Researchers in Scotland have devised a way to “neutralize” creepy crawlies in the coolest way possible: by shooting them with a laser. Ildar Rakhmatulin, a research associate at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, recently partnered with a group of engineers, biologists, and machine learning specialists to create a cockroach-compromising, AI-powered laser device. Rakhmatulin had previously created Raspberry Pi and laser combinations to kill mosquitos, but after recognizing the effect roach infestations could have on the restaurant industry and general public health, he wanted to go bigger.
The system begins with a single-board Jetson Nano, a small computer capable of running deep learning algorithms. Using 1,000 images of cockroaches in different lighting, Rakhmatulin and his team trained the Nano to recognize its target and track the insect’s movement. Once the two cameras attached to the device have located a roach, the Nano calculates its target’s distance within 3D space. It then sends this information to a galvanometer, which uses mirrors to adjust the laser’s direction. The laser can then be shot at the target.
The Jetson Nano is the core of Rakhmatulin’s roach laser. (Photo: Nvidia)
The laser’s effect varies depending on its power level. Lower power appears to trigger the insects’ flight response, which the team thinks might teach roaches not to return to a particular area. Stronger power levels “neutralized” (AKA killed) the roaches. Better yet, the team is already testing it on a wider range of pests, like hornets.
Technology like Rakhmatulin’s could be a viable alternative to more conventional anti-roach measures. Mechanical and sticky traps are better used as monitoring tools than as a way to get rid of roaches, since they only catch or kill a few wanderers at a time. While effective on a larger scale, many pesticides contain “forever chemicals” that leach into the environment and pose serious public health risks. Some are even dangerous to use around children or pets.
But it’ll be a while before the team’s roach laser becomes available to the hospitality industry or public health agencies—if ever. Though the technology is relatively inexpensive (Rakhmatulin writes each of the device’s five components was under $250), it’s so far incapable of targeting a specific part of an insect’s body, which would make it more effective. Its actual laser component is also dangerous to the human eye without proper precautions.
If you use the internet, you’ve answered a few CAPTCHAs. (Okay, maybe more than a few.) These unavoidable tests of humanity are a hallmark of the online experience, but they’re inconvenient and intrusive. Cloudflare, a cloud server network, claims to have created a more discreet substitute. On Wednesday the company announced Turnstile, a “privacy-preserving” alternative to CAPTCHA. Unlike many Cloudflare products, this one will be free to use for any site owner—even those who aren’t Cloudflare customers.
Turnstile differs from CAPTCHA in that it doesn’t require any input from the site visitor whatsoever. Rather than asking a site visitor to click on blurry palm trees or copy down a few characters, Turnstile automatically picks from a handful of browser challenges based on recent telemetry and client behavior. It then runs the selected challenge behind the scenes. The result is a quick and easy check against malicious activity that doesn’t exclude blind site visitors and others with accessibility concerns.
But according to Cloudflare, near-universal annoyance with CAPTCHA wasn’t its only motivation to create an alternative. CAPTCHA works by assigning site visitors individual scores, which are based on various signs of legitimacy. One of these signs is the presence (or lack) of a Google cookie, which signifies that the visitor likely has a Google account and is therefore not a bot. Another is the use of a VPN: visitors with a VPN look suspicious, while those without a VPN appear more legitimate. Not only is this unfair to people who use VPNs, but it presents clear privacy risks. By looking for the aforementioned traits, Google’s CAPTCHA can view and store a visitor’s IP address, device ID, browser plug-ins, and more.
Turnstile’s browser challenges largely rely on what are referred to as Private Access Tokens (PAT), or a new type of cryptographic token built into the Privacy Pass protocol. PAT help to verify that HTTP requests are coming from legitimate devices and site visitors while isolating device and visitor data. Though Turnstile briefly checks a few aspects of visitors’ session data, like headers and browser characteristics, PAT preserve the integrity of that data by requesting validation from the device manufacturer (like Apple or Google). Cloudflare says Turnstile could eliminate a vast majority of CAPTCHA uses, thus making the web a more confidential—and less frustrating—space to be. Those who are interested in trying out Turnstile on their sites can now sign up to do so.
Hello, readers, and welcome back to This Week in Space, your Friday escape from terrestrial news. This week, NASA finally crashed its DART spacecraft into its target asteroid. Three cosmonauts also came home from the International Space Station. And despite the center of Hurricane Ian passing directly over the Kennedy Space Center, and despite a “fire” in the Vehicle Assembly Building, as far as we know the Artemis rocket is doing fine.
DART Spacecraft Finally Crashes Into Asteroid
Monday evening, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) smashed into its target asteroid: Dimorphos, AKA “Didymoon.” Dimorphos is a moonlet, an asteroid orbiting another, slightly larger asteroid called Didymos. Neither poses a threat to Earth, so NASA chose the smaller of the two for a low-stakes field test of their ability to defend the planet from an inbound asteroid.
In the weeks preceding the launch, concern mounted among scientists poring over data from observations of Dimorphos. One report characterized it as a “rubble pile,” more akin to a pile of rocky snowballs than a snow-covered rock. The moonlet’s low density suggested that DART would leave a much larger crater in Dimorphos than NASA expected — or even destroy it altogether.
The video below compiles data from DART’s final two minutes before impact into a 4K60 (interpolated) video. While it’s not exactly Stanley Kubrick, it’s mesmerizing to watch, especially the last few frames. We recommend slowing the video to 1/4 speed around the 40-second mark to enjoy the final approach. Pause on the final shots and you can even see the texture of the ice. YouTube can also be advanced or rewound frame-by-frame by using the “<” and “>” keys.
