I’m guilty of it. We all are, to some degree.

I’ve entered situations with preconceived notions of what to expect, either of the event itself or of the people involved, and found my ideas to be quite accurate.

Yes, I thought: This entrepreneur is indeed a snake oil salesman of the highest order. He dresses all in black, dark hair slicked back, and crows about his past conquests with delight befitting an ancient Norse Viking warrior speaking of victories past.

I didn’t need to actually meet the jackal to know he was a jackal. I knew it.

I knew it.

…

In 2019, a group of Spanish and Chinese biologists have reported their successful work in creating monkey-human hybrid “chimaeras” created by inserting human cells into monkey embryos in an effort to prove we can grow possible transplantable organs for humans in other species.

Also in China, geneticists have used similar techniques to place human brain genes in macaques, and early results indicate they are indeed smarter than their unaltered fellow monkeys.

And at the end of 2019, researcher He Jiankui was sentenced to three years in prison for using gene-editing techniques over a year prior to disabling some genes in…

Jupiter, a gas giant and the most massive world in our Solar System, has 79 moons. Fourth-largest of these is Europa, at 3,100 kilometers in diameter. The small world is bigger than Pluto but smaller than our own Moon.

What makes Europa truly special is that it very likely may have a huge amount of liquid water hiding beneath its frozen exterior. NASA scientists believe there is some proof of this due to results of density and magnetic field measurements that point to the existence of a great deal of water. …

In China, a Tesla Model S in “autopilot” mode crashed into a semi-truck, killing the Tesla driver, in 2016.

Another fatal Model S crash occurred while in autopilot in Florida a few months later.

In early March 2018, a self-driving Uber just hit and injured a woman in Scottsdale, AZ. She died later at a hospital.

On March 23, 2018, a Tesla set on Autopilot mode crashed into a highway barrier, killing the 38-year-old driver.

Those are the fatalities so far. There have been dozens of non-fatal accidents and other incidents.

Regarding the Tesla crash, NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board)…

The drone attack claimed by Yemeni rebels on key Saudi Arabian oil refineries that took place on September 14, 2019 has brought the powerful technology back into the news. Unfortunately, the strikes that disrupted roughly 5% of the world’s oil supply has also contributed more ammunition to the overarching negative connotations the word “drone” conjures.

“Drone” is a very broad term. Colloquially, drones are usually thought of as remote-piloted flying devices used by militaries for surveillance and offensive tactics or by civilians for recreational or business purposes. Merriam-Webster defines it as “an unmanned aircraft or ship guided by remote control…

Dark matter and dark energy make up the vast majority of our universe, and yet we can’t really perceive them.

However, we have ways to perceive their influence, and it’s as wide-reaching as dark matter and energy are.

All matter as we know it, from muons, electrons and atoms all the way up to planets, stars and galactic clusters, makes up less than a meager 5% of everything in the universe.

As far we we know, roughly 25% is dark matter and 70% is dark energy. But the thing about those two massive chunks of everything is that they are…

“Space, the final frontier…”

These famous words were uttered at the beginning of every episode of the original Star Trek series. They encapsulated the idea of outer space as a particular area left to explore once we discovered everything there is to know about Earth.

As for Earth, we have humbly come to understand that we may never discover everything there is to know about it, from the last inch of the ocean floor to finding Amazonian species before they go extinct. Sadly, we will never be able to explore all of space either.

On a brighter note, humanity will…

Touchless technology is not a new concept at its core. Indeed, ever since the first remote-controlled race car was made by Italian electronics company Elettronica Giocattoli in 1966, we’ve been enjoying some form of it.

But with the wondrous advent of 3D environments and virtual reality powered by the exponential improvements in computer processing, a gigantic new arsenal of use cases for touchless tech has become available.

Thomas Amilien co-founded Clay AIR in 2016 with the mission of bringing best-in-class gesture recognition and hand tracking software to as many cameras as possible while preserving the precision and performance of the…