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Blast off! SpaceX launches all-civilian crew for first privately-funded spacewalk- The Week

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Blast off! SpaceX launches all-civilian crew for first privately-funded spacewalk- The Week

Four astronauts have been launched into space, before carrying out the first privately-funded spacewalk, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday. It marks the start of the SpaceX’s five-day Polaris Dawn mission.

Due to “unfavourable weather” the blast-off was delayed for almost two hours.  

ALSO READ | Human health in space: Charting the unknown on Polaris Dawn mission

The four crew onboard include billionaire Jared Isaacman, retired Air Force Thunderbirds pilot Lt Colonel Scott Poteet, and two SpaceX engineers–Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. 

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This is the first privately funded spacewalk. Earlier, only government-funded astronauts have carried out spacewalks.

The spacewalk is scheduled for late Wednesday or Thursday, midway through the five-day flight. Follow the mission here: https://www.spacex.com/follow-dragon

The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half. 

Isaacman and Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch and also test their white-black-trimmed custom suits and see how they’ll hold up in the harsh vacuum. 

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Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder. There will be no jetpack showboating and no dangling at the end of their 12-foot (3.6-metre) tethers. Only NASA’s suits at the space station come equipped with jetpacks, for emergency use only.

Pilot Scott Kidd Poteet and SpaceX’s Anna Menon will monitor the spacewalk from inside. Like SpaceX’s previous astronaut flights, this one will end with a splashdown off the Florida coast.

SpaceX teamed up with Isaacman to pay for spacesuit development and associated costs.

William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX vice president said that we are starting to push the frontiers with the private sector. 

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As SpaceX astronaut trainers, Gillis and Menon helped Isaacman and his previous team and NASA’s professional crews prepare for their rides.

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100 million affected in worst U.S. health care data breach

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100 million affected in worst U.S. health care data breach

Until now, the worst health care data breach occurred in 2015, which compromised 78.8 million people. But the ante has been upped.

The cyberattack in question has hit a new record of 100 million people affected — and just happens to have struck the largest health care company in the world (by revenue), UnitedHealth Group.

The actual incident happened in February 2024, when a ransomware attack caused disruptions at pharmacies all across the country, originally reported by Reuters. The target was Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group that manages finances for medical providers. Cybercriminals reportedly found their way into the Change Healthcare employee system due to a lack of multi-factor authentication on login credentials.

A statement from the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance described the nightmarish results of the hack, which involved prescriptions going unfilled, doctors and hospitals not getting paid, and insurance companies unable to reimburse medical providers. “The Change Healthcare hack is considered by many to be the biggest cybersecurity disruption to health care in American history,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said in the committee statement.

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Approximately a third of all U.S. citizens are somehow connected to the organization, and that includes lots and lots of personal data. We all knew it was bad at the time, as the CEO of Change Healthcare said the stolen files included the personal health data for “a substantial proportion of people in America,” as reported by TechCrunch.

The attack was claimed to have been committed by the BlackCat ransomware gang, which was confirmed by Change Healthcare. A post on the dark web by the Russia-based group later claimed to have stolen the health and patient information of millions of Americans.

But now, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has updated the figure of those affected in its data breach portal to reveal just how bad it really is: a terrifying 100 million people. One industry journal even suggested that the round figure of 100 million could change in the future, as reported by DailyMail. Hopefully that means the actual number could be smaller, but it could just as easily go in the opposite direction.

The sheer scale makes the 5.3 million data breach that affected Mexican health care systems reported on just yesterday look negligible by comparison.

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‘consistent and coherent energy policy’ matters

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'consistent and coherent energy policy' matters


With a historic presidential election just around the corner, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth told CNBC’s Jim Cramer what kind of government action is important for his company.

“What really matters is consistent and coherent energy policy,” he said. “Affordable and reliable energy is essential to keeping inflation at a level that economies can handle — and that’s why we need investments, and we need stable policy to encourage that investment.”

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Wirth stressed that energy is a vital part of the global economy, saying that if supplies are constrained by political actions, it can trigger inflationary reactions across the board. The price of energy, he continued, is “embedded in everything,” and he said other countries are looking to the U.S. for long term commitments about energy and investment in the global supply.

According to Wirth, Chevron is apolitical and tries to work with both parties. He said there are legislators from both sides of aisle — usually from energy producing states — that understand his company’s needs. He said Chevron wants to see people elected to office that believe in free markets, competition and “the economic vitality of this country.”

He also stressed that electricity demand in the U.S. will continue to grow, saying there will be a need for all kinds of power, including wind, solar and natural gas. He added that even though electric vehicles are becoming more popular, combustion engines remain important and produced en masse. And Chevron’s oil has purposes beyond gasoline, he continued. For example, he said, oil helps create petrochemicals which are used for a variety of manufacturing purposes, including to create materials for EVs.

“There’s room for all of it. We’re going to need all of it,” he said, “I want to see every solution that is economic and feasible come to bear.”

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GeForce NOW users can stream Black Ops 6 on launch day

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GeForce NOW users can stream Black Ops 6 on launch day

NVIDIA GeForce NOW is gearing up to supply subscribers with the latest game in the Call of Duty franchise, as Black Ops 6 will be streamable on launch day. Now as with all GeForce NOW games, you still have to own the game through the respective PC client you plan to play on. Unless of course, that happens to be Xbox Game Pass, where you can play the game for free since it’s included with your Game Pass subscription.