As you can see here, the “rubble pile” hypothesis holds true. In fact, we’re pretty sure DART did blow a gigantic crater in Didymoon, and it may have disrupted the moonlet entirely. However, DART mission control reported the time of impact by reporting when telemetry cut off. That means we don’t have much direct data about the innards of the asteroid yet.
Other telescopes were watching Didymoon for signs of impact. While we don’t yet have anything else in the same exquisite focus as the impact video, Webb and Hubble were both watching.
Credits | Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jian-Yang Li (PSI), Cristina Thomas (Northern Arizona University), Ian Wong (NASA-GSFC); image processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Webb, Hubble, and other observatories captured “plumes” or “tendrils” of debris, streaming away from the asteroid after the impact. You can check out full-res versions of these images, along with animated versions of both, at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Webb Calibration Puts Observations in Jeopardy
Speaking of the JWST, Nature reports on the space telescope’s calibration sent a frisson of alarm through the astronomy community this week. Webb officially opened for science on July 12 of this year. Booked solid for its entire first year, the telescope immediately went to work full-time gathering data and taking pictures. However, calibration procedures from July 14-15 cast initial doubt on observations performed during that period.
This is a blob, yes, but it’s a blob of great scientific importance! Image: Naidu et al, P. Oesch, T. Treu, GLASS-JWST, NASA/CSA/ESA/STScI
Nature assured astronomers in an editorial that after “a bit of panic,” so far nobody has found any problems in any of the studies published in their journals. Thankfully, that includes several candidates for the universe’s first galaxies, including the blurry red splotch you see here. However, many studies of Webb images are self-published by their authors on arXiv, sacrificing peer review to get the information out there faster. One scientist called the process “peer review via Twitter.”
One Mission Ends, Another Begins Aboard International Space Station
Three cosmonauts landed safely in Kazakhstan Thursday evening at about 5 p.m. local time, as they returned from the International Space Station this week. Denis Matveev, Sergey Korsakov, and former space station commander Oleg Artemyev came back planetside in a Soyuz-21 capsule.
Samantha Cristoforetti Assumes Command of the ISS
Already a decorated pilot and a spaceflight veteran, ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti made history this week as she took over command of the International Space Station. During a formal ceremony on Wednesday, Artemyev handed over control of the station. Cristoforetti is the first European female to step into the role.
Samantha Cristoforetti inside the BEAM inflatable module, floating in microgravity aboard the International Space Station. Image: Samantha Cristoforetti / ESA
Cristoforetti herself is nearing the end of her stay on the station. Consequently, one of her principal responsibilities is now ensuring a smooth handoff of the station to her successor.
Wind Speeds, and Blood Pressure, Dropping After Ian
Hurricane Ian cut a broad swathe across Florida this week, and despite being all the way over on the state’s Atlantic coast, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center was no exception. In fact, the hurricane’s eye passed directly over the KSC. Afterward, Ian yawed back out to sea, where it resumed its hurricane status before taking aim at the Carolinas.
As you may imagine, it’s been a very busy week for NASA. Here are the highlights:
There was a “fire” in the VAB, but Artemis wasn’t involved. NASA officials reported Tuesday that fire alarms in the VAB had gone off around noon, local time. As fires go, though, this one was a nothingburger. We’re using scare quotes for a reason. Later in the day, the agency gave more detail:
“The notification came,” said NASA spokesperson Patti Bielling, “when an arc flash event occurred at a connector on an electrical panel in High Bay 3. A spark landed on a rope marking the boundary of the work area. The rope began to smolder, workers pulled the alarm, and employees evacuated the building safely.”
Nobody was injured, and the agency later said bluntly, “The Artemis I rocket and spacecraft were never in any danger.”
Kennedy Space Center’s “ride-out” team weathered the storm onsite. It’s kind of bananas to put this many billions of dollars worth of space equipment in one of the places most likely to get hit by a hurricane. Thankfully, NASA has a plan in place to batten down its very expensive hatches. Like the armed forces’ DEFCON (defense readiness condition) levels of alert, there’s a HURCON specifically for impending hurricanes. “As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 28,” the agency said in a blog update, “Kennedy Space Center declared HURCON I status with the ride-out team sheltered in place at their designated locations until the storm passes.”
Artemis, just before sundown on Monday. NASA began moving the vehicle and capsule into the VAB a few hours later, shortly before midnight. Image: NASA/Joel Kowsky
To prepare for the storm, NASA decided to roll the Space Launch System back from pad 39B to the VAB, where the rocket hung out beside Psyche. Meanwhile, SpaceX mission techs secured the Dragon Endurance spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket in their hangar at Launch Complex 39A.
Crew-5 should launch on October 5. As late as the 27th, NASA and SpaceX were targeting October 4 to launch Crew-5 to the ISS. However, the agency has since updated the Crew-5 launch window to reflect atmospheric conditions and hurricane cleanup. Undocking of the current Crew-4 mission from the ISS “will move day-for-day along with the Crew-5 launch.”
SpaceX Crew-5 PreFlight Imagery – CEIT – Anna Kikina, Josh Cassada, Nicole Mann and Koichi Wakata. Provided by SpaceX
Crew-5 will include NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, who will serve as mission commander and pilot, respectively. Astronaut Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and cosmonaut Anna Kikina will serve as mission specialists.
