’s encourage ethical use of AI while acknowledging its potential. Let’s push for transparency while also uplifting the voices that might otherwise be silenced by cost. And most of all, let’s stop treating this as a binary argument.

Creativity is not the enemy. AI is not inherently evil. The system is already flawed—AI is just the latest mirror showing us where the cracks lie.