Kalakshar US

If extreme challenges are your cup of tea, NASA has the perfect opportunity for you. The space agency put out a call on Friday for volunteers to participate in its second yearlong simulated Mars mission, the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA 2). For the duration of the mission, which will start in spring 2025, the four selected crew members will be housed in a 1,700-square-foot 3D-printed habitat in Houston. NASA is accepting applications on the CHAPEA website from now through April 2. It’s a paid gig, but NASA hasn’t publicly said how much participants will be compensated.

The Mars Dune Alpha habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center is designed to simulate what life might be like for future explorers on the red planet, where the environment is harsh and resources will be limited. There’s a crew currently living and working there as part of the first CHAPEA mission, which is now more than halfway through its 378-day assignment. During their stay, volunteers will perform habitat maintenance and grow crops, among other tasks. The habitat also has a 1,200-square-foot sandbox attached to it for simulated spacewalks.

To be considered, applicants must be a US citizen aged 30-55, speak English proficiently and have a master’s degree in a STEM field, plus at least two years of professional experience, a minimum of one thousand hours piloting an aircraft or two years of work toward a STEM doctoral program. Certain types of professional experience may allow applicants without a master’s to qualify too. CHAPEA 2 is the second of three mission NASA has planned for the program, the first of which began on June 25, 2023. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasa-is-looking-for-volunteers-to-live-in-its-mars-simulation-for-a-year-172926396.html?src=rss 

Sometimes, timing ruins things. Take this week, instead of detailing the disgust I feel towards this ‘meaty’ rice, this week’s Morning After sets its sights on Mark Zuckerberg, the multimillionaire who’s decided to review technology now. Does he know that’s my gig?

The Meta boss unfavorably compared Apple’s new Vision Pro to his company’s Meta Quest 3 headset, which is a delightfully hollow and petty reason to ‘review’ something. But hey, I had to watch it. And now maybe, you’ll watch me? 

We also look closer at Waymo’s disastrous December, where two of its robotaxis collided with a truck. The … same truck.

This week:

🥽🥽: Zuckerberg thinks the Quest 3 is a ‘better product’ than the Vision Pro

🤖🚙💥💥: Waymo robotaxis crash into the same pickup truck, twice

🚭🛫🚫: United Airlines grounds new Airbus fleet over no smoking sign law

Read this:

GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy group, has published its first annual report on the video game industry. It found that nearly 20 percent of all players in the United States identify as LGBTQ, yet just 2 percent of games contain characters and storylines relevant to this community. And half of those might be Baldur’s Gate 3 alone. (I half-joke.) The report notes that not only does representation matter to many LGBTQ players, but also that new generations of gamers are only becoming increasingly more open to queer content regardless of their sexual orientation. We break down the full report here.

Like email more than video? Subscribe right here for daily reports, direct to your inbox.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-zuckerbergs-vision-pro-review-and-robotaxis-crashing-twice-into-same-truck-150021958.html?src=rss 

Some Wyze camera owners have reported that they were suddenly given access to cameras that weren’t theirs and even got notifications for events inside other people’s homes. Wyze cofounder David Crosby has confirmed the issue to The Verge, telling the publications that “some users were able to see thumbnails of cameras that were not their own in the Events tab.” Users started seeing strangers’ camera feeds in their accounts after an outage that Wyze said was caused by an Amazon Web Services problem. 

Crosby wrote in a post on the Wyze forum that the company’s servers got overloaded, which corrupted some user data, after the outage. The security issue that resulted from that event then allowed users to “see thumbnails of cameras that were not their own in the Events tab.” Users couldn’t view those videos and could only see their thumbnails, he clarified, and they were not able to view live streams from other people’s cameras. Wyze was able to identify 14 incidents before taking down the Events tab altogether. 

The company said it’s going to notify all affected users and that it has forcibly logged out everyone who’ve recently used the Wyze app in order to reset tokens. “We will explain in more detail once we finish investigating exactly how this happened and further steps we will take to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Crosby added. 