Artemis 1, however, won’t launch until November. During a Wednesday briefing, NASA officials confirmed that while they do have another launch window in October, Artemis will be delayed for at least one more launch period. Janet Petro, director of the KSC, explained that hurricane cleanup, along with some necessary attention to “some of the rocket’s more delicate components,” would take longer than the remaining October launch window permits.
Instead, Petro confirmed that the agency will wait for the next lunar launch window, which opens on Nov. 12.
Skywatchers Corner
Last week, six planets went into retrograde: Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto. All six will remain in retrograde until Mercury resumes its “proper” motion on Oct. 2. At the time, I wrote:
Not only did it confound their equations, retrograde motion confounded the horoscopes drawn up by more spiritually-inclined [classical] astronomers. During periods when the planets were in retrograde, astrologers then and now forecast that the characteristics associated with each planet could turn on their heads, changing the horoscope like an inverted tarot card changes a reading. The gamut ran from stubbed-toe inconveniences, à la Mercury in retrograde, to celestial omens that swayed the hand of Alexander the Great in his march across the Mediterranean and the Near East.
Imagine what he would have thought to hear that NASA means to launch a moon rocket with six planets in retrograde.
To be clear, what I half-suspected would happen was some glitch on Artemis’ umpteenth rescheduled launch date, Oct. 3. Then, over the weekend, the hurricane blew in, scuttling the launch date entirely.
Hurricane Ian, as seen from the International Space Station. Image: NASA
Do you think NASA will have time to hire some sort of paranormal professional to remove the obvious curse before Nov. 12? Failing that, how much of the ocean has to be holy water, by volume, to confer some kind of protection in time for the next auspicious launch date? Inquiring minds demand to know.
Image: NASA
Elsewhere in the night sky, the waxing crescent moon is visible shortly before dawn. You’ll see it framed by the triangle between Mars, Betelgeuse, and Aldebaran if you look to the south. All three are big, bright points of reddish light, with Mars highest in the sky.
Hot on the heels of Logitech’s G Cloud handheld announcement, there’s a new cloud gaming portable on the horizon. Verizon, Razer, and Qualcomm have teamed up to launch the Razer Edge 5G, an Android-powered gaming device that will let you play your favorite phone games, as well as console and PC games streamed from the cloud. We don’t have most of the details, but as the name implies, this device will have a 5G connection for cloud gaming on the go.
The Edge 5G will run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon G3x Gen 1, the current top-of-the-line gaming platform from Qualcomm. It previously only appeared in a dev kit produced in partnership with Razer. The brief teaser video of the Edge 5G doesn’t reveal many details, but we can assume it shares some chipset-level capabilities with the dev kit, like USB-C video output, high-refresh display support, and Snapdragon Sound-enabled speakers. The companies have not announced if the device will be optimized for any particular cloud gaming platform, but we can assume Stadia won’t be on the list.
The only parts of the Edge 5G shown in the teaser are the d-pad, a thumbstick, and a couple of miscellaneous buttons. It spends a strangely long time focused on one of the triggers. You can also see the screen for just a moment — it’s widescreen with rounded corners. The profile of the device makes it look much bulkier than the Logitech G Cloud or Nintendo Switch, as well.
BREAKING: @Verizon, @Razer and @Qualcomm are teaming up on the world's first 5G mobile gaming handheld—Razer Edge 5G! It will allow you to play your favorite games regardless of whether you are gaming in the cloud, on an app or streaming from your console. https://t.co/TYPw5xFyeFpic.twitter.com/F9Vg3CfABl
Verizon says the new handheld will be the first 5G-enabled gaming handheld, which is true. There just hasn’t been any demand for one until now… and maybe not even now. True, one of the issues cited with the Logitech G Cloud was the need for Wi-Fi to play cloud games, but adding mobile data to such a device is going to increase the cost and greatly impact battery life. In addition, you need a fast, and more importantly, reliable internet connection to stream games from the cloud. Current 5G networks are still struggling to live up to the claims carriers make every time they add coverage or band support.
Razer will unveil the Edge 5G in full on Oct. 15 at Razercon. Verizon’s involvement means this device will probably be limited to operating on the carrier’s 5G network. While Verizon is partially limited in how it locks 5G devices, Razer could simply decline to get it certified on other 5G networks. That means buyers would have to pay whatever Verizon asks if they want mobile data on the handheld, and if not, there’s little reason to buy this over another portable game machine.
The DALL-E image-generating AI made waves when it debuted earlier this year. The engine offers creepily accurate renderings of almost any description imaginable, and you can now access it free and without waiting through a queue. It’s not unlimited, but OpenAI will be happy to sell you more credits once you run through your allotment.
At its core, DALL-E is an advanced machine learning model built to understand natural language and turn it into an image. It’s not the first neural network to attempt this, but it’s certainly the most capable one that’s been made available to the general public. When it launched publicly in April 2022, demand was extremely high, and OpenAI had to use a waitlist to control access. Now, you can just sign up and begin creating your wildest dreams right away.
According to OpenAI, DALL-E is currently spitting out more than two million images per day with over 1.5 million active users. The company says feedback from users (especially artists) has helped to refine the quality of DALL-E images. Having used DALL-E earlier this year and again today, it does seem more accurate and “artistic.” The image at the top of this post was created with DALL-E from the prompt “abstract head in profile filled with glowing circuit boards.”
Some particularly good examples of DALL-E images provided by OpenAI.
