Space Tourism: Virgin Galactic Has Big Backers, Ambitious Dreams, Celebrity Passengers

BERLIN — When Michael Bommer found out that he was terminally ill with colon cancer, he spent a lot of time with his wife, Anett, talking about what would happen after his death. She told him one of the things she’d miss most is being able to ask him questions whenever she wants because he is so well read and always shares his wisdom, Bommer recalled during a recent interview with The Associated Press at his home in a leafy Berlin suburb. That conversation sparked an idea for Bommer: Recreate his voice using artificial intelligence to survive him after he passed away. The 61-year-old startup entrepreneur teamed up with his friend in the U.

Apple, Microsoft and Google are heralding a new era of what they describe as artificially intelligent smartphones and computers. The devices, they say, will automate tasks like editing photos and wishing a friend a happy birthday. But to make that work, these companies need something from you: more data. In this new paradigm, your Windows computer will take a screenshot of everything you do every few seconds.

Enlarge / Preparing to install the floppy disk edition of FreeDOS 1.3 in a virtual machine. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Two big things happened in the world of text-based disk operating systems in June 1994. The first is that Microsoft released MS-DOS version 6.22, the last version of its long-running operating system that would be sold to consumers as a standalone product.

Enlarge / An artist's conception of one of the last mammoths of Wrangel Island. (credit: Beth Zaiken) A small group of woolly mammoths became trapped on Wrangel Island around 10,000 years ago when rising sea levels separated the island from mainland Siberia. Small, isolated populations of animals lead to inbreeding and genetic defects, and it has long been thought that the Wrangel Island mammoths ultimately succumbed to this problem about 4,000 years ago. A paper in Cell on Thursday, however, compared 50,000 years of genomes from mainland and isolated Wrangel Island mammoths and found that this was not the case.

Enlarge (credit: Malte Mueller / Getty) Cryptocurrency has always made a ripe target for theft—and not just hacking, but the old-fashioned, up-close-and-personal kind, too. Given that it can be irreversibly transferred in seconds with little more than a password, it's perhaps no surprise that thieves have occasionally sought to steal crypto in home-invasion burglaries and even kidnappings.

Daniel Miller and Summer Lin | (TNS) Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES — The hooded man darted past shattered glass, his headlamp illuminating the rare collectibles housed in display cases that lined the walls of Bricks & Minifigs in Whittier. “Ninjago” Ultra Violet (Oni Mask of Hatred). Percival Graves (“Harry Potter” Series 1).