The Automated Daily

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Consensus: AI for Research. Get a free month - https://get.consensus.app/automated_daily - KrispCall: Agentic Cloud Telephony - https://try.krispcall.com/tad - Effortless AI design for presentations, websites, and more with Gamma - https://try.gamma.app/tad Support The Automated Daily directly: Buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/theautomateddaily Today's topics: Asteroid 2026 JH2 Close Approach - Asteroid 2026 JH2 passes extremely close to Earth at 91,000 km distance, discovered just eight days ago, raising awareness about near-Earth objects monitoring. SpaceX CRS-34 ISS Docking - SpaceX Dragon spacecraft successfully docks with International Space Station carrying 6,500 pounds of scientific experiments including bone scaffold research and planetary formation studies. Moon Venus Conjunction Tonight - Closest Moon-Venus conjunction of 2026 visible tonight, creating a striking celestial pairing in western sky after sunset, best viewing opportunity of evening apparition. SMILE Mission Launch Tomorrow - ESA-China SMILE mission launches tomorrow to study solar wind-magnetosphere interactions, first major joint space mission between European and Chinese space agencies. Starship Version 3 Debut - SpaceX prepares for Starship Version 3 debut with significant redesigns, aiming to demonstrate full and rapid reuse capabilities for future lunar missions. Episode Transcript Asteroid 2026 JH2 Close Approach Starting with today's most attention-grabbing story: Asteroid 2026 JH2, recently dubbed 'Death Rock' in some media circles, is making an extremely close approach to Earth today. Discovered just eight days ago on May 10th, this space rock measuring between 50 and 115 feet across will pass within 91,000 kilometers of our planet—closer than many communication satellites orbit. While NASA confirms there's no collision risk, the proximity has scientists closely monitoring its trajectory. What makes this particularly noteworthy is how quickly it was detected after entering our observational range, highlighting both the capabilities and limitations of our planetary defense systems. This event serves as a timely reminder of why continued investment in near-Earth object tracking remains crucial for planetary safety. SpaceX CRS-34 ISS Docking In International Space Station news, SpaceX's CRS-34 cargo mission successfully docked with the orbital laboratory yesterday morning at approximately 6:37 a.m. Eastern Time. The Dragon spacecraft, which launched from Cape Canaveral on Friday evening, delivered about 6,500 pounds of scientific experiments and crew supplies. Among the payload are several noteworthy investigations: a bone scaffold made from wood that could lead to new osteoporosis treatments, an instrument studying charged particles that affect power grids and satellites, and research that may provide fundamental insights into planetary formation. The spacecraft will remain attached to the station until mid-June before returning to Earth with time-sensitive research samples. This mission marks another successful chapter in the ongoing partnership between NASA and commercial space providers for maintaining continuous scientific operations in low Earth orbit. Moon Venus Conjunction Tonight Skywatchers have a special treat tonight as the Moon and Venus put on their closest conjunction of this evening apparition. About an hour after sunset, look toward the western horizon to spot the brilliant planet Venus positioned just 2.4 degrees to the lower left of the thin crescent Moon. This celestial pairing creates one of the most striking visual events of the year, easily visible even from urban areas with minimal light pollution. Through binoculars, both objects will fit comfortably in the...