Since launching, DALL-E has also added new features like Outpainting, which allows you to leverage the AI to expand an image beyond its original borders. The AI just makes up more content out of nothing, and it’s surprisingly believable. You still have to provide a text prompt to tell the AI what the image is, though.
OpenAI says it’s already testing DALL-E with several potential customers with the aim of turning it into a paid service. While it’s free to try for individuals, you only get 50 credits per month, and each set of four text-prompted images eats up a credit. You can purchase an additional 115 credits for $15, which works out to 13 cents per action. But be aware, each frame you add to an image in Outpainting also costs you a credit. It could get spendy if you get really into tinkering with the AI. You could just sign up for more free accounts, but each one requires phone number verification.
Mortal Kombat 11 was one of the big AAA launch titles for Stadia, but it hasn't gotten many since then.
Stadia exploded onto the gaming scene in 2019 with some big promises and veteran gaming executives on board. Google said it was committed to making Stadia the future of gaming, but now it’s the past. Google has announced that Stadia will shut down in January 2023, and the game purchases are ending immediately. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Google will refund all past Stadia purchases. Stadia’s failure leaves Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft as the leading providers of cloud gaming services.
Google initially only made Stadia accessible to Pro subscribers, but the service opened up to everyone in 2020. Stadia launched with a handful of popular games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Mortal Kombat 11, but Google also promised exclusive first-party games from its Stadia Games & Entertainment division, which was run by Jade Raymond of Assassin’s Creed fame. One of the first signs that Stadia was in trouble came in early 2021 when Google shuttered SG&E without warning, and this was mere weeks after Stadia finally started to get positive buzz for how well it ran Cyberpunk 2077 while the Xbox and PS4 struggled to keep up.
With no first-party titles, Google pledged to continue courting developers to get more games on the service. Reports indicate it was paying tens of millions to snag AAA ports, but there were still surprisingly few big releases. Following the shutdown of SG&E, Google was allegedly seeing subscriber numbers falling hundreds of thousands short of expectations. That’s when it began working on a new vision for Stadia, or rather, the underlying technology that it calls Immersive Stream. In late 2021, Stadia began to appear as a white label game streaming service for companies like AT&T. According to Google’s shutdown plans, this is the only part of Stadia that will survive.
This tweet aged like a fine milk.
Throughout 2022, Stadia continued to get just a trickle of indie games, which led to rumors that Google was going to shut down the service. However, Google publicly denied that in late July, saying that it was always working to bring more games to the platform. And just a few weeks later, we know the rumors were true.
Google says it will refund all purchases of games on the Stadia Store, as well as Stadia hardware on the Google Store. Stadia controllers are designed to connect over Wi-Fi, making them of limited utility in the absence of the cloud gaming platform. They should still work as generic USB game controllers, though. The refunds will take place over the coming months, finishing up in January 2023 when the service is discontinued. In the meantime, Stadia users can keep playing the games they already have in their libraries.
Despite the well-meaning refunds, this is not a good look for Google. The company has a reputation for losing interest and then canning services on which people come to rely. It asked for trust when it announced Stadia, and then failed systematically over the following three years to live up to our expectations. At the end of the day, no matter what PR and community managers say, Google is as predictable as the tides.
It’s common for people to split their computing between a computer and mobile device, but they don’t always talk to each other as seamlessly as they should. Intel hopes to fix that with its new Unison app. This tool can connect to your smartphone and make your files, messages, and more available on Windows. Well, as long as you’re using the latest and greatest Intel chips.
Unison is the product of Intel’s acquisition of Screenovate, which it announced at CES 2022 early this year. As an independent firm, Screenovate made bespoke apps for PC manufacturers like Dell that provided mobile integrations, and now Intel is bringing a version of that to PCs powered by its chips.
Intel says there will be a “simple pairing process” to link your phone and PC with Unison. With your machines connected, some of the core parts of the mobile experience will be replicated on your Windows machine, including phone calls, notifications, text messaging, and file access (photos taken on your phone will sync to a special gallery inside Unison).
Android users will get the full suite of features, but the iPhone won’t support the same deep integrations. Some messaging features won’t work, and notifications from third-party apps won’t have as many features. However, iPhone users who value computer-phone cooperation will almost certainly use a macOS machine, which has more extensive integrations than even the most well-supported Android-Windows pairings.
There’s an elephant in the room, too. Microsoft already bundles much of this same functionality with Windows in the form of the Phone Link app (previously branded as “Your Phone”). This app lets you connect a phone to your PC to get messages, notifications, and even photo synchronization. It’s possible Unison will offer a smoother experience for the basics, but Phone Link offers expanded features for some popular (and unpopular) Android phones, like those from Samsung and Microsoft. For example, these devices can mirror apps from your phone to your PC without installing them. Unison doesn’t do that at all.
Intel Unison will debut on a subset of laptops based on Intel Evo technology with 12th Gen Intel Core processors. These will be HP, Lenovo, and Acer machines, but that’s just the first step. Intel says that Unison will arrive on more computers in early 2023, but these will be those with 13th Gen Intel Core-based designs. Those with older CPUs will, apparently, have to make do with the very similar Phone Link tools Microsoft includes with Windows 10 and 11.
Volvo is taking a new step toward protecting its customers and their passengers. Select new vehicles will soon come with interior radars that aim to prevent children and pets from accidentally being locked inside.
