Volkswagen vs Google April Fools Jokes

There's a good way and a bad way to do an April Fools joke. On Monday, the automaker briefly posted, then removed, a draft press release on its website supposedly announcing it was changing its name to promote electric vehicles. VW then put out a media release Tuesday pledging to rebrand itself “Voltswagen” in the U.S. as “a public declaration of the company’s future-forward investment in e-mobility.” Later Tuesday, the company fessed up. “The renaming was designed to be an announcement in the spirit of April Fool’s Day,” VW said in a statement after removing the earlier release from its U.S. media site. It might have been a funny move if the announcement came out on April Fools rather than three days prior.

On the otherhand, Google, as per tradition, is known for its annual April Fools’ Day prank to celebrate the practical joke-based holiday. In 2013, Google Nose BETA, the company’s new fictional product, promises “to offer the sharpest olfactory experience available.” A video introducing Google Nose (viewable above) explains that the feature allows users to “search for smells.” Seems complicated, right? Well that’s because it is (it’s also fake). The product intersects “photons with infrasound waves” and “temporarily aligns molecules to emulate a particular scent.” The “mobile aroma indexing program” at the heart of the product has amassed a “15 million scentibyte database of smells from around the world.”

Credits:
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/3/31/bb-thejokeis-on-volkswagen-after-april-fools-name-change-debacle

Security Robots

Palo Alto-based Cobalt Robotics says its nearly human-sized rolling robot is designed to continually move through a building, scanning for anything suspicious: People not wearing badges, doors left open, water leaks, the sound of breaking glass, and more. Data from more than 60 onboard sensors gets sent back to a human security guard, who can dispatch people to fix the problem. Cobalt didn’t say how much the robots will cost, or when they’ll be widely available. About a dozen Cobalt robots will be installed this quarter, the company told TechCrunch. Cobalt’s sales pitch is that much of a human security guard’s work can be automated, and possibly enhanced through sensors. Rather than hiring dozens of guards to sit at entrances and periodically walk through a building, a smaller number of guards can instead monitor live video feeds from rolling robots and make decisions based on data.

The robots were designed by Yves Béhar, who — among other projects — helped design the kid-friendly, green and white budget laptop for the One Laptop Per Child project. Cobalt’s bot has a blue fabric body, which is supposed to put people at ease while it navigates around a building, the company says. Cobalt launched in early 2016 and raised an unspecified amount of money from Bloomberg Beta, Promus Ventures, Haystack, Comet Labs and Subtraction Capital. Its cofounders, CEO Travis Deyle and CTO Erik Schluntz, were both accepted into Y Combinator’s winter 2013 class — Deyle, for a fashion retail startup called Lollipuff, and Schluntz, for an iPad-centric customer service product called Posmetrics. Posmetrics was acquired later that year, while Lollipuff continues to operate independently. The following year, Deyle joined Google[x] as a hardware engineer. Schluntz, who was a Harvard student at the time, interned at Google[x] and SpaceX before helping launch Cobalt, according to their LinkedIn profiles.



Credits:
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/03/01/cobalt-robotics-indoor-security-robot-video.html

FL Mom Hacks Homecoming Queen Election

A mother and daughter have been charged with hacking the election to become 2020 homecoming queen at the J.M. Tate High School near Pensacola, Florida. The electronic equivalent of fingerprints at the crime scene indicated that dozens of student votes were lodged from a computing device with a single internet address. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested Laura Rose Carroll, 50, and her 17-year-old daughter, both of Pensacola, and charged them with unlawful use of computers, two-way communications devices and personally identifiable information. The mother-daughter duo accessed 117 student accounts and voted 246 times, but all from the same IP address. District IT department noticed the unauthorized access, and eventually discovered the fraudlent votes.

The daughter was named winner in October, but in November, the Escambia County School District reported unauthorized access to hundreds of student accounts, the FDLE said. Carroll, an elementary school assistant principal, had access to the school district's computer system that tracks student information. Witnesses in the homecoming queen case reported that Carroll and her daughter both tapped into the student record system. The daughter was know to log into her mom's school account and openly shared information, grades, and schedules with others. Parents will go a long way to advance their children's prospects, and technology opens up new avenues. In March, police in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, accused a mother of creating deepfake videos to undermine the prospects of her daughter's cheerleading rivals.

