by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Markets, Social Entrepreneur, Social Media, Technology, World
San Francisco : After taking down SpaceX, Tesla and his own official pages from Facebook, the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has now justified his action.
“It’s not a political statement and I didn’t do this because someone dared me to do it. Just don’t like Facebook. Gives me the willies. Sorry,” Must tweeted on Saturday night.
The Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla disappeared minutes after Musk responded to a comment on Twitter calling for him to take down the official pages in support of the #DeleteFacebook movement.
“What’s Facebook?” Musk on Friday morning, sarcastically replied to a tweet from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton urging his followers to delete Facebook by tweeting: “It is time.”
Prior to the deletion, both the two pages had over 2.6 million Likes and Follows, and super high engagement rates.
The boycott “#DeleteFacebook” started after the US and British media reported that the data of more than 50 million Facebook users were inappropriately used by Cambridge Analytica, in activities allegedly connected with US President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
When it comes to Facebook-owned Instagram, Musk is a bit considerate.
“Instagram’s probably ok imo, so long as it stays fairly independent. I don’t use FB and never have, so don’t think I’m some kind of martyr or my companies are taking a huge blow. Also, we don’t advertise or pay for endorsements, so a don’t care,” he tweeted.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that his company had made mistakes in a data leak that caused grave concern about user privacy possibly abused for political purposes.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
Los Angeles : Verified Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla disappeared on Friday, minutes after Elon Musk responded to a comment on Twitter calling for him to take down his rocket company SpaceX, electric carmaker Tesla and his own official pages in support of the #DeleteFacebook movement.
“What’s Facebook?” Musk on Friday morning sarcastically replied to a tweet from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton urging his followers to delete Facebook by tweeting “It is time.”
Musk, CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla, Inc, replied to a comment on Twitter calling for him to take down the SpaceX, Tesla and Musk official pages in support of the #DeleteFacebook movement by saying “I didn’t realize there was one. Will do.”
Less than half an hour, the verified Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla, Inc are no longer accessible, Xinhua reported.
Prior to the deletion, both the two pages had over 2.6 million Likes and Follows, and super high engagement rates.
The boycott “#DeleteFacebook” started after the US and British media reported that the data of more than 50 million Facebook users were inappropriately used by a British data analysis company, Cambridge Analytica, in activities allegedly connected with US President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Wednesday that his company had made mistakes in a data leak that caused grave concern about user privacy possibly abused for political purposes.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Opinions, Success Stories
The seminal message of Douglas Adams
By Vikas Datta,
No other book has gone so far. Last month, Canadian American entrepreneur Elon Musk sent a copy of this science fiction classic into deep space aboard his Roadster, with one of its seminal messages painted on the dashboard. Then another phrase from this book was, according to a leading writer of the genre, the best advice that could be given to the human race.
But that is not the only significance of Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” — the only literary trilogy of five books (and now six). A particularly influential example of comic science fiction (or cosmic comedy, if you prefer), it is also the best possible demonstration of storytelling’s prowess across media. Starting as a show on BBC Radio in March 1978 before becoming a widely popular series of novels (selling 150 million copies and being translated into 30 languages), it was also adapted as stage shows, comic books, a TV series, video games, and a full-length film.
Not bad for something that was the outcome of inspiration that struck Adams, then a struggling writer, as he lay in a field somewhere in Europe gazing into the night sky and wondering if the universe also needed a version of “The Hitchhikers’ Guide to Europe” lying beside him.
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (1979), also the first novel of the series, was directly adapted from the radio show. It begins one Thursday in a sleepy English village where Arthur Dent is trying to stop his house being demolished for a new bypass when his best friend, Ford Prefect, drags him to the pub for something important.
Little does Dent suspect his strangely-named friend (a misspelling of what Ford thought was the dominant species on the earth) is actually a human-like alien roving researcher for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” who knows the Earth is going to be demolished within minutes for a new interstellar bypass and wants to help him escape.
Interstellar mayhem ensues as the duo jump from the frying pan into the fire, listen to the universe’s worst poetry, are rescued by the two-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox, the President of the Galaxy, his human girlfriend Trillian (taken off Earth earlier), meet many eccentric characters and face unique situations — including finding out the real purpose of Earth and the significance of the number 42.
“The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” (1980), is more of a second part than sequel. Based on the radio show with additions, it sees the characters facing more challenging situations and visiting the titular establishment — and the end of time, not space. Zaphod and Trillian meanwhile try to find who really runs the universe, and Ford and Arthur end up somehow on the prehistoric earth where they learn the shocking origin of the human race — it involves telephone sanitisers, car salesmen, hairdressers, TV producers, etc.
“Life, the Universe, and Everything” (1982) is the first “original” story, though coming from Adams’ attempt at a Dr Who radio serial that didn’t take off. The most hardcore adventure, it sees Dent and Ford being rescued from their prehistoric peregrinations to foil the irredeemably warlike race of Krikkitmen’s plans to utterly destroy all creation. As seems evident, the sport plays a major role.
“So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” (1984) sees Dent back on Earth which has been saved by some aquatic mammals. While he finds some romance and goes to meet Wonko the Sane in California to understand what had happened, Ford returns and drags him to space again to read God’s final message to creation.