The automaker’s new tech depends on “occupant sensors” built into the overhead console, roof-mounted reading lamps, and the trunk. These monitor the vehicle’s entire interior for the smallest movements. Should a distracted parent or pet owner attempt to lock the vehicle with a child or animal inside, the vehicle will block the lock attempt and display a reminder to check the interior on the vehicle’s center console screen. It’ll also activate climate control to keep children and animals from overheating or freezing, the company said.
Volvo’s rendering of the EX90’s interior using Unreal Engine. (Image: Volvo)
Most drivers swear themselves incapable of forgetting a child or pet in the car, but almost a thousand US children have died of hyperthermia in locked cars since 1998. The ASPCA estimates just as many pets die after being left in hot vehicles every year—either because they are forgotten or because owners think it’s safe to leave them behind. These deaths are preventable. According to Volvo, keeping the car unlocked, running climate control, and notifying drivers is the most practical way to achieve this.
Volvo’s flagship EX90 electric SUV will be the first of its fleet to include the radar. The automaker announced earlier this month that it would officially unveil the EX90 on November 9, but it’s revealed a few details in the days since. The new model is designed to be Volvo’s safest vehicle yet, with external sensors Volvo claims will reduce serious crashes by up to 20 percent. Another new internal sensor will monitor drivers’ eye movements, nudging those who appear to be sleepy or distracted and calling for help if a driver falls asleep at the wheel.
These features will eventually make their way to all of Volvo’s new vehicles. Volvo says it’ll include its interior sensors “in all countries where the 60GHz frequency used by the system is approved for automotive use,” so long as it receives the right regional approvals.
Samsung has only just released its last flagship phones for 2022, the Z Fold4 and Flip4, but its first launch of 2023 is already leaking. New renders purport to show the upcoming Galaxy S23 and S23+ in all their glory. The phones are a bit larger than the outgoing models, and the design takes some cues from the S22 Ultra.
These renders are not direct from Samsung — they come courtesy of OnLeaks, which has a history of accuracy working from leaked CAD files. Some elements like the material finish and color are mere guesses, but the shape and size of the device should be close to what we see in a few months.
The S23+ (above) will be in the middle of the lineup, with the smaller and cheaper S23 on one side and the S23 Ultra on the other. According to Smartprix, the S23+ will have the same 6.6-inch display size as the S22+, but the overall body is a bit larger. The S22+ is 157.4 x 75.8 x 7.6 mm, but the S23+ will allegedly be 157.7 x 76.1 x 7.6mm. Hopefully, the added space will allow Samsung to increase the battery size, which was smaller in the S22+ than in previous models.
It also looks like Samsung is dropping the distinctive camera island it has used on the Galaxy S family for the past several years. No more will the frame jut out to surround the camera sensors. The S23 will reportedly feature individual raised rings around each of the three camera sensors, a design that Samsung debuted earlier in 2022 with the S22 Ultra. Lest you think the base model S23 will retain the S22’s design, there’s a separate leak via Digit.in with renders of that phone. It’s visually identical to the S23+, but the phone will be smaller with a 6.1-inch screen.
The Galaxy S23 is smaller than the Plus variant, not that you can tell from a render.
Given the track record of OnLeaks releases, we’d put money on these renders being spot-on for the S23+. We won’t know for sure until Samsung reveals the S23 family officially, which is expected in February 2023. Perhaps Samsung will have an upgrade that isn’t discernable in these leaked images — maybe a better primary camera or faster charging. In terms of design, this is only a minor departure from the S22+. Regardless, the S23 family will have the latest Qualcomm chips, and it sounds like Samsung won’t saddle the international market with an inferior Exynos variant for once.
If you’ve ever wanted to zip around in a real-life jetpack, your opportunity awaits—if you’ve got exorbitant amounts of cash, of course.
Gravity, a “human flight” startup based in the United Kingdom, demonstrated its latest jet suit at this year’s International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago. Gravity founder Richard Browning hovered several feet over a lawn as attendees looked on, floating back and forth between crowds to give everyone a look at his invention in action. Browning’s movements were similar to those of a SCUBA diver: slow, graceful, and calculated. But at the end, he zoomed across the grass to demonstrate the jet suit’s dexterity at higher speeds.
Considered the world’s first patented jet suit, Gravity’s technology packs 1,000 horsepower and allows the user to fly anywhere from 10 to several hundred feet off the ground. (It’s technically capable of reaching a 12,000-foot altitude, but Gravity keeps its flights a little tamer for obvious safety reasons.) It uses five gas turbine jet engines, which run on jet fuel, diesel, or kerosene. These help the user obtain speeds up to 80 miles per hour.
The 75-pound suit probably isn’t the comfiest thing to wear on a hot day—or at all, for that matter. Once the “backpack” part of the jet suit goes on, the user inserts their arms into a pair of apparatuses each containing two turbines. (The fifth turbine is in the central pack.) It’s by moving these apparatuses that the user can manipulate their position and glide through the air.
The jet suits themselves cost around $400,000, but Gravity offers individual flight experiences for $3,500 and personalized flight training programs for $8,500. Gravity says it can take time for new users’ vestibular systems to adjust to the unique sensation of flying in the suit. Once they’ve overcome any motion sickness or imbalance, new users can focus on honing their movements.
But Gravity’s jet suits don’t exist just for the sake of novelty. The company has lent its technology to the Royal Navy, who used it to hop from battleship to boat in the middle of the ocean. Gravity’s also partnering with a British air ambulance service to allow medics to reach emergencies quicker and stabilize patients before conventional vehicles arrive.