Credits: 

https://www.cnet.com/news/florida-mother-daughter-charged-with-hacking-homecoming-queen-election/

Tweets from High School Cost Teen Vogue Editor her Job

Alexi McCammond is out as editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue even before officially starting, she and the magazine's owner announced Thursday. The tweets that Ms. McCammond posted as a 17 year old high school senior has resurfaced and caused the latest uproar. The announcement of her appointment to the job had sparked outrage from the publication's staffers and readers as well as some celebrities because of anti-Asian and homophobic tweets she posted a decade ago. Condé Nast, which owns Teen Vogue, The New Yorker, and other popular magazine titles, was aware of McCammond's tweets prior to her hiring, the company's Chief People Officer, Stan Duncan, revealed in an email to staff on Thursday announcing the news. He wrote that McCammond was "straightforward and transparent about these posts during our interview process and through public apologies years ago."

But McCammond's tweets resurfaced after Condé Nast announced her hiring on March 5, and they immediately prompted backlash. The weekend after the news broke, Diana Tsui, editorial director of recommendations at The Infatuation, posted on Instagram a series of text-based photos calling attention to the McCammond's old tweets and said she was a "questionable hire." It was recirculated by Diet Prada, an Instagram account with 2.5 million followers that shares gossip and drama about the fashion industry.

Credits:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/18/media/alexi-mccammond-teen-vogue-out/index.html  

High School Students Build a Duct Tape Dispenser for NASA

For more than 50 years, NASA astronauts have relied on duct tape as a fix-it-all for everything from a lunar rover on the moon to an air leak on board the International Space Station. Up until now, though, they have not had an easy way to dispense the adhesive. Enter high school students from five different states, who have come up with the solution. HUNCH, or High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware, is a nationwide program that challenges students to design and build equipment that is then launched and used aboard the space station. Now in its 18th year, HUNCH students have built lockers, handrails, various tools and a galley table for the crew to eat at and share meals. The program has even come up with some of the food items that have been added to the astronauts' menus.

Before the HUNCH dispenser, rolls of duct tape — which is also referred to as "grey tape" or "Mach 25 tape" — and Kapton high temperature tape were generally stuck to the edges of work areas, on handrails or wherever in reach. To cut the tape from the roll, the astronauts needed to use scissors or, in a pinch, they tore it with their teeth. The need for the tape dispenser underscores the many uses that tapes have on the station. More than 20 different adhesives are used aboard the orbital complex, though duct tape and Kapton tape are the most popular. The tapes are used for everyday activities, much like on Earth, but also to keep items from floating away in the microgravity environment of space.



Credits:
http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-031221a-space-station-hunch-tape-dispenser.html

Canoo Announces New Electric Truck

Canoo has already given us a peek at the van and delivery vehicle it plans to launch, and now the company has unveiled images of its first electric pickup truck built on the same electric platform. According to the company, pre-orders will start in Q2 of this year, with the truck's release due in early 2023. The design certainly takes a different approach from Tesla's edgy Cybertruck, and is even going to stand out as electric pickups from Rivian, Ford and others start to hit the streets. 

Canoo has already given us a peek at the van and delivery vehicle it plans to launch, and now the company has unveiled images of its first electric pickup truck built on the same electric platform. According to the company, pre-orders will start in Q2 of this year, with the truck's release due in early 2023. The design certainly takes a different approach from Tesla's edgy Cybertruck, and is even going to stand out as electric pickups from Rivian, Ford and others start to hit the streets.

Credits:

https://www.engadget.com/canoo-electric-pickup-030541238.html

Google Doodle Celebrates The Inventor of the Face Mask

Google on Wednesday is honoring Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a Chinese-Malaysian epidemiologist who created a surgical face covering widely believed to be the forerunner of today's N95 mask. To celebrate this achievement, Google dedicated its Doodle to Wu on the doctor's 142nd birthday. After becoming the first student of Chinese descent to study at Cambridge University, Wu went to work for the Chinese government, becoming vice director of the Army Medical College in 1908. When a highly lethal epidemic broke out in northwestern China in 1910, Wu was tasked by the government with investigating the disease, which he determined to be a highly contagious pneumonic plague.

