Yellies: The Worst Holiday Gift

Everybody knows the best way to get back at an adult is buying their kids a drum set. But what if we told you there was something that could annoy your friends even more this holiday season? Like maybe a toy that encourages their kids to yell at the top of their lungs? Yellies! are a toy made by Hasbro and they are exactly what they sound like.

"The louder you yell, the faster they go," the Hasbro website says. According to the website, Yellies! respond to sound. You can talk loudly or softly to get the Yellies! moving. You can also clap, play music or sing. 12 Yellies! are available to collect in 2018 with hints that more are coming in 2019. Yellies! retail for $14.99 on the Hasbro toy shop site.

Credits:
https://6abc.com/shopping/parents-react-to-yellies-toys-that-move-when-kids-scream/4900038/

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Voyager 2 Enters Interstellar Space

Comparing data from different instruments aboard the trailblazing spacecraft, mission scientists determined the probe crossed the outer edge of the heliosphere on Nov. 5. This boundary, called the heliopause, is where the tenuous, hot solar wind meets the cold, dense interstellar medium. Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2 carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.

The most compelling evidence of Voyager 2's exit from the heliosphere came from its onboard Plasma Science Experiment (PLS), an instrument that stopped working on Voyager 1 in 1980, long before that probe crossed the heliopause. Until recently, the space surrounding Voyager 2 was filled predominantly with plasma flowing out from our Sun. This outflow, called the solar wind, creates a bubble - the heliosphere - that envelopes the planets in our solar system. The PLS uses the electrical current of the plasma to detect the speed, density, temperature, pressure and flux of the solar wind. The PLS aboard Voyager 2 observed a steep decline in the speed of the solar wind particles on Nov. 5. Since that date, the plasma instrument has observed no solar wind flow in the environment around Voyager 2, which makes mission scientists confident the probe has left the heliosphere.



Credits:
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/details.php?article_id=112

MIT's Plant Robot Drives Itself to Sunshine

Keeping a houseplant alive isn't always easy, especially for those who don't have a green thumb or can't be bothered to move plans around to keep them in the sun. Perhaps this plant-robot hybrid from MIT Media Lab is the answer to needless plant deaths. Called Elowan, the cyborg plant is equipped with electrodes, light detectors and wheels and uses its own internal electrical signals to communicate with a robotic extension that drives it toward light. Elowan acts as a new kind of cybernetic life form, where a plant "talks" to a machine.

Plants already generate natural bio-electrochemical signals in response to changes in light, gravity, soil conditions, temperature and other environmental conditions that affect their health. The idea of combining these electrical reactions with robotics to let plants save themselves is rather ingenious. The signals are routed to a wheeled robot base that holds the plant. The base then moves the plant to a spot with better light to help ensure its survival. This new kind of cyborg botany has interesting potential. "Instead of building completely discrete systems, the new paradigm points toward using the capabilities that exist in plants (and nature at large) and creating hybrids with our digital world," MIT Media Lab suggests.



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Daimler Trucks to Test "Platooning" in Nevada

Daimler AG is a German automotive company and one of the world’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturers. The 133-year-old company is perhaps best known for producing Mercedes-Benz and Smart cars, but they’re also running some rad experiments in the realm of self-driving trucks. It began last year when Daimler publicly launched their “Inspiration Truck,” an 18-wheeler semi-autonomous truck. Now it will be testing this truck in Nevada. Nevada is one of four states that permits self-driving vehicles on public roads.

These trucks use platooning technology, which allows trucks to connect wirelessly to each other. Daimler tested out this technology with three trucks traveling along Germany’s autobahn, which at more than 8,000 miles, ranks as one of the most dense and longest highways in the world. This was the first time platooning technology was tested with driverless vehicles. The trucks drove 80 kilometres an hour at about 15 meters apart. Daimler wanted to prove how self-driving technology could improve the efficiency of long-haul trucks traveling on freeways. The company predicts autonomous trucks could improve fuel efficiency by 5%, and also reduce the space used on the highway by almost half. Usually big rigs require a spacing of 150 feet, but this test proved it was possible to decrease it to 50 feet.



Credits:
https://blog.routific.com/daimler-hits-the-road-with-a-new-self-driving-truck-544edfdec4df

Republican National Party Hacked before 2018 Election

Campaign officials for the US Republican Party had their email accounts hacked ahead of this year's mid-term elections, it has emerged. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) said it was the victim of a cyber intrusion by an "unknown entity", and the FBI had been informed. Party officials said none of the emails had been made public. News website Politico, which first reported the hack, said the accounts of four senior aides had been targeted. It said the accounts were compromised for several months until the intrusion was spotted in April by an NRCC official who alerted the committee.

The NRCC co-ordinates election campaigns for Republican candidates running for the US House of Representatives, the lower house of Congress. Politico, citing senior party officials, said the NRCC had kept details of the hack hidden from the party's leadership, as well as its house members, saying it feared it would make it harder to find the culprit. NRCC spokesman Ian Prior said: "The NRCC can confirm that it was the victim of a cyber intrusion by an unknown entity. The cybersecurity of the Committee's data is paramount, and upon learning of the intrusion, the NRCC immediately launched an internal investigation and notified the FBI, which is now investigating the matter."

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Credits:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46446722

Etcha-a-Sketch on your Phone.

Most of us have fond memories of the Etch-a-Sketch from childhood. [Potent Printables] wanted to update the designs so he 3D printed an XY carriage for a stylus that works with a cell phone drawing program. You can see the video below and the 3D model details on Thingiverse. The design is fun all by itself, but it also gave us a few ideas. For one thing, if you motorized it you could make some pretty clever drawing toys. But there could be a more practical use, too.

You’d have to automate the Z-axis as well, but if you did, this wouldn’t be a bad test jig for mobile application developers. The stylus could simulate finger poking and dragging while screen captures verified proper operation. Of course, there are other ways to do this, but it would be pretty neat to see a mechanized finger tracing out tests on a new user interface. Besides that, it’s just a fun project that should be easy enough to scale up to use an old tablet that’s gathering up dust and make it useful again. In addition, the first part of the video shows how the real McCoy works, which is always fun.



Credits:
https://hackaday.com/2018/12/03/etch-a-sketch-3d-printed-with-cell-phone/

Marriott Hackers Acquire Data on Half a Billion People

The Marriott hotel chain asked guests checking in for a treasure trove of personal information: credit cards, addresses and sometimes passport numbers. On Friday, consumers learned the risk. Marriott International revealed that hackers had breached its Starwood reservation system and had stolen the personal data of up to 500 million guests. The assault started as far back as 2014, and was one of the largest known thefts of personal records, second only to a 2013 breach of Yahoo that affected three billion user accounts and larger than a 2017 episode involving the credit bureau Equifax.

The Starwood’s data has not popped up on the so-called dark web, according to Recorded Future, a cybersecurity firm, and Coalition, a cyber insurance provider, which suggested that the hotel attackers weren’t looking to sell what they took. “Usually when stolen data doesn’t appear, it’s a state actor collecting it for intelligence purposes,” said James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic Studies in Washington. The names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, email addresses and encrypted credit card details of hotel customers were stolen. The travel histories and passport numbers of a smaller group of guests were also taken. Marriott said it had set up a dedicated website and call center to deal with guests and said it would try to reach affected customers on Friday to inform them of the breach. The site was having problems staying online shortly after the attack was announced.

Senator Chuck Schumer has suggested that the Marriott Corporation should pay to replace all passports of everyone who shared their passport number on the Marriott site.


Marriott's Starwood database was breached, potentially exposing 500 million guests from CNBC.


Credits:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/business/marriott-data-breach.html