Intel’s 2022 Innovation event just wrapped up, and it featured a peek at new Intel-powered technology like Unison, as well as the much-anticipated pricing for its Arc GPU and Raptor Lake CPUs. It also teamed up with Samsung to show off a concept slidable PC. The device was only on stage for a few minutes, but it stole the show.
When Samsung Display CEO JS Choi first held the device aloft, it looked like a typical tablet, but with a tug on one side, it expanded into a 17-inch landscape display. The demo hardware did not appear to be a fully functional PC, but Choi described it as a “display for PC.” We’ve seen foldable phones and even a few foldable laptops before, but a slidable PC would be new. You can see the entire demo in the timestamped video below.
Choi and Intel’s speakers spent a few minutes sliding the display back and forth (and they do seem genuinely giddy about it), but there was no discussion of how the screen worked. If it’s anything like other slidable prototypes we’ve seen, the flexible OLED rolls up inside the frame, and indeed, you can see a faint crease in the screen where the panel would have to double back on itself when in the smaller configuration.
As a piece of hardware, Samsung’s slidable screen looks incredible. We already know the company can make a foldable that works — the latest generation of Android foldables are surprisingly durable, with software integrations that make the form factor shine. The Galaxy Z Fold4 even supports stylus input, and the flexible OLED doesn’t get marked up by the tip. However, adding a slidable display to a Windows laptop might not yield the same results. Windows is only modestly optimized for touch, and Samsung’s display still measures 13 inches when compressed. There is little functional difference between using Windows on a 13-inch screen versus a 17-inch one.
Despite these potential issues, we may well see laptops and convertible PCs with these Samsung slidable screens in the coming year. The laptop market is cooling after a pandemic-fueled climb, but high-end computers are still selling well, and OEMs can eke out more profit from these devices. You can bet that any laptop with this technology will be expensive. The second-gen Lenovo X1 foldable PC retails for $2,500, and the Z Fold 4 is $1,800, and both have smaller displays than the one Samsung showed off at Intel Innovation.
In the face of Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine, a 17-year-old engineer has created a drone that can locate landmines. Igor Klymenko and his family had to flee their home in Kyiv earlier this year when Russia began its invasion. After a few weeks of hearing bombs and planes outside of their basement hideaway, Klymenko recalled a previous attempt to create a mine-detecting drone back in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea. Klymenko had felt desperate to find a way to help both soldiers and civilians. At the time, landmines were responsible for killing or injuring upwards of 7,000 people a year, The Smithsonianreports—a figure unlikely to have dropped in recent months.
Metal detector operators, landmine probes, and animals trained to sniff out explosives are the most common (and least expensive) ways to detect landmines before it’s too late. But all of these methods require being within relatively close proximity to the mine. Klymenko’s solution was to devise a system that could detect mines from above-ground and wouldn’t require putting people or animals in harm’s way.
His invention begins with a 4DRC F5 PRO quadcopter—an inexpensive, commercially available drone often used for photography and videography. Klymenko built a custom metal detector to hang from the drone as it flies. Before lift-off, the drone records its static GPS coordinates and waits for Klymenko to set a geographical search radius.
Once the attached metal detector has located a landmine, it sends an infrared signal to a phototransistor on a user-operated Arduino board. Klymenko wrote a C++ code to determine the landmine’s GPS coordinates based on the drone’s speed as well as the length of time between its initial GPS scan and the infrared signal’s receipt. These coordinates, which reliably fall within two centimeters of accuracy, can help civilians avoid landmines and guide professional deminers once the war has ended.
Klymenko hopes to enhance his invention by adding a few key features. A spray paint system would allow the drone to mark the landmines’ locations on the ground, while a ground-penetrating radar would further improve the detector’s accuracy. Klymenko might even someday introduce AI to determine the exact type of landmine, as well as a detonation system to prevent located mines from injuring people. Despite working toward degrees in computer science, math, and machine building at the University of Alberta and the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Klymenko aims to have a scalable product by the end of the year.
You can’t drive more than a few miles in most parts of America without running into a gas station, but electric car chargers are much less numerous. A new initiative from the US Department of Transportation (DOT) might help change that. The administration has allocated $5 billion to fund the deployment of electric car chargers, and now the project is getting underway with approvals in all 50 states, plus Washington DC and Puerto Rico.
The money comes from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, which was passed as a bipartisan infrastructure bill in early 2022. Now that the DOT has laid the groundwork, states have access to the 2022 and 2023 funding, totaling $1.5 billion. The full $5 billion fund is set to last five years, but 10 percent of the NEVI funds will be set aside each year for the Secretary of Transportation to direct as they see fit to fill the gaps in state-developed charging stations.
These federally funded chargers will be built mainly along highways with the goal of blanketing 75,000 miles of America’s roadways with EV charging capacity. This comes at a time when EV ownership is trending upward, though it still hovers in the single digits in most states. California leads the way with a 15.1 percent EV share in 2022, but the nationwide share is just one percent.
Home chargers like Ford’s 48-amp / 240 volt Level 2 charger are common, but a network of public chargers could save people the hassle and expense of installing their own at home.
The share of electric vehicles will undoubtedly keep moving upward, especially in states that plan to phase out gasoline vehicles in the 2030s. Nationwide, the administration is aiming for 50 percent of car sales to be electric by 2030. We can’t wait for people to buy more EVs before we start expanding infrastructure — consumers regularly cite the lack of charging stations as a barrier to purchasing an EV, hence the NEVI funding. Currently, many EV owners have gone to the expense of installing high-wattage charging in their homes to keep the car charged. However, some research suggests that charging at home in the evening and at night is the wrong way to plan for the future.
