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Two documentaries revisit the OceanGate sub tragedy

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush peering through viewport
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush is the central figure in two shows about the Titan sub's fatal dive in 2023. (Netflix Photo / Becky Kagan Schott)

Nearly two years after OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded during a dive to the Titanic, killing all five people aboard, two documentaries are bringing fresh perspectives to the disaster. But they also make clear that it’s too early to close the book on the tragedy and its aftermath.

To call the failings of the Everett, Wash.-based venture a tragedy is particularly fitting, because both documentaries focus on the hubris of the tale’s central character, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. It was Rush who piloted the sub during its final journey — and who died alongside veteran Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, and Pakistani-born business executive Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood.

The basic facts of the case are laid out similarly in “Implosion,” now streaming on Discovery+ and HBO Max; and in “Titan,” which made its debut on Netflix today. But if you’re intrigued by the OceanGate saga, there are enough differences between the two shows to make it worth watching them both.

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GeekWire

Smartphone satellite texting isn’t exactly rocket science

Alan Boyle holds his phone above his head in an Oregon cafe
GeekWire’s Alan Boyle points his iPhone skyward to seek a satellite connection. (Photo Courtesy of Alissa Farley)

NEHALEM, Ore. — When I bought myself a phone that was built for satellite texting, nearly three years ago, I never thought my first opportunity to make a space-based connection would come in a cozy Oregon cafe.

But there I was, standing up and pointing my iPhone toward the sky to find a signal while the rest of my family was eating brunch. It was my first lesson in the nuts and bolts of direct-to-cell satellite phone service — the sort of lesson that some smartphone users might be learning under more dire circumstances.

One of the big selling points for the iPhone 14 that I bought in 2022 was that you could send emergency SOS messages via the Globalstar satellite network if you ran into trouble in a cellular dead zone. GeekWire co-founder John Cook learned his lesson about the emergency alert system when he inadvertently triggered “the worst butt-dial” of his life during a hike through Dinosaur National Monument in 2023.

Since then, telecom network operators have worked to widen subscribers’ access to satellite texting, in recognition of the fact that you don’t need to have an emergency to appreciate being able to communicate from a dead zone.

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Fiction Science Club

How humans can hold the line against AI hype

Illustration: A squadron of green avatars being held back by a red hand
Strategic refusal is one of the ways to counter AI hype. (Bigstock Illustration / Digitalista)

Don’t call ChatGPT a chatbot. Call it a conversation simulator. Don’t think of DALL-E as a creator of artistic imagery. Instead, think of it as a synthetic media extruding machine. In fact, avoid thinking that what generative AI does is actually artificial intelligence.

That’s part of the prescription for countering the hype over artificial intelligence, from the authors of a new book titled “The AI Con.”

“‘Artificial intelligence’ is an inherently anthropomorphizing term,” Emily M. Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, explains in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “It sells the tech as more than it is — because instead of this being a system for, for example, automatically transcribing or automatically adjusting the sound levels in a recording, it’s ‘artificial intelligence,’ and so it might be able to do so much more.”

In their book and in the podcast, Bender and her co-author, Alex Hanna, point out the bugaboos of AI marketing. They argue that the benefits produced by AI are being played up, while the costs are being played down. And they say the biggest benefits go to the ventures that sell the software — or use AI as a justification for downgrading the status of human workers.

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GeekWire

Aerospace Tech Hub’s federal funding is put on hold

The leaders of Spokane's Tech Hub hoped to make use of a 386,000-square-foot facility near the city's airport. (ATC Manufacturing Photo)
The leaders of Spokane's Tech Hub hoped to make use of a 386,000-square-foot facility near the city's airport. (ATC Manufacturing Photo)

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has blocked $48 million in federal funding for an advanced aerospace materials test bed in Spokane, triggering protests from lawmakers.

The decision also affects five other Tech Hub projects around the country that were approved for federal support in the final days of the Biden administration. Lutnick had approved a $220 million loan from the Treasury Department as part of a plan to make funding available for the six projects — but in a statement released May 16, he said he was rescinding the grants.

Lutnick said the process was “rushed, opaque and unfair,” and added that the Economic Development Administration would come up with a new process to select grant recipients by early 2026. The six blocked projects would be allowed to reapply for funding in that selection round. Lutnick’s decision does not affect 12 other Tech Hub projects that were approved last July.

