Elon Musk wants to get to Mars before we nuke ourselves

Elon Musk is bullish on humanity’s chances getting to Mars and even building a city, but he’s not super confident about our odds here on Earth. During a wide-ranging interview with GQ, the SpaceX CEO described planetary colonization as a coldly practical endeavor. “You back up your hard drive… maybe we should back up life, too?” As for how he plans to do it, he said that SpaceX will announce more concrete plans as soon as it’s ready. “Before we announce it, I want to make sure that we’re not gonna make really big changes … I think it’s gonna seem pretty crazy, no matter what.”

Once ready, however, Musk wants to send astronauts there as soon as possible. It’s not a question of technical feasibility, but rather “I don’t think we can discount the possibility of a third World War,” he said. If things went nuclear, he feels it could be “far worse than anything that’s happened before,” and set space technology back decades or worse. Musk famously said that he doesn’t like our chances if we develop true artificial intelligence either, so he’s apparently doubly motivated on colonizing Mars as quickly as possible.

However, Musk has no qualms about triggering nuclear bombs on Mars’ poles in order to make it hotter and more habitable (see the video, above). Meanwhile, NASA actively prohibits potentially contaminated planetary probes from even going the planet’s water-rich zones, let alone nuking it. He deemed it unlikely that it’s something we need to worry about, though. “As far as we can see now, there’s not evidence of life on the surface of Mars at all — the best case is really that there’s subterranean microbial life.” As a result, he has the opposite sentiment of the US space agency. “It would be, I think sort of immoral not to [colonize Mars], if it meant preservation of life on Earth as we know it.”

Closer to home, Musk also elaborated on his relationship with Apple following remarks earlier this fall that Cook and company only hired Tesla’s “worst engineers.” After starting to say that Steve Jobs was “kind of a jerk” the only time he met him, he stopped himself and said “the last thing I need is to generate animosity, you know. It just is not helpful.”

Source: GQ

Researchers hide messages in a sea of spam

Researchers are trying quantum cryptography and other exotic ways to keep your missives safe, but here’s a new one: junk mail. A team of computer scientists from MIT’s CSAIL have devised a system called “Vuvuzela” that adds noise to messages, making them virtually untraceable to the recipient or sender. While it uses nodes like the Tor “dark internet” router, it only requires a few servers and relies more on numerous fake messages to confuse hackers. If scaled up, the technique could give you nearly mathematical certainty that your messages and even metadata are secure.

With the system, messages are never sent directly; instead, users deposit encrypted messages in a “dead drop” server mailbox. The exchange of messages is never initiated by the user — something that could be detected by hackers — but instead happens in “rounds” every 10-20 seconds. That increases security dramatically, but bad guys could still access metadata info by, say, knocking one user offline to see if the number of messages decreases. That’s where the spam comes in — each server sends “cover traffic” messages to random mailboxes to hide individual users’ activities. The system even works even if many of the servers have been infiltrated, provided some are still “clean.”

The scheme would be particularly useful to users worried about NSA-style mass surveillance, like whistleblowers or reporters. (Of course, like many legitimate services, it could also be misused by bad guys.) The drawback is the speed — since server rounds are performed at set intervals, message speeds are limited to those times. The researchers ran a simulation on Amazon EC2 servers, and with a million simulated users and 15,000 messages per second, system latency was a foot-tapping 44 seconds per message. They plan to scale it up to see if that time can be improved, but we imagine that users who absolutely can’t have messages traced back to them are cool with a small delay.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: MIT

Pandora launches a personalized station based on your likes

Pandora is putting to work what it knows about all of those songs you’ve thumbed up over the years. Today it’s launching Thumbprint Radio, a “hyper-personalized” station that’s based entirely on the songs you’ve liked. “This is a living, breathing station that will continue to change as you listen,” the company said. “Each time you thumb up a track on Pandora, your station will update and evolve.” The station is a mix of songs you already know and new tunes that Pandora thinks you might dig. Yes, it’s pretty much another spin on Spotify’s wildly success Discover Weekly feature, but it’s hard to blame Spotify for going this route.

As we noted when iHeartRadio announced similar custom stations, streaming music really is all personalization these days — it’s one of the defining features of Apple Music, after all. You’ll be able to share your Thumbprint Radio station with friends, and Pandora says you’ll need to have listened to at least three stations with four thumbs each to activate the new station.

[Photo credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images]

Source: Pandora

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Paris climate talks, and more!

This week marked the close of the COP21 climate talks in Paris, where world leaders from 195 countries voted to clean energy in the United States, and researchers revealed a road map for how the entire planet can switch to renewables by the year 2050. Uruguay in particular is way ahead of the curve: The nation currently gets about 95 percent of its energy from sustainable sources. We also showcased several energy innovations, including a sea wall that harvests electricity from the motion of the ocean, and a new floating solar plant that’s coming to the US next year.

Porsche made waves when it first unveiled its “Tesla-killing” Mission E speedster — and this week the luxury automaker officially announced plans to produce the vehicle. Not to be outdone, BMW confirmed plans to launch the i8 Spyder, a convertible hybrid supercar based on the i8. In two-wheeled transportation news, San Francisco-based Bolt debuted a svelte electric motorbike and Gogoro brought its battery-swapping Smartscooter to the Paris climate talks.

A 17-year-old student in Florida has developed a new way to purify drinking water, and she won a $100,000 scholarship for her discovery. Meanwhile, students at Cranfield University developed a waterless Nano Membrane Toilet that could help millions of people who lack access to plumbing. In wearable tech news, Google just filed a patent for a blood-sucking smartwatch and Adidas is 3D printing sneakers from recycled ocean trash. And if you’re decking the halls this week, why not make your own ornaments? This fun Lego tutorial shows you how.

[Image credit: Associated Press]

US officials investigate ‘hoverboard’ safety

If concern about “hoverboard” safety from airlines, Amazon and the UK wasn’t enough, the US government is getting in on the action. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating reports of both fires (10 known so far) and falls (29) to determine whether or not the self-balancing transporters are safe. It’ll push for voluntary standards if it finds any systemic problems, but there is the possibility of regulation if the industry doesn’t get its act together.

The CPSC says it’s racing to complete its investigation, since it knows that boards are popular gifts this year. With that said, it’s still going to be pretty late to the party. Any conclusions are likely to come well after legions of people get their boards, and some of the companies (particularly knock-off brands) may not be willing or able to offer recalls. Your best bet at the moment is to shop at Amazon and other places that are promising to carry only US-certified boards.

[Image credit: Getty Images]

Source: The Hill