The Morning After: Wednesday, July 26th 2017
We all need a pizza DJ.
Welcome to your Wednesday morning. Today we explain how we'll try to stop killer robots, reveal some new gadgets from Motorola and look into the sketchier side of YouTube influencers.
The unending fight to preserve 'The Last Supper'
Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper is a particularly tragic example of man's impermanence. And the fight to save it has been laden with controversy, particularly in the modern era, as corporate sponsorship and claims to technology have muddied the waters of an already sensitive subject. The latest attempt to stave off its inevitable deterioration comes in the form of a state-of-the-art air-filtration system, which will be active by 2019.
Just like the movies, we'll have to work together.
Will we be able to control the killer robots of tomorrow?
The Pentagon has long tried to protect human forces with the use of robotic weapons, but as these systems gain ever-greater degrees of intelligence and independence, some critics fear that humans are ceding too much power to devices whose decision-making processes we don't fully understand (and which we may not be entirely able to control). How do we make sure Skynet doesn't happen?
House science chairman thinks climate change is "beneficial"
Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the Republican head of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology just doesn't believe the climate change "hype." In a baffling editorial titled 'Don't Believe the Hysteria Over Carbon Dioxide,' Smith complains that Americans are being brainwashed by scientists and offers up some bizarre pluses caused by all that CO2.
The makers of 'Pokémon Go' explain away its first live-event's woes
On Saturday, Pokémon Go players from around the world gathered in Chicago's Grant Park for a promised special anniversary event, but as we now know, things didn't quite work out. As Niantic Labs explains it, the issues that tripped up Pokémon Go Fest ranged from technical hiccups that caused the client to crash to network congestion and overloaded cell networks. The company is quick to trumpet the figures: Through late Saturday and early Sunday, players in the downtown area caught more than 7.7 million Pokémon, 440,000 Legendary Pokémon and participated in more than 69,000 raid battles.
The Moto Z2 Force is a powerhouse that plays it safe
While the Z2 Force is not as crazy-slim as Motorola's first Z smartphone, the Moto Z Force comes awfully close. That's pretty damned impressive when you consider all the extra physical layers that form Motorola's ShatterShield display technology. It's also so light it's barely there -- Chris Velazco carried it in his jacket pocket all day and apparently forgot where it was three or four times. The Z2 Force will look awfully familiar if you've spent any time with the Moto Z2 Play as well, but you probably could've guessed that based on their names. And yes, the modular cases and add-ons are still here.
Musk and Zuckerberg bicker over the future of AI
Everyone's favorite eccentric billionaire, Elon Musk, publicly slammed Mark Zuckerberg with a tweet stating that the Facebook CEO's understanding of AI "is limited." The 140-character burn came after comments made on a recent live stream by Zuckerberg, where the Facebook founder expressed some heavy-handed criticism of those who believe that we should be wary of AI and put in safeguards and regulations before the tech becomes mainstream. (There's also some livestreamed BBQ talk from Zuck, and an MIT expert who decided to weigh in, too.)