Much more bleak is Adams’ final installment “Mostly Harmless” (1992), which begins with Dent losing his love and culminating in Earth being destroyed in all versions across all realities. The author, who was going through a tough time himself, admitted that this came to be reflected in the book and promised to write another installment but never got around to it before his death in 2001. Eoin “Artemis Fowl” Colfer did the honours with “And Another Thing…” (2009).
The story is not only about a disparate bunch of characters roaming through time and space, but another example of typical British humour and satirical insights into the human condition. A key source for this is the “Hitchhikers’ Guide” (product) entries quoted throughout the text, offering background or sarcastic commentary. Of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products, it says: “It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.”
And also advice: If you find yourself “underneath a giant boulder you can’t move, with no hope of rescue”, it suggests you “consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won’t be troubling you much longer.”
More useful is what the guide’s cover proclaims: “Don’t Panic.” You can’t go much wrong with this.
(Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Narendra Modi and Elon Musk
By Rajendra Shende,
“A one-km auto rickshaw ride in Ahmedabad takes Rs 10 and India reached Mars at Rs 7 per km, which is really amazing,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised the achievement in his speech in New York in September 2014.
He was speaking about the inter-planetary plan of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) that has disrupted space technologies.
Elon Musk, a dangerously daring dreamer, at that time had a blueprint of a Martian journey on the drawing board of his SpaceX office in California. He not only wants to just send man to Mars, he wants to colonise it. He has planned on taking one million willing people from our blue planet Earth to the red planet by 2022, a journey of 650 million kilometres. To achieve this objective, he has to make the journey affordable and safe.
“Everything about Mangalyaan (ISRO’s space craft to Mars) is indigenous. We reached Mars at a smaller budget than a Hollywood movie (“Gravity”),” Modi stated smugly, adding that “India is the only country to reach Mars on its first attempt. If this is not talent, then what is?”
Indeed, India’s Mars spacecraft catapulted the country into an elite club of three nations, that too at just $74 million. That was a tenth (about $670 million) of NASA’s Mars mission “Maven” that entered the Martian orbit just two days before Modi’s statement.
Surely, Elon Musk was listening to Modi. It must have been a shocker for him because his project to colonise Mars had, and still has, the same objectives as ISRO’s — to reduce space transportation and pay-load carrying costs.
Within the next three years SpaceX developed a family of Falcon-series launch vehicles and the Dragon spacecraft, both of which deliver payloads into the Earth’s orbit at low cost mainly because Musk is able to bring back the launch vehicle for reuse.
During the same three years, ISRO became one of the world’s top space-runners. It is now a technology giant that is championing and taming space launches. It is no longer just a government-funded agency but a commercial venture that can launch other countries’ satellites through its massive launch vehicles — the GSLVs and the PSLVs. These are capable of carrying heavy payloads of satellites into space.
The ambitions, aspirations and potential of ISRO and Space X have started to demonstrate amazingly clear similarity.
When Space X was busy announcing the contract with two private individuals to send them in a Dragon spacecraft around the Moon, ISRO had already fired its PSLV and launched 104 satellites into space from a single vehicle. While Moon tourism is Space X’s business proposition, taking other countries’ satellites into space is ISRO’s.
Of the 104 satellites launched at one go, a whopping 96 belonged to the US, which paid India for the launch. The satellites, released in rapid-fire fashion every few seconds from a single rocket as it travelled at 30,000 kms an hour is like testing the limits of technology.
On January 12, 2018, ISRO soared again. This time it launched 31 satellites during a single mission that included three of India’s and 28 of other countries. When the last of the satellite was ejected, it was the 100th satellite of ISRO.
A month later, on February 6, 2018, Elon Musk recaptured the headlines as the Falcon Heavy 9 vehicle, the most powerful ever developed after the one that took man to moon, had carried a payload of his Tesla Roadster with dummy driver into space and toward the Asteroid belt.
It was sort of a gimmick and fun, as per Musk. However, more importantly, the mission was able to bring back to the earth two of the three launch vehicles and they were recovered. The same did not happen with the third vehicle.
ISRO has also announced that it is planning a flight with a “dummy crew module”, which is part of a programme for the development of critical technologies that it seeks to develop as part of its “human space-flight programme”.
Now is the time for Modi and Musk to collaborate as equal partners, particularly under Modi’s pet project of “Make in India”. Both of them need to recognise this as there are not only excellent convergence of the attributes and traits between Space X and ISRO, but also between Musk and Modi.
All of Elon Musk’s projects — electric cars that have captured the imagination of almost all governments, lithium batteries that can break long-standing barriers for solar energy, Tesla Solar Roof Tiles that can turn every home into a power plant, car elevators and Underground Tunnels that will drastically reduce use of fossil fuels, Hyperloop for sustainable transport — are all path-breaking innovations that can make dependence on fossil fuels history.
Modi has a unique opportunity for de-politicising climate change and space exploration, and take global leadership by partnering with Musk. It would in turn help Indian aspirations of eradicating poverty and making gainful employment.
(Rajendra Shende is Chairman, TERRE Policy Centre, and Director, UNEP. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at shende.rajendra@gmail.com)
—IANS