Transportation remains the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Reducing the number of gasoline-powered cars on the road is seen as key to reducing emissions. The current administration has set an ambitious goal of having the number of gas-powered vehicles be 50-52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. That’s going to be tough even with an EV charger every few miles.
Everyone is currently focused on the revenge NASA has exacted for dinosaurs by crashing the DART spacecraft into an asteroid, but that wasn’t our first salvo against the space rock menace. It’s been just over three years since Japan’s Hayabusa2 probe shot the asteroid Ryugu with multiple metal slugs to collect its samples. It wasn’t just about justice for dinos, though. The Hayabusa2 materials have been on Earth since late 2020, and new research reveals how Ryugu has changed over its lifetime, including a cataclysmic impact that made it the small-ish rock it is today.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) split its precious 5.4 grams of Ryugu among six different teams around the world. One of the most interesting discoveries is how and where Ryugu formed. Based on remnant magnetization in the samples, scientists have determined that Ryugu formed in the primordial solar nebula, which existed before the formation of the planets and has since condensed to the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets we see today. That means, by some measures, parts of Ryugu are older than the solar system.
Ryugu formed when the nebular gas was still very dense, blocking sunlight and driving temperatures down to -200 degrees Celsius (-328 degrees Fahrenheit). This parent body picked up large volumes of water and carbon dioxide ice and likely measured about 62 miles (100 kilometers) in diameter. The water and carbon dioxide reacted in the parent body to form hydrous silicates and carbonate minerals, which make up the majority of the samples obtained by Hayabusa2. There was even some liquid water still trapped inside crystals in the samples.
The research suggests that the original Ryugu collided with a smaller object, roughly one-tenth of its size, a billion years ago. This event blasted the parent body to pieces, and part of it reformed as the sub-kilometer asteroid we know today. Scientists report that today’s Ryugu is a mixture of the internal and external materials of the parent body. It is believed that water-bearing asteroids like Ryugu, which formed and were then pulverized outside the orbit of Jupiter, could have played a part in early formation of planets in the solar system.
We’ve clearly learned a great deal already from a few grams of Ryugu, and there’s much more to come. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission picked up as much as several kilograms of material from Bennu, and it’s on course for Earth right now. It’s expected to land about a year from now, in September 2023.
Until recently, DART was a spacecraft about the size of a vending machine. Now, it’s debris scattered across the surface of a small asteroid called Dimorphos. This was very much the intention, though. NASA succeeded in smashing DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) into its target on Monday, Sept. 26. Now, scientists get to assess the data from the impact, including some stunning images of the event.
NASA live-streamed the big moment, which was the first real-life test of planetary defense technology. The idea is that a sufficiently large impactor spacecraft could change the orbit of a dangerous asteroid, ensuring that it doesn’t hit Earth. We would, of course, need a lot of warning to push an asteroid out of the way, but how much? And how big would the impactor need to be? Those are questions that DART could help answer.
This first-of-its-kind test was observed from a few angles, including from the DART spacecraft itself. It carried a camera known as DRACO that relayed images right up to the moment of impact. That’s important because scientists haven’t seen very many asteroids up close, and our previous assumptions about what they’re like have fallen short.
In the above footage, the surface of Dimorphos is strewn with rubble — it looks a great deal like the asteroid Bennu, which NASA recently visited with the OSIRIS-REx probe. The team behind that mission was surprised when they found the surface of Bennu to be so craggy that it was difficult to find a safe place for OSIRIS-REx to boop the asteroid. Japan found the asteroid Ryugu to be similarly uneven.
The first images from LICIACube, a small Italian Space Agency satellite, of the NASA #DARTMission striking the asteroid Dimorphos last night.
Before beginning its death spiral, DART dropped off a small cubesat that could observe the event. The Italian-made LICIACube returned images of the impact as well, showing a sizeable burst of material emanating from Dimorphos. Its larger companion, Didymos, is visible in the frame.
Some ground-based observatories were watching the event as well. The ATLAS Project, a collaboration between NASA and the University of Hawaii, used the ATLAS 2 telescope to record the impact. It shows a large puff of material escaping the binary pair, which is visible even though it cannot resolve the individual asteroids.
While DART has done its job, this is only the beginning. There’s more data to collect, and the European Space Agency is preparing to send a probe to Didymos-Dimorphos that will further analyze the effects of the impact.
Air travel must often be approached with the same attitude you’d bring to a game show: wary yet eager as you throw caution to the wind and embrace the unknown in the name of a new adventure. Maybe you’ll have a good experience, with straightforward ticket prices and working in-flight Wi-Fi; maybe you’ll lose everything at the last minute, having been hit with a canceled flight just moments after unexpectedly having to pony up for a checked bag. A lack of airline accountability can make for a whirlpool of exasperating (and financially painful) circumstances. Soon, this could change, as yesterday the White House proposed a slew of regulations that would protect air travelers from shady airline practices.
First up on the docket would be disclosing flight-related fees upfront. As of now, you often don’t see extraneous fees until you go to pay for a flight. Other times, it’s not clear what fees might be charged to change your flight, or you could get to the gate without ever having learned the cost of sitting with your child. The White House’s new rule would require that airlines and travel search websites “disclose upfront—the first time an airfare is displayed—any fees charged to sit with your child, for changing or canceling your flight, and for checked or carry-on baggage.”
