An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Elon Musk on Wednesday said SpaceX is “hoping” to launch the first orbital flight test of its mammoth Starship rocket in January, a schedule that depends on testing and regulatory approval. “We’ll do a bunch of tests in December and hopefully launch in January,” Musk said, speaking at a meeting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Space Studies Board.

The company’s next major step in developing Starship is launching to orbit. First, the company needs a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration for the mission, with the regulator expecting to complete a key environmental assessment by the end of this year. Musk noted that he wasn’t sure if Starship would successfully reach orbit on the first try, but emphasized that he is “confident” that the rocket will get to space in 2022. “We intend to have a high flight rate next year,” Musk said.

SpaceX aims to launch as many as a dozen Starship test flights next year, he said, to complete the “test flight program” and move to launching “real payloads in 2023.” He stressed that creating a mass production line for Starship is crucial to the program’s long-term goals, noting that the current “biggest constraint” on rocket manufacturing is how fast the company can build the Raptor engines needed for Starship. “I think, in order for life to become multiplanetary, we’ll need maybe 1,000 ships or something like that,” Musk said. “The overarching goal of SpaceX has been to advance space technology such that humanity can become a multi-planet species and, ultimately, a spacefaring civilization.” SpaceX received a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to develop Starship for delivering astronauts to the moon’s surface, but Musk said the company is “not assuming any international collaboration” or external funding for the rocket program. “[Starship] is at least 90% internally funded thus far,” Musk said.

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Source: Slashdot – SpaceX Will ‘Hopefully’ Launch First Orbital Starship Flight In January

GoJays shares a report from Yahoo Finance: Nvidia’s (NVDA) stock closed out the trading day Thursday with gusto, following its impressive Q3 earnings report on Wednesday. Shares of the chip maker ended the day up 8.25%, after jumping more than 10% at the open. The stock’s performance comes after the company reported quarterly revenue jumped 50% year-over-year on the back of strong performances by its data center and gaming businesses in Q3.

Nvidia’s data center arm has been a boon for the firm, helping to power its stock price up 124% year-over-year at the close of trading on Wednesday. And the company’s earnings report only buoyed investor confidence in the business, which saw record revenue of $2.94 billion in the prior quarter, a 55% year-over-year increase. Not to be out done, Nvidia’s gaming business also brought in record revenue of $3.22 billion, a 42% year-over-year increase.
Needham analysts said Nvidia could become the “first trillion dollar semiconductor company.” As Bloomberg notes, $60 billion was added to the company’s market capitalization on Thursday, which is near the $800 billion threshold. “Since early October, Nvidia has added nearly $300 billion in market value, about the equivalent of the market cap of Disney, Netflix or Pfizer.”

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Source: Slashdot – Nvidia Eyes Trillion Club Following Blowout Earnings

NFTs are unique blockchain entries through which people can prove that they own something. However, the underlying images can be copied with a single click. This point is illustrated by The NFT Bay which links to a 19.5 Terabyte collection of ‘all NFTs’ on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. And it comes with an important warning message too. TorrentFreak reports: “The Billion Dollar Torrent,” as it’s called, reportedly includes all the NFTs on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. These files are bundled in a massive torrent that points to roughly 15 terabytes of data. Unpacked, this adds up to almost 20 terabytes. Australian developer Geoff is the brains behind the platform, which he describes as an art project. Speaking with TorrentFreak, he says that The Pirate Bay was used as inspiration for nostalgic reasons, which needs further explanation.

The NFT Bay is not just any random art project. It does come with a message, perhaps a wake-up call, for people who jump on the NFT bandwagon without fully realizing what they’re spending their crypto profits on. “Purchasing NFT art right now is nothing more than directions on how to access or download an image. The image is not stored on the blockchain and the majority of images I’ve seen are hosted on Web 2.0 storage which is likely to end up as 404 meaning the NFT has even less value.” The same warning is more sharply articulated in the torrent’s release notes which are styled in true pirate fashion. “[T]his handy torrent contains all of the NFT’s so that future generations can study this generation’s tulip mania and collectively go…” it reads.

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Source: Slashdot – ‘The NFT Bay’ Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs