Signal to Noise Report
The lunar gold rush, the water rush, AI Brad Pitt scammers, Surveillance Capitalism, Brain Rot...and more headlines from the bright, unnerving world of today.
The Signal to Noise Report collects headlines to illustrate humanity’s move into what is beginning to resemble a hybrid species: The Jetsons meets Blade Runner. The idea being that we have a proclivity to accept (with glee) whatever new techno gizmos are shoved at us, yet rarely question their purpose and/or their long-term effects on our health and sanity.
The Lunar Economy is Coming
The lunar economy, complete with its own supply chain, may seem like a distant concept, but its foundations are already here. It will center around using the moon’s natural resources to construct scientific infrastructure on its surface, as well as develop capacity for future space exploration (the moon is a potential spaceport for more distant destinations, such as Mars).
There are many countries and companies vying to be part of this new lunar gold rush. Among them is private space firm Firefly Aerospace, based in Texas. Its Blue Ghost 1 mission, which launched on January 15, has just shown what the first stage of a delivery system between Earth and the moon will look like.
A new front in the water wars: Your Internet use
More than 30 percent of the world’s data centers are located in the United States; the power required to run those centers already accounts for about 2 percent of the nation’s electricity use. As the data storage requirements of the planet escalate — and as water becomes scarcer because of climate change — these operations may attract greater scrutiny.
Those servers require a great deal of energy and produce a great deal of heat. Without adequate cooling, the servers can overheat, fail or even catch fire. Companies can either use traditional air conditioning to cool the servers, which is expensive, or use water for evaporative cooling. The latter is cheaper, but it also sucks up millions of gallons of water. A large data center, researchers say, can gobble up anywhere between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day — as much as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.
AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830,000
A French woman who was conned out of €830,000 (£700,000; $850,000) by scammers posing as actor Brad Pitt has faced a huge wave of mockery, leading French broadcaster TF1 to withdraw a programme about her.
The primetime programme, which aired on Sunday, attracted national attention on interior designer Anne, 53, who thought she was in a relationship with Pitt for a year and a half.
FTC Says Consumer Data Is Behind ‘Surveillance’ Pricing
Major retailers can tailor prices based on customer data including location, demographics or shopping history, the US Federal Trade Commission said in initial study findings, raising concerns about the use of what they termed “surveillance pricing.”
The FTC found that as many as 250 different businesses, including grocery stores, apparel, health and beauty retailers, convenience stores, building and hardware stores, and department and discount stores, use consumer information to help target prices, profile consumers or rank products that are shown to shoppers. Companies most often said they were using the tools to boost revenue by increasing sales volumes, and they are used both online and in-store, the FTC said.
Nokia Put a 4G Cellular Network on the Moon but Couldn’t Make a Phone Call
If everything went to plan on March 6, there'd be a small 4G LTE network on a tiny area of the moon right now. The first lunar 4G network—from Nokia—would have provided connectivity for several rovers as a part of the IM-2 mission. The work was supposed to pave the way for NASA's Artemis III in 2027, the first crewed mission to the moon since 1972, where Nokia and Axiom Space will integrate 4G LTE communications capabilities into astronaut spacesuits.
Unfortunately, Intuitive Machine's lander, Athena, landed on her side—a fate that befell the original IM-1—not to mention 250 meters from its intended landing site at the lunar south pole. The orientation of the solar panels, direction of the sun, and cold temperatures in the crater it landed in all contributed to the fact that Athena couldn't recharge. The company announced on March 7 that the mission quickly concluded. (IM-2 wasn't the only craft to recently land on the moon—earlier this week, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 successfully touched down.)
Can Algorithms, a Touchscreen, and an Internet Connection Make the Perfect Piece of Toast?
I wish that both the new toaster and I could claim victory and celebrate with a thick slice of sourdough slathered with butter and marmalade and sprinkled with flaky salt, but there was other stuff to figure out. First, there's that touchscreen, and now an internet connection. Does a toaster need a screen when a simple dial (or knob) might suffice? Do you need a screen in your kitchen, one that stays lit all the time, including while you sleep? Do algorithms make for better toast?
Once it's plugged in, the Revolution's screen is on and currently never goes off. Instead of turning off after breakfast, it stays on, a big "R" logo the color of glowing coils in the center. If it's nighttime and you're sleeping, it's on. Fiddle with it a bit and connect it to Wi-Fi and it will display the weather on the screen. Instead of sun, cloud, or snowflake icons floating across the seven-inch screen like they likely do on your phone's weather app, the current conditions are displayed across the bottom inch of the screen, leaving plenty of room for that logo, which hasn't budged…
‘Brain rot’ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024
‘Brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”.
Our experts noticed that ‘brain rot’ gained new prominence this year as a term used to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. The term increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024.
Source: Oxford University Press
The song “Beer Cans On The Moon” is beginning to seem quite prescient…
Ned Mudd resides in Alabama where he engages in interspecies communication, rock collecting, and frequent cloud watching. He is the author of The Adventures of Dink and DVD (a space age comedy). Some of Ned’s best friends are raccoons.
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what do toasters and Brad Pitt have in common? Brain rot! great piece, Ned, as always.