Rowan Hooper

Timeline cleanse. This is Checko, a 4-year-old fox who lives in Kew Gardens

How Ukraine Became a Drone Factory - and Changed Warfare Forever Spotify video

On today's podcast: a commander of a drone unit speaks to us from Ukraine about the war. With @pennysarchet.bsky.social and @sparkes.bsky.social
open.spotify.com/episode/7Hzx...

Hang on, now I think it, Blunt was also in the timey-wimey LOOPER

"I won't lie, it's a kick in the nuts," said RIchard Dawkins 😂

And here’s the drone-commander interview www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHaw...

“He’s a vampire. He sucks the life out of people because his own life bores him so much” - worth seeing at the @orangetreetheatre.bsky.social

YouTube video by The World, The Universe And Us How Ukraine is Making 80,000 War Drones Per Day

We hear how Ukraine is waging drone war
✈️Gamefication of warfare
✈️20 points for taking out a tank, 12 for a soldier
✈️The shift to mass drone production
✈️AI guidance of drone attacks
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHaw...

Watched EDGE OF TOMORROW last night. As time loop sci-fi goes, it was fun enough, definitely helped by the charisma of Cruise and Blunt. Screenplay by Jez Butterworth!

😂

Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week Neuron-powered computer chips can now be easily programmed to play a first-person shooter game, bringing biological computers a step closer to useful applications

Next we’ll be outsourcing calls to it.

A few years ago a brain-on-a-chip learned to play Pong. Now brain cells can play Doom

www.newscientist.com/article/2517...

It’s not that so much as their destruction of upland ecosystems

In case you missed us I’ve pointed it out: THE WORLD, THE UNIVERSE AND US is playing Latitude this year! @cosmicshambles.com

Sorry, @georgemonbiot.bsky.social ruined sheep on hills for me long ago and I need to ruin it for you too!

David, that is White Death, not sheep!

YouTube video by The World, The Universe And Us How Ukraine is Making 80,000 War Drones Per Day

We hear how Ukraine is waging drone war
✈️Gamefication of warfare
✈️20 points for taking out a tank, 12 for a soldier
✈️The shift to mass drone production
✈️AI guidance of drone attacks
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHaw...

How Ukraine Became a Drone Factory - and Changed Warfare Forever Spotify video

On today's podcast: a commander of a drone unit speaks to us from Ukraine about the war. With @pennysarchet.bsky.social and @sparkes.bsky.social
open.spotify.com/episode/7Hzx...

Absolute trolling here! Cc @lemoustier.bsky.social

Such an interesting and original - and useful - take on how we should use LLMs

Why I have changed my mind about AI and you should too Both boosters and sceptics have strongly held opinions on AI tools like ChatGPT, but after an experiment in vibe coding, I have realised that both camps are wrong, says Jacob Aron

I have written a piece articulating what I believe is a reasonably new position on AI, or at least one extremely underrepresented in the discourse, and I hope people will read it. The full piece is behind the New Scientist paywall, but I will share some snippets www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

Dance of Death review – spark and mischief as humorously horrible couple wish each other dead Richard Eyre’s adaptation brings comedy and tenderness alongside Strindberg’s original savagery

“Strindberg’s couple is turned from merely horrible to humorously, movingly, horrible” www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/f...

DANCE OF DEATH (August Strindberg) at the Orange Tree Theatre - such an intimate venue!

I've been learning a lot about the amount of competition going on between drone manufacturers in Ukraine to win govt resources

🥶

I know 🥶

How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to ...

This for the podcast version of this incredible story by @sparkes.bsky.social www.newscientist.com/article/2514...

I just interviewed the commander of a drone unit in Ukraine and I asked about the gamefication of the war and if flying a drone was just like playing a video game. Afterwards the press officer emailed and said if I thought it was just like a video game I'm welcome to go out there and try it.

"somewhere in his career he became less interested in writing novels and more interested in rewriting history" - but Mishima finished The Sea of Fertility in 1970, told friends he'd put everything he'd ever thought about into it, then committed seppuku.

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases

Have these AIs been trained on the Terminator films? www.newscientist.com/article/2516... by @stokel.bsky.social

Will King Theostarm be rejuvenated now Wormtongue has gone?

A cubic millimetre of the human brain. The whole thing is about 960,000 times this size, giving you some idea of the mind-boggling complexity we have yet to encounter. But you have to start somewhere.