While the company doesn’t have a detailed explanation for what happened yet, its swift confirmation of the incident is a huge departure from how it previously dealt with a security flaw. Back in 2022, cybersecurity firm Bitdefender revealed that in March 2019, it informed Wyze of a major security vulnerability in the Wyze Cam v1 model. The company didn’t inform customers about the flaw, however, and didn’t even issue a fix until three years later.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wyze-camera-security-issue-allowed-users-to-see-other-owners-homes-140059114.html?src=rss 

Ever posted or left a comment on Reddit? Your words will soon be used to train an artificial intelligence companies’ models, according to Bloomberg. The website signed a deal that’s “worth about $60 million on an annualized basis” earlier this year, it reportedly told potential investors ahead of its expected initial public offering (IPO). Bloomberg didn’t name the “large AI company” that’s paying Reddit millions for access to its content, but their agreement could apparently serve as a model for future contracts, which could mean more multi-million deals for the firm. 

Reddit first announced that it was going to start charging companies for API access in April last year. It said at the time that pricing will be split in tiers so that even smaller clientele could afford to pay. Companies need that API access to be able to train their chatbots on posts and comments — a lot of which had been written by real people over the past 18 years — from subreddits on a wide variety of topics. However, that API is also used by other developers, including those providing users with third-party clients that are arguably better than Reddit’s official app. Thousands of communities shut down last year in protest and even caused stability issues that affected the whole website. 

Reddit could go public as soon as next month with a $5 billion valuation. As Bloomberg notes, the website could convince investors still on fence to take the leap by showing them that it can make big money and grow its revenue through deals with AI companies. The firms behind generative AI technologies are working to update their large language models or LLMs through various partnerships, after all. OpenAI, for instance, already inked an agreement that would give it the right to use Business Insider and Politico articles to train its AI models. It’s also in talks with several publishers, including CNN, Fox Corp and Time, Bloomberg says.  

OpenAI is facing several lawsuits that accuse it of using content without the express permission of copyright holders, though, including one filed by The New York Times in December. The AI company previously told Engadget that the lawsuit was unexpected, because it had ongoing “productive conversations” with the publication for a “high-value partnership.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/reddit-reportedly-signed-a-multi-million-content-licensing-deal-with-an-ai-company-124516009.html?src=rss 

Amazon, a company that employs more than 1.54 million people, has claimed that the National Labor Relations Board Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency responsible for protecting the rights of workers, is unconstitutional. Amazon made the claim in a legal document filed on Thursday as part of a case in which prosecutors from the Board have accused the e-commerce giant of discrimination against workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island who had voted to unionize, according to The New York Times.

Amazon is not the first company to challenge the Board’s constitutionality. Last month, Elon Musk’s SpaceX sued the NLRB after the agency accused the company of unlawfully firing eight employees and called the agency “unconstitutional” in the lawsuit. Weeks later, grocery chain Trader Joe’s, which the NLRB accused of union-busting, said that the NLRB’s structure and organization was “unconstitutional,” Bloomberg reported. And in separate lawsuits, two Starbucks baristas have independently challenged the agency’s structure as they sought to dissolve their unions.

Amazon’s claim is similar to the existing claims filed by SpaceX and Trader Joe’s. In the lawsuit, the company’s lawyers argued that “the structure of the N.L.R.B. violates the separation of powers” by “impeding the executive power provided for in Article II of the United States Constitution.” In addition, Amazon claimed that the NLRB’s hearings “can seek legal remedies beyond what’s allowed without a trial by jury.”

Seth Goldstein, a lawyer who represents unions in the Amazon and Trader Joe’s cases told Reuters that these challenges to the NLRB increase the chances of the issue reaching the Supreme Court. And they might cause employers to stop bargaining with unions in hope that courts will finally strip the federal agency of its powers, Goldstein said. Amazon has a contentious history with the NLRB, which said the company broke federal labor laws last year. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-one-of-the-worlds-largest-employers-has-called-the-national-labor-relations-board-unconstitutional-011519013.html?src=rss