Spell

Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/ZDNETWe ended our chat in French. I wished him the best of luck. He promised that if he got back to France, he'd make me a general in the French army.Oh, Napoleon, you're very sweet, but Minister of Culture will do.This whole foray into AI characters lifted my spirits -- by the end -- and made me consider just how caring, entertaining, loving, nasty, dangerous and, dare one say it, human AI could be.Who'd have ever thought that Napoleon was a far more lovable character than…

One of the most iconic space probes ever launched could be on its way out the door. The Voyager 1 probe, which has spent the last decade barreling through interstellar space, has been experiencing glitches in its system since the end of last year. Its status remains unchanged, and now, NASA JPL says it will be a “miracle” to get it working again (via Ars Technica).Voyager 1 launched in 1977, shortly after its twin, Voyager 2. The two space probes have since become the longest-running human-made spacecraft, as…

Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines planes takeoff at the same time from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in San Francisco, California, United States on June 21, 2023.Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty ImagesPresident Joe Biden's Justice Department has successfully had two airline link-ups halted in court in recent months. That doesn't necessarily spell doom for Alaska Air's plan to buy Hawaiian Airlines.U.S. District Court Judge William Young on Tuesday sided with the Justice Department and blocked JetBlue Airways'…

On January 12, Peregrine finally reached lunar distance. Of course, the Moon wasn’t there, as the spacecraft’s original trajectory had a much different timeline. Now, though, the spacecraft is barreling back toward Earth, and while the team is sure it could keep it from burning up, Astrobotic’s latest Peregrine update says that it is safer to let the spacecraft re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up.In the latest update, Astrobotic talked more about the company’s ongoing mission to make the Moon more accessible.…

Drive down any of the the long, rutted back roads of Anza, a dusty Riverside County community, and it won’t take long before you feel like you’ve fallen off the grid.Telephone poles disappear. Street signs and lights are nowhere to be seen. And ramshackle houses and fences hide behind thickets of weather-beaten manzanita and chaparral.If you’re quiet, you’ll hear the wind roll across the valley, or maybe the bell-like clink of a sage sparrow in a nearby bush. But if you make a sound, one, two, three or more barking,…

In 1946 a young atmospheric scientist named Bernard Vonnegut made a significant discovery. It had already been shown that clouds could be made to produce snow or rain by “seeding” them with dry ice, but Vonnegut proved that an even more dramatic and persistent effect could be achieved with silver iodide. The following year, he encouraged his struggling younger brother to join the same lab, not as a scientist but as a copywriter. It was almost 20 years later that Kurt Vonnegut published his satirical novel Cat’s Cradle,…

Have you ever sat down and really listened through the lyrics of the many songs we often sing to little children? Just like the original, pre-Disney fairytales are a lot darker than the sanitized modern renditions, old lullabies, and children’s stories tend to often seem a bit morbid.A man asked the internet if he was a jerk for singing an “inappropriate” lullaby when he was babysitting his niece. He wrote out the lullaby in full for netizens to judge and people had a lively discussion, sharing other “inappropriate”…

The company announced it would open up its GPT store, where users will be able to charge for access to custom-made versions of ChatGPT for tackling specific tasks, such as the much-castigated Laundry Buddy, later in November. We are, of course, now in December, and the tumult that faced the company these past few weeks has delayed the storefront’s unveiling to early 2024, according to a company email sent to subscribers of its GPT Builder. (When the future of an $80 billion company is on the line, it’s not surprising that…

Stars are gravitationally fastened to their galaxies and move in concert with their surroundings. But sometimes, something breaks the bond. If a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, for example, the black hole can expel it out into space as a rogue star.What would happen to Earth if one of these stellar interlopers got too close?It's not a very likely occurrence, but the chance is not zero.After several billion years, our Solar System has evolved into sedentary predictability. The planets move as they move,…

Starting today, is rolling out what it says is one of its most-requested features: the ability to manage and settle up shared expenses in groups. The aptly-named Groups feature seeks to make it easy for users to figure out how much money each person owes to someone else in the group, and then take care of the payments all in one app.Venmo says it's easy for anyone in the group to add expenses and it will automatically figure out the amounts due. The feature is designed to be ongoing, so if you often go to dinner with the…