The Biden administration designated 31 public-private consortiums as Tech Hubs in 2023, in an effort to support regional tech innovation. A fact sheet from the EDA said the six awards that were made in January “resulted in some criticism from those Tech Hubs that did not receive awards and their members of Congress.” It said the new selection process would follow the Trump administration’s directives on issues ranging from energy and labor policy to diversity, equity and inclusion.

U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, D-Wash., both objected strenuously to the decision.

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GeekWire

Get a sneak peek at Amazon’s satellites flying in orbit

Video frame showing Amazon Project Kuiper satellites being deployed in orbit
A video shows Project Kuiper satellites being deployed in orbit. (Amazon / ULA / Rajeev Badyal via LinkedIn)

Several days after the launch of the first full-scale satellites in Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation, the mission team is still on an adrenaline high, according to the team’s leader.

“It’s early in the mission and we still have lots of work ahead,” Rajeev Badyal, Amazon’s vice president of technology and head of Project Kuiper, said today in a LinkedIn post. “It’s been an entirely nominal start though, and that’s all thanks to the talent, passion and dedication of the Kuiper team. They’ve delivered in a big way here – for Amazon and for our customers – and I’m so proud.”

Project Kuiper is Amazon’s effort to build a satellite-based broadband network that could eventually serve millions of people around the world. It’s seen as a competitor for SpaceX’s Starlink network, which already has more than 7,000 satellites in low Earth orbit and more than 5 million users.

Following up on a test mission in 2023, Amazon had its first batch of 27 operational Project Kuiper satellites launched into orbit from Florida on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on April 28. Those satellites are now being checked out by the mission operations team in Redmond, Wash. The launch kicked off a campaign that’s expected to take years to execute, leading to the deployment of 3,232 satellites.

Amazon’s satellites are built at a 172,000-square-foot facility in Kirkland, Wash., with additional work being done at Project Kuiper’s Redmond headquarters.

The company hasn’t shared many images of the satellites, apparently for proprietary reasons. Badyal, however, posted a video that provided a rare peek of the satellites being deployed in orbit from the Atlas V rocket’s Centaur upper stage. The video shows the satellites rising from the upper stage in sequence and floating off into space. A thin blue slice of Earth’s disk can be seen at the end of the clip.

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GeekWire

Amazon satellites go into orbit, boosting Starlink rivalry

Atlas V rocket launch with Project Kuiper satellites
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket sends Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites into space. (ULA Photo)

A powerful rocket sent the first batch of 27 satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband internet network into low Earth orbit today, marking a milestone in the company’s multibillion-dollar bid to catch up with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.

Today’s liftoff came nearly three weeks after the first attempt was scrubbed due to weather concerns. This time, the clouds and rain showers stayed far enough away for United Launch Alliance to launch its Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 7:01 p.m. ET (4:01 p.m. PT). ULA used its most powerful version of the Atlas, with five solid-rocket boosters attached to the first stage.

“Go Atlas … Go Centaur … Go KA-01,” launch managers declared in the final seconds before liftoff.

The rocket’s Centaur upper stage delivered Amazon’s satellites to an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers). In a posting to Threads, ULA said the satellites were deployed successfully. And in an online update, Amazon said its team “established contact with all 27 satellites, and initial deployment and activation sequences are proceeding nominally.”

The satellites will use their onboard electric propulsion systems to settle into their final intended orbits of 392 miles (630 kilometers) under the management of Project Kuiper’s mission operations team in Redmond, Wash.

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Cosmic Environment

Mati Carbon wins top prize in carbon removal competition

African farmers holding Mati Carbon sign
Mati Carbon partners with smallholder farmers in Africa. (Mati Carbon Photo)

The $50 million grand prize in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, backed by billionaire Elon Musk, has gone to Mati Carbon — a nonprofit initiative that is pioneering an enhanced rock-weathering technology in India and Africa.

The XPRIZE program distributed a total of $100 million in prizes and support for competitors over the course of four years. Each of the teams was challenged to remove more than 1,000 net tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during the final year of the competition. Mati Carbon and the runner-up teams all achieved the goal.

