Tech Allows the World to Monitor Natural Refuge Parks

According to a report by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), the planet's wildlife population has plummeted by 68% since 1970, with threats including things like poaching and loss of habitat. But around the world, animal conservation has now evolved so it's not just rangers and anti-poaching groups monitoring the wildlife of our world. So just how is technology helping to modernise animal conservation? The most recent eye-catching example of technological innovation can be found in the Balule Nature Reserve in South Africa, part of the huge Kruger National Park. Camera phones mounted in protective cases streamed images of animals to people worldwide. Thousands, sat comfortably at home, became virtual rangers with this anti-poaching pilot project, Wildlife Watch, by Balule, Samsung and Africam.

Viewers were able to report suspicious activity - things like seeing fence lines cut or hearing gunshots - and alert rangers to the possibility of poachers and trapped animals needing rescue. For Leitah Mkhabela, a member of the park's all-female anti-poaching unit known as The Black Mambas, creative use of technology can make a big difference. "The live-stream is a great tool that helps us monitor even more areas in real time. The public helps us with watching and listening for anything suspicious," the 28-year-old tells Radio 1 Newsbeat. It's not just about animals on land. Big satellite, data-driven projects monitor deforestation and illegal fishing, with drones and underwater microphones being used to try and understand the behaviour of endangered whales.



Credits:
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-57234398

Microsoft to Retire Internet Explorer

The end is finally near for Internet Explorer, one of Microsoft's most-reviled products that refused to die. Microsoft announced this week that it will end support for Internet Explorer 11 on June 15, 2022. That final nail in the coffin came after years of flirting with IE's demise. For example, in August 2020, Microsoft turned its back on IE for its own products. Workplace chat software Teams stopped working with IE last fall, and its 365 apps (including Office) will no longer work on IE by mid-summer 2021. Once the most-used web browser, Internet Explorer had been on a steady downward trajectory for nearly two decades. Its share of the browser market fell below the 50% threshold in 2010 and now sits at about 5%, according to browser usage tracker NetMarketShare. Google's (GOOGL) Chrome is the browser leader, commanding a 69% share of the market.

In its death announcement, Microsoft said Internet Explorer is slow, no longer practical for or compatible with many modern web tasks, and is far less secure than modern browsers. Yet IE has miraculously managed to stick around for 26 years. Microsoft has continued to ship IE with Windows to ensure that corporate apps keep functioning properly. Corporations tend to be very slow to adopt new browser versions, particularly if they custom-build applications for them. Most Windows 10 PC owners probably never noticed that IE is installed on their computers. Edge, Microsoft's modern browser, is based on Google's open source Chrome code, and has gained much more traction than IE in recent years. It's unclear if Microsoft will stop installing IE on Windows PCs by default once the company discontinues support for IE, although that would be likely. Microsoft's latest version of the Edge browser supports web apps built for IE so customers don't have to keep switching between browsers. So IE has at long last outlived its usefulness.



Credits:
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/internet-explorer-is-dead-heres-when-microsoft-is-pulling-the-plug

Ford Unvails Electric F150

Ford has revealed the all-electric F-150 pickup truck one day ahead of schedule. The truck, dubbed F-150 Lightning, was on display Tuesday at Ford’s Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan during a speech from President Biden. Images from the event show that the F-150 Lightning largely looks like its gas and hybrid counterparts, though the truck has a more modern grille, with an unbroken light bar that stretches from headlight to headlight. And even from a distance, it seems that the F-150 Lightning will have a large portrait touchscreen similar to the one in the Mustang Mach-E.

The F-150 EV has been years in the making and is the second mass-market electric vehicle from Ford, following the Mustang Mach-E. The company is set to reveal full pricing, specifications, and other details about the electric pickup truck Wednesday at 9:30PM ET. But the truck is expected to be one of the most powerful F-150s ever made, and it will serve as a huge test of the appetite for an all-electric version of the most popular vehicle in the country. Biden also focused heavily on how he wants automakers to build their electric vehicles in the United States with American parts and labor — a topic that has become especially hot after General Motors announced it would build some electric vehicles in Mexico. Ford will build the electric F-150 at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center, but is currently building the Mustang Mach-E in Mexico.