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Invest Like the Pros with StockMVP - https://www.stock-mvp.com/?via=ron - Discover the Future of AI Audio with ElevenLabs - https://try.elevenlabs.io/tad - Lindy is your ultimate AI assistant that proactively manages your inbox - https://try.lindy.ai/tad Support The Automated Daily directly: Buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/theautomateddaily Today's topics: Vatican sets AI ethics agenda - Pope Leo XIV launched a Vatican AI study group and is expected to frame artificial intelligence through human dignity, justice, labor, peace, and truth—echoing Catholic social teaching. US-China race for robotics - A new analysis says the AI contest is shifting toward physical deployment: the U.S. leads in frontier models and chips, while China’s manufacturing scale accelerates robotics and embodied AI. Ukraine strikes deep into Russia - Ukraine carried out one of its largest long-range drone barrages on Russia, including areas near Moscow, highlighting growing reach and pressure on Russian air defenses and oil infrastructure. Hormuz blockade shocks global business - The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz has driven oil and shipping costs sharply higher, with airlines and manufacturers warning of major profit hits. US-China farm trade thaw - After a Trump-Xi summit, China and the U.S. signaled preliminary steps to expand agricultural trade, potentially easing tariffs and reviving U.S. soybean and beef exports to China. Ebola exposure concerns for Americans - During an Ebola outbreak in DR Congo, several Americans were reportedly exposed; the WHO declared an international emergency as officials weigh quarantine moves and cross-border screening. SpaceX readies new Starship test - SpaceX is targeting a May 19 launch window for a new Starship version designed for bigger payloads and more routine reusability—an important test for future Moon missions. India-Netherlands strategic partnership expands - India and the Netherlands upgraded ties to a strategic partnership, signing agreements spanning defense, critical minerals, semiconductors, AI, and green hydrogen amid wider global tensions. Episode Transcript Vatican sets AI ethics agenda We begin with the Vatican, where Pope Leo XIV has created an internal study group focused on artificial intelligence. The message from Church officials and scholars is clear: AI is moving fast, and the Church wants to weigh in—publicly and forcefully—on what that means for human dignity and the future of society. This move comes as the Pope prepares his first encyclical, timed to the anniversary of “Rerum Novarum,” the 1891 text that helped define Catholic social teaching during the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution. The hint is hard to miss: the new document is expected to frame AI as a similarly world-changing force, and to argue that ethics can’t be an afterthought—especially with concerns like misinformation, deepfakes, bias, and the use of AI in warfare. It’s also a geopolitical signal. The Vatican is positioning itself as a moral voice in a global race where governments and companies are accelerating development, and where international rules remain contested—potentially sharpening friction with Washington, where the Trump administration has pushed for rapid AI progress and resisted stronger global regulation. US-China race for robotics Staying with AI, a new report from Alpine Macro argues the competition is no longer just about who has the smartest software—it’s about who can build and deploy machines at real-world scale. Their take: the United States still leads the “brain” side of AI—think cutting-edge models and advanced semiconductors. But China dominates what the report calls the “body” layer: manu...

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - KrispCall: Agentic Cloud Telephony - https://try.krispcall.com/tad - SurveyMonkey, Using AI to surface insights faster and reduce manual analysis time - https://get.surveymonkey.com/tad - Discover the Future of AI Audio with ElevenLabs - https://try.elevenlabs.io/tad Support The Automated Daily directly: Buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/theautomateddaily Today's topics: Vatican launches AI ethics push - Pope Leo XIV formed an in-house Vatican AI study group and is expected to frame AI like an Industrial Revolution moment, emphasizing human dignity, justice, labor, truth, and deepfake risks. Starship V3 test and Artemis - SpaceX is lining up Starship Flight 12, the first major test of the larger V3 vehicle tied to NASA’s Artemis plans; success could restore momentum after recent failures and fuel IPO speculation. AI agents reshape software engineering - Engineers are increasingly starting tasks by delegating implementation and debugging to AI agents, while new practices like spec-driven development and ‘agent hooks’ aim to keep quality, safety, and accountability in place. arXiv cracks down on AI papers - arXiv will more aggressively penalize submissions showing unverified AI-generated content, including possible year-long bans—raising the stakes for research integrity and trustworthy citations. Robotaxi rivalry: Uber versus Waymo - Uber is publicly needling Waymo while investing heavily to assemble its own robotaxi capacity, signaling a shift from being a distribution platform to a direct autonomy competitor. Rubin Observatory real-time sky alerts - The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is ramping toward an industrial-scale sky survey, already finding new asteroids and stress-testing an alert pipeline that will force astronomy to handle millions of nightly change notifications. China’s edge in embodied AI - A macro report argues the AI race is tilting toward real-world deployment: the U.S. leads in frontier models and chips, while China’s manufacturing scale and robotics supply chains accelerate ‘embodied intelligence.’ Amazon’s AI-era restructuring bets - Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is cutting bureaucracy and doubling down on massive AI infrastructure to defend AWS, even as partnerships and data-center spending reshape the company’s risk profile. White-collar automation and careers - Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman predicts rapid automation of white-collar work, as tech workers debate inequality in the AI boom and rethink job-hunting through ‘side doors’ like public work and direct outreach. Episode Transcript Vatican launches AI ethics push Let’s start with that Vatican development. Pope Leo XIV has set up an in-house study group on artificial intelligence, as the Church prepares a major teaching document expected to argue that AI is reshaping society the way industrialization once did. The emphasis, according to officials and scholars, will be ethics first—human dignity, justice, labor impacts, truth, and the growing problem of misinformation and deepfakes. What makes this noteworthy isn’t just symbolism. The Vatican is trying to become a consistent global participant in AI governance debates at a time when governments and companies are moving fast, and often disagree on what limits—if any—should be set. Starship V3 test and Artemis On the space front, SpaceX is preparing Starship Flight 12 for Tuesday, and it’s a big one: the first flight of Starship V3, a larger and more capable version that NASA is depending on for future Artemis missions. SpaceX is expected to attempt satellite-deployment demos and an in-space engine relight—both key stepping stones toward more complex missions, including deorbit burns and eventually in-space refueling. The backdrop here is pressure on ...

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Lindy is your ultimate AI assistant that proactively manages your inbox - https://try.lindy.ai/tad - SurveyMonkey, Using AI to surface insights faster and reduce manual analysis time - https://get.surveymonkey.com/tad - Discover the Future of AI Audio with ElevenLabs - https://try.elevenlabs.io/tad Support The Automated Daily directly: Buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/theautomateddaily Today's topics: Apple, AI hype, and iPhone - John Gruber pushes back on “killer AI product” talk for Apple, arguing AI will be integrated across devices and the iPhone remains central to the interface. Graduation boos and AI backlash - Commencement crowds boo AI talk, including Eric Schmidt at the University of Arizona—signaling job-market anxiety, anti-hype sentiment, and growing public resistance to AI narratives. Trust gap between experts, public - A Pew Research Center survey shows a sharp optimism gap: AI experts largely positive, the public far less so, with Gen Z using AI while feeling notably anxious and under-guided by policy. Europe’s AI infrastructure sovereignty push - Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch warns lawmakers Europe has a narrow window to build chips-to-data-center capacity, or risk long-term dependence on US compute, energy, and cloud providers. Data centers: water narrative reality-check - An analysis argues “AI guzzles water” headlines are often context-free in the US, with national shares small—while acknowledging localized water stress and planning concerns are still real. ThinkPad’s evolution into AI PCs - A ThinkPad retrospective highlights how a consistent enterprise design endured, and why NPUs, local models, and memory capacity are shaping the next ‘AI workstation’ era. - Gruber Pushes Back on Calls for Apple’s ‘Killer AI Product’ - Eric Schmidt Booed at University of Arizona Commencement After AI Remarks - Graduates Boo Commencement Speakers Over AI Comments Amid Job Market Fears - Mistral CEO Says Europe Has Two Years to Build AI Infrastructure or Depend on US - theverge.com - Retrospective Charts ThinkPad’s 1992–2026 Evolution From IBM Origins to AI-Era Workstations - Growing U.S. AI Backlash Threatens Data Center Expansion and Industry Growth - UA graduates drown out Eric Schmidt’s pro-AI message with boos at commencement - Analysis Says AI Data Center Water Panic Is Overstated, With Impacts Mostly Local and Manageable - Eric Schmidt Booed at University of Arizona Commencement After Praising AI Episode Transcript Apple, AI hype, and iPhone Let’s start with the mood shift around AI in public life—because it’s getting louder, literally. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was repeatedly booed during a University of Arizona commencement address after he compared AI’s impact to the personal computer era. He acknowledged student anxieties—jobs, climate, politics—and argued the future is still unwritten, urging graduates to shape AI’s direction. But the reaction itself is the headline: similar boos have popped up at other ceremonies, and reports suggest graduates increasingly hear “AI” as shorthand for a tougher entry-level job market, not a brighter future. Why this matters: tech leaders are still speaking in big, optimistic arcs, while students are reacting to immediate, personal stakes—hiring, wages, and whether their work will be devalued. That gap is widening, and institutions are going to feel pressure to offer more than inspiration—things like training, clearer policies, and credible pathways into AI-shaped careers. Graduation boos and AI backlash That backlash isn’t just about vibes; it’s showing up in broader sentiment and even in project-level friction. One recent read on US public opinion argues negativity toward AI is becoming a real political and fin...