(Photo: Rayhan Fahmi/Unsplash)
A second proposed rule would require airlines to refund travelers for in-flight Wi-Fi that they purchased but couldn’t use. (Yes, you read that right: airlines can currently charge you for internet connectivity, fail to provide it, and then refuse to give you a refund.) Though only Wi-Fi was named in the US Department of Transportation’s press release, the rule would also protect other services purchased yet never fulfilled.
“Airline passengers deserve to know the full, true cost of their flights before they buy a ticket,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in the release. “This new proposed rule would require airlines to be transparent with customers about the fees they charge, which will help travelers make informed decisions and save money.”
These proposals constitute only the most recent of Secretary Buttigieg’s attempts to even the air travel playing field. This month the Department of Transportation introduced a customer service dashboard that tells travelers whether their airline is committed to certain delay or cancellation remedies, like complimentary hotel accommodations or immediate free rebooking. The dashboard, combined with the above proposals, are in direct response to the Biden administration’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, which was signed last year.
The Department of Transportation has given the public 60 days to issue comments on the above rules prior to their amendment or implementation. Both can be found under docket number DOT-OST-2022-0109 on Regulations.gov.
Netflix has come a long way since it first began shipping DVDs in paper sleeves. The subscription streaming service announced yesterday that it’s digging its heels into the video games industry by establishing its very own games studio.
The internal studio is in Helsinki, Finland and is headed by former Zynga and Electronic Arts executive Marko Lastikka. At Zynga, Lastikka spearheaded FarmVille 3; before that, he co-founded and managed EA’s Helsinki studio, Tracktwenty, where he helped build SimCity BuildIt. Lastikka’s newest studio at Netflix will join Next Games, Night School Studio, and Boss Fight Entertainment—all pre-existing teams acquired by the streaming service over the last year.
Netflix made its first foray into the gaming space in September 2021 when it hired another former EA exec, Mike Verdu. Verdu has since helped the company introduce a handful of exclusive mobile games, including two Stranger Things games, a game that combines basketball with dart guns, and mobile poker. Netflix has even come to offer a few premium versions of non-exclusive titles, like Exploding Kittens (originally a card game) and Heads Up. These have been available to all Netflix subscribers at no additional cost.
(Image: Netflix)
Despite the ease with which subscribers can access these titles, however, Netflix’s games haven’t been all too popular. Less than one percent of subscribers showed interest in the service’s mobile gaming library in August. We even suspected at the time that Netflix might eventually cut its losses and dip out of mobile games, but it seems the company has doubled down instead. (This wouldn’t be the only questionable choice Netflix has made in recent months: It also hinted at password-sharing fees and ad-supported subscription tiers earlier this year after its stock price took a plunge.)
“Creating a game can take years, so I’m proud to see how we’re steadily building the foundation of our games studios in our first year, and look forward to sharing what we produce in the coming years,” said VP of game studios Amir Rahimi.
Netflix didn’t say in its announcement whether its new studio’s titles would be included with regular subscriptions or come at an extra cost. It’s not even clear whether the company will stick with mobile games exclusively; some subscribers watch Netflix on their computers or gaming consoles, and the service has experimented with remote-driven interactive shows in the past. It did confirm the games would be ad-free and lack in-app purchases, which is refreshing, given mobile games’ tendency to make microtransactions integral to the user experience.
The Artemis 1 launch is still hanging in limbo, but it’s only a matter of time before NASA has humans walking on the moon once again. This time, the agency intends to use the moon as a waypoint to more distant locales like Mars. However, some scientists believe Mars should be our second stop. Instead, they say, the mission should start with a quick swing past Venus.
After Artemis 1 finally gets off the ground, it will take two more missions before humans return to the lunar surface. Toward the end of the planned Artemis launches, NASA hopes to have the Gateway station up and running allowing for a long-term human presence around the moon. This will provide a jumping-off point for Mars in the 2030s, following the agency’s moon-to-Mars model. But if we’re going to send people beyond lunar orbit for the first time, scientists like Noam Izenberg of the Johns Hopkins University applied physics laboratory think Venus should come first.
Venus is poorly studied compared with Mars, although it’s considered Earth’s sister planet. The two worlds have very similar mass and composition, but it is also the victim of a runaway greenhouse effect. The atmosphere is corrosive and about 100 times denser than Earth’s, and temperatures hover around 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 degrees Celsius), which is hot enough to melt lead and zinc metals.
Naturally, Izenberg and his allies are not proposing people take a stroll on the surface of Venus. Only a handful of automated probes have landed on the surface, and they didn’t last more than a few minutes. “The current NASA paradigm is moon-to-Mars. We’re trying to make the case for Venus as an additional target on that pathway,” Izenberg tells The Guardian.
The Gateway station is supposed to be a stepping stone to Mars, but maybe we should start with Venus.
Venus is closer than Mars, so a flyby mission could be completed in as little as a year, compared with about three years for a Mars return mission. According to Izenberg, Venus could also help us get to Mars. While Venus is on the opposite side of Earth from Mars, Izenberg says the planet could provide a gravity assist that actually gets astronauts to the red planet faster and with less fuel.
Sending people to Venus, even if they don’t land, could allow them to do science that isn’t possible with automated probes. And there’s plenty of reason to learn about Venus. It has so much in common with Earth, but the conditions on its surface are comparatively hellish. As we identify more exoplanets in the cosmos, we might want to be able to tell the difference between an Earth-like world and one more like Venus. It’s uncertain if NASA will heed this call, but it’s currently busy with the first leg of its quest to escape Earth orbit.