The disease, which had a 99.9% fatality rate and would ultimately claim 60,000 lives, was being spread from human to human through respiratory transmission. To combat the spread, Wu developed a mask made of cotton and gauze to filter the air people inhaled. It's widely believed to be the ancestor to today's N95 mask, used to help keep people from contracting the coronavirus. With his leadership and direction, which included establishing quarantine stations, disinfecting buildings, and demolishing and replacing the old plague hospital, the epidemic known as the Manchurian plague was eradicated within months.

Credits:
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-doodle-celebrates-dr-wu-lien-teh-surgical-mask-pioneer/

NASA On Track to Nudge an Astroid off Collision Course with Earth

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will reach an asteroid named Didymos in 2022 as a demonstratiDART is designed for a kinetic impact, which means it will crash into Dimorphos in an effort to nudge it. If it works, this method could potentially be used to move an Earth-threatening asteroid onto a safer path. on of an asteroid deflection system designed to redirect a space rock away from an Earth impact. Didymos' moon is the target of the exercise and was recently given the new name of "Dimorphos" this week.

Hazardous asteroids are a global issue and NASA isn't doing this alone. DART's exploits will be witnessed by a small CubeSat companion from the Italian Space Agency. Two years later, ESA will launch its own Hera spacecraft to visit Didymos and examine the results of the DART mission. DART is scheduled to launch in 2021. Didymos and Dimorphos aren't an actual threat to Earth, but they could be become invaluable test subjects as we work out new ways to protect our planet.In February, NASA announced it was targeting a secondary launch window for sending DART on its way. That window will last from Nov. 24 to Feb. 15, 2022. SpaceX will launch the mission on a Falcon 9 rocket. If DART gets off the ground within that time frame, it should be on track to smack the moonlet in late 2022.

Credits:

https://www.cnet.com/news/see-how-nasa-is-going-to-bludgeon-an-asteroid/    

Researchers Discover "Space Hurricane" in Upper Atmosphere

Hurricanes in the Earth’s low atmosphere are well known; however, disturbances resembling hurricanes had never before been detected in the upper atmosphere. “Until now, it was uncertain that space plasma hurricanes even existed, so to prove this with such a striking observation is incredible,” said Professor Mike Lockwood, a space scientist in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. “Tropical storms are associated with huge amounts of energy, and these space hurricanes must be created by unusually large and rapid transfer of solar wind energy and charged particles into the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Plasma and magnetic fields in the atmosphere of planets exist throughout the Universe, so the findings suggest space hurricanes should be a widespread phenomenon.”

“This study suggests that there are still existing local intense geomagnetic disturbance and energy depositions which are comparable to that during super storms,” he added. “This will update our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling process under extremely quiet geomagnetic conditions. In additional, the space hurricane will lead to important space weather effects like increased satellite drag, disturbances in High Frequency (HF) radio communications, and increased errors in over-the-horizon radar location, satellite navigation and communication systems.”

Credits:
http://www.sci-news.com/space/space-hurricane-09408.html

Perseverance Parachute Colors Encoded Message

As NASA’s Perseverance rover fell through the Martian atmosphere last week, a video camera on the spacecraft captured the breakneck deployment of its parachute, which was decorated with splotches of reddish orange and white. Those splotches were a secret message. During a news conference Monday, Allen Chen, the engineer in charge of the landing system, narrated what could be seen and learned in the slowed-down video. He added, cryptically and nonchalantly, that his team hoped to inspire others. “Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find for that purpose,” he said. “So we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work.”

The person who came up with the idea for embedding a message was Ian Clark, who led development of the parachute. NASA’s previous rover, Curiosity, used the same system when it successfully landed on Mars in 2012. But a failure of a prototype parachute intended for future missions spurred engineers to improve the design. While watching video of a high-altitude test of the new parachute for Perseverance, Dr. Clark noticed that the checkerboard pattern on the canopy made it difficult to track how individual portions of the parachute unfurled and inflated.

Credits:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/science/nasa-mars-parachute-code.html