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - SurveyMonkey, Using AI to surface insights faster and reduce manual analysis time - https://get.surveymonkey.com/tad - Prezi: Create AI presentations fast - https://try.prezi.com/automated_daily - KrispCall: Agentic Cloud Telephony - https://try.krispcall.com/tad Support The Automated Daily directly: Buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/theautomateddaily Today's topics: Exotic crystals inside trinitite glass - Scientists found a new clathrate crystal phase inside trinitite from the Trinity nuclear test, showing how extreme, brief events can create exotic materials under nonequilibrium conditions. Opting out of data brokers - The open-source macOS tool auto-identity-remove automates data-broker opt-outs with scheduled rechecks, local-only state, and optional CAPTCHA handling—reducing long-term personal data exposure. Capability-based secure OS history - A 1979 SRI paper on PSOS highlights formal methods and capability-based access control, emphasizing a small trusted base and verifiable security through modular “type manager” design. Image-to-CAD with editable history - GenCAD generates not just a 3D CAD model but the full parametric command history from an image, making AI-generated geometry more editable and useful for real engineering workflows. Student backlash over AI hype - Eric Schmidt being booed at a graduation underscores growing public unease about AI, jobs, and platform harms—signaling a credibility gap for tech leaders’ optimism. Rethinking the hard problem - Carlo Rovelli argues the “hard problem of consciousness” is a framing error rooted in dualism, reframing consciousness as a scientific, natural phenomenon described at different levels. Debian on locked Android tablets - The rkdebian project boots Debian 12 from SD on a Rockchip-based tablet without touching Android, expanding low-cost hardware reuse and hands-on Linux experimentation. Voyager legacy software myth check - A Voyager retrospective says the real risk isn’t mystical 1970s code, but lost documentation and institutional memory—critical as the mission runs on dwindling power and staffing. Searchable astronaut Q&A archive - The “Ask an Astronaut” site organizes thousands of ISS interview questions into a searchable archive, making firsthand spaceflight explanations easier for educators and the curious. - Open-Source macOS Tool Automates Monthly Data Broker Opt-Outs Across Hundreds of Sites - SRI’s PSOS Paper Outlines a Formally Designed Capability-Based Secure Operating System - DOGMA 25 Launches New Manifesto and Ruleset for Low-Tech, Human-Centered Filmmaking - GenCAD Generates Editable Parametric CAD Programs from Images - Eric Schmidt Booed at University of Arizona Commencement After AI Remarks - Carlo Rovelli: The ‘Hard Problem’ of Consciousness Is a Category Mistake - Scientists Find a New Clathrate Crystal Inside Trinity Test Trinitite - rkdebian Pre-Release Brings SD-Card Debian 12 Boot to Doogee U10 RK3562 Tablet - Voyager’s Real Software Risk Isn’t a ‘Lost Language’—It’s Fading Expertise and Missing Records - ISS in Real Time Launches “Ask an Astronaut” Searchable Q&A Archive Episode Transcript Exotic crystals inside trinitite glass First up, materials science with a historical twist. Researchers analyzing trinitite—the greenish glass formed when the Trinity nuclear test fused desert sand—found a previously unknown crystal phase embedded inside it. The new structure is a cage-like lattice that traps other atoms, apparently formed during the blast’s split-second combination of extreme heat, crushing pressure, and rapid cooling. Why it matters: events like nuclear detonations, meteor impacts, and other high-energy shocks can act like accidental laboratories, creating “can’t-make-t...