This week is packed full of new titles for subscribers as NVIDIA adds 9 new games to the service in total. Although, to be fair, there are technically 10 new games since one of the 9 is the Xbox Game Pass version of Call of Duty HQ: which includes both Modern Warfare III and Warzone.

If Call of Duty isn’t your thing, don’t worry. There are plenty of other amazing games to stream starting today and tomorrow. Not the least of which is Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven from Square Enix.

GeForce NOW subscribers can stream Black Ops 6 from day one

While I won’t always recommend someone stream a game like the latest Call of Duty as opposed to playing it locally, it’s a pretty awesome capability in a pinch. Let’s say you want to play using your phone while you’re not at home. All you have to do is hook up a controller and launch the GeForce NOW mobile app. Simple. Plus it lets you play anywhere you have an internet connection.

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It’s also nice if you have a less powerful PC yet you want to get better performance and graphics. This is especially the case with GeForce NOW Ultimate subscribers. Because they get to stream games off of GeForce RTX 4080 servers.

All of this can be done starting on October 25 as soon as the game goes live for everyone. And it doesn’t matter if you own the game on Steam, Battle.net, or through the Xbox app via purchase or the Xbox Game Pass subscription. All of those are available to stream through GeForce NOW.

Elder Scrolls Online players get a new reward

If you sub to GeForce NOW and you sub to Elder Scrolls Online, then you’re in for another treat. Because NVIDIA has a new reward for players. You’ll need to have opted into the GeForce NOW Rewards to claim the gift. If you fit into that category then you’ll be able to claim Stag-Heart Skull Sallet Hat as a cosmetic item. Which is apparently pretty rare.

You also need to make sure to claim the reward by November 24 or it disappears for good. So don’t miss out. As for this week’s remaining games, GeForce NOW is adding Worshippers of Cthulhu, No More Room In Hell 2, Windblown, DUCKSIDE, Off The Grid, and Selaco.

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Good Omens’ final season will have only one episode

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There’s time for one more Armageddon for Amazon’s Good Omens but not much. announced that Good Omens would return for one final season last year, but it’s only going to have one 90-minute episode that will begin filming in Scotland soon.

Amazon originally confirmed that author Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote the book upon which Good Omens is based with Discworld creator Terry Pratchett, will continue through the final season as the show’s executive producer, writer and showrunner. TVLine says Gaiman “contributed to the episode’s writing,” but “he will not work on the production.”

Gaiman has stepped out of the spotlight and away from several projects based on his works since his sexual assault allegations surfaced in July. The Tortoise Media podcast outlined the author’s alleged behavior with accounts from four women, one of whom signed a non-disclosure agreement. A fifth woman later stepped forward with similar accusations on the podcast. Gaiman denied the allegations and said he was “disturbed” by them, according to .

The allegations paused pre-production for Good Omens’ third season. Gaiman also offered to step away from the show in September, according to .

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Good Omens stars Michael Sheen as the angelic, fussy angel Aziraphale and David Tennant as the free-wheeling demon Crowley who formed an unlikely alliance to prevent the coming of the Antichrist and the fall of humankind. The dramatic comedy started as a limited series on Amazon’s streaming network in 2019 but the show’s popularity prompted a second season in 2020 with an expanded cast including Jon Hamm as the archangel Gabriel.

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DeepMind’s Talker-Reasoner framework brings System 2 thinking to AI agents

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Talker-reasoner agent

Talker-reasoner agent


Talker-Reasoner is inspired by the two-system thinking cognitive framework proposed by Daniel Kahneman.Read More

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Lumen Orbit closed one of the biggest rounds from Y Combinator’s last cohort

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Lumen Orbit, startups, venture capital, space, data centers

Lumen Orbit has closed an oversubscribed, eight-figure seed round of more than $10 million, making it one of, if not the, hottest deal of the most recent Y Combinator batch, a source familiar with the details told TechCrunch.

The Redmond, Washington-based startup is pursuing a moonshot idea to build a network of data centers in space that can scale to a gigawatt capacity and be used to train large AI models. Lumen Orbit declined to comment.

The company went through YC’s 2024 summer batch and garnered a significant amount of attention from VCs, multiple VCs told TC. This interest led to an extremely competitive deal process for the startup’s seed round.

While Lumen has a lofty mission, the company seems to be making notable progress already. It was founded earlier this year and is planning to launch its demonstrator satellite in 2025 in partnership with Nvidia’s Inception program.

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It’s not surprising that a company looking to build data centers in space would garner a lot of interest. There’s such a big scramble to power AI that companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are inking deals with nuclear power plants. Data centers are expected to consume 9% of overall energy consumption in the U.S. by 2030.

Lumen isn’t the only company looking to solve the potential data center crisis, nor is it the only one looking to take the issue to the great beyond. Lonestar Data Holdings is another that has raised $5.8 million and plans to build data centers on the moon.

Venture capitalists recently told TechCrunch that regardless of the data center solution, customer adoption is likely going to be tough for these startups. Still, VCs love to bet on companies with original solutions to big problems.

Lumen was founded in January 2024 by Philip Johnston, CEO, Ezra Feilden, CTO, and Adi Oltean, chief engineer. The startup had previously raised a $2.4 million pre-seed round in March that was led by Nebular with participation from Everywhere Ventures, Tiny VC and Sequoia among others.

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