Carbon removal is one of the options for addressing the human-caused rise in CO2 levels and the resulting effects on global climate, ranging from rising sea levels and melting glaciers to hotter heat waves, more frequent flooding and other types of extreme weather. Natural vegetation does the best job of converting CO2 into oxygen, but researchers are also turning to technology for an assist.

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Fiction Science Club

Dictators weaponize new technologies in fact and fiction

Illustration: Huge eye formed from ones and zeros
Surveillance tools and artificial intelligence are making life easier for Big Brother. (BigStock Illustration / Valery Brozhinsky)

When Ray Nayler began writing his science-fiction novel about a repressive regime powered by artificial intelligence, he didn’t expect the story to be as timely as it turned out to be. He really wishes it wasn’t.

“This is not a world that I think we should want to live in, and I would love it if it is a world that we completely avoid, and if the book seems in 10 to 20 years to be extraordinarily naive in its predictions,” Nayler says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

Nayler’s new novel, “Where the Axe Is Buried,” draws upon his experience working on international development in Russia and other former Soviet republics for the Peace Corps and the U.S. Foreign Service. “I added it up, and I’ve spent over a decade in authoritarian states,” he says. “And so I have, fortunately or unfortunately, a lot of experience with this problem.”

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GeekWire

Outbound’s first flight test advances airplane ambitions

Demonstrator plane takes off from Oregon airstrip
Outbound’s demonstrator plane takes off from a runway at Pendleton UAS Range in Oregon. (Outbound Aerospace Photo)

Things are looking up for Outbound Aerospace’s quest to build a new kind of passenger airplane. The Seattle startup has raised $1.15 million in pre-seed funding so far, and last weekend it sent a small-scale prototype into the skies over Oregon for its first-ever flight test.

“Over the last month, everything came together, and we went out there and got the plane up in the air, and proved that it flies,” said Jake Armenta, the former Boeing engineer who serves as Outbound’s chief technology officer and co-founder. “So, it’s been a really exciting month or two.”

The demonstrator aircraft — which is code-named STeVE (for Scaled Test Vehicle) — is a remote-controlled plane that weighs 300 pounds and has a 22-foot wingspan. That’s only one-eighth of the planned wingspan for the Olympic airliner that Outbound eventually aims to build. What’s more, the March 22 flight at the Pendleton UAS Range in eastern Oregon lasted merely 16 seconds. Nevertheless, the test proved that Outbound’s 3D-printing fabrication process could turn out a flyable carbon-fiber aircraft.

“We flew this demonstrator because I got a lot of questions,” Armenta said. “People were really pessimistic about us. I got literally laughed out of investors’ rooms here in Seattle because I told people, ‘We’re building an airplane.’ And they were like, ‘You can’t do this. No one can.’”

Despite the skepticism, Outbound has been able to bring in enough investment to support what’s now a full-time staff of five, plus “about half a dozen contractors who have helped us in various ways,” Armenta said. Over the past year, Armenta and his fellow co-founder, CEO Ian Lee, have raised $500,000 from Blue Collective, a matching amount from Antler, and another $150,000 from private investors.

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GeekWire

Prediction: Human-level AI is just a few ‘miracles’ away

Nathan Myhrvold and Todd Bishop on stage at Microsoft@50 event
Intellectual Ventures CEO Nathan Myhrvold makes a point during a chat with GeekWire's Todd Bishop. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Will artificial intelligence ever catch up with human intelligence? And if it does, is humanity doomed? Intellectual Ventures CEO Nathan Myhrvold, who had the job of predicting the future of tech during Microsoft’s early years, was ready with some answers this week at GeekWire’s Microsoft@50 anniversary event.

The feature that AI still lacks is the ability to create a new abstract concept, “imbue it with meaning and then reason about it,” said Myhrvold, who joined Microsoft in 1986 and served as the company’s first chief technology officer.

“I think we’ll get there, but that’s at least one miracle that needs to be figured out, and I variously have thought there was like three to five miracles that need to be done. Who knows?” he said during the March 20 event at Town Hall Seattle. “And that could happen tomorrow, or maybe it already happened tonight, and they just haven’t told us. Or it could take another 10 years.”

GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop returned to the topic a minute later. “Did I hear correctly that we’re three to five miracles away from AI that’s as powerful or as intelligent as humans?” he asked.

“Yes,” Myhrvold replied.

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