Click here for a video of President Biden's Test Drive

Credits:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/18/22442415/ford-f150-lightning-electric-pickup-truck-first-images

Mars Rover Curiosity Could Shed It's own Tires

Curiosity landed on Mars in August of 2012. After a year of exploring Gale Crater, JPL engineers noticed some wear on Curiosity’s wheels, in the form of dents and small holes in the wheels’ 0.75mm thick aluminum skin. While not unexpected, the wear on the wheels kept increasing at a higher rate than JPL had planned for. Every 1000 meters of driving, Curiosity snaps some pictures of its wheels so that JPL can keep track of wheel wear. The images above show one of the wheels in pristine condition, along with a MAHLI image taken on 4 April 2021, showing extensive skin damage and a missing grouser on one of the rover’s middle wheels.

As of mid-April, Curiosity has driven a total of 25.246 km, and JPL has found one broken grouser on the right middle wheel along with three broken grousers on the left middle wheel. NASA has come up with a potential solution for wheels in a critical damage state, called wheel shedding. The objective of wheel shedding is to take the broken inner two-thirds of the wheel and completely detach it from the rover to protect that fragile cabling and (hopefully) keep the rover roving. Obviously, the rover is not in the least equipped to do this by itself, but as it turns out Mars is covered in potential wheel shedding tools in the form of pointy rocks.




Credits:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/aerospace/robotic-exploration/if-necessary-mars-rover-curiosity-could-rip-its-own-wheels-off-to-stay-mobile

Scientists Convert Brainwaves into Text for Paralyzed Patients

Humans have long been fascinated with the idea of someone or something that can read our minds -- be it a telepath, a computer or Santa Claus. Now scientists say they've developed a system that combines machine learning and a brain-computer interface, or BCI, to read handwriting that takes place in the brain rather than on paper. A team of scientists worked with a 65-year-old man paralyzed from the neck down, using sensors implanted in his brain to detect neural activity linked to writing by hand. As the volunteer imagined writing letters, that activity was fed to an algorithm that translated it, in real time, to text displayed on a screen.

The details of the experiment are laid out in a report in the current issue of the journal Nature. Study co-author Krishna Shenoy, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Stanford University, says this method appears to be more potentially powerful than similar studies that have attempted to translate speech rather than handwriting. "Right now, other investigators can achieve about a 50-word dictionary using machine learning methods when decoding speech," Shenoy said in a statement. "By using handwriting to record from hundreds of individual neurons, we can write any letter and thus any word which provides a truly 'open vocabulary' that can be used in most any life situation."



Credits:
https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/brain-implants-let-paralyzed-man-write-on-a-screen-using-thoughts-alone/?__twitter_impression=true

Colonial Oil Pipeline Shut Down Due to Ransomware Attack

The F.B.I. confirmed on Monday that the hacking group DarkSide was responsible for the ransomware attack that closed a U.S. pipeline providing the East Coast with nearly half of its gasoline and jet fuel. The Biden administration is expected to announce an executive order in the coming days to strengthen America’s cyberdefense infrastructure. President Biden said on Monday that the government had mitigated any impact the hack on the petroleum pipeline might have had on the U.S. fuel supply. He added that his administration had efforts underway to “disrupt and prosecute ransomware criminals.”

Colonial’s pipeline transports 2.5 million barrels each day, taking refined gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel from the Gulf Coast up to New York Harbor and New York’s major airports. Most of that goes into large storage tanks, and with energy use depressed by the coronavirus pandemic, the attack was unlikely to cause any immediate disruptions. Late Friday, Colonial said in a vaguely worded statement that it had shut down its 5,500 miles of pipeline, which it said carried 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel supplies, in an effort to contain the breach. Earlier in the day, there had been disruptions along the pipeline, but it was not clear at the time whether that was a direct result of the attack or of the company’s moves to proactively halt it.



Credits:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/us/politics/dark-side-hack.html

Recently, IBM announced it has created a 2-nanometer chip, the smallest, most powerful microchip yet developed. Most computer chips powering devices today use 10-nanometer or 7-nanometer process technology, with some manufacturers producing 5-nanometer chips. The lower numbers denote smaller, more advanced processors. IBM's new chip uses 2-nanometer process technology, a huge leap forward for the components used to power everything from consumers' smart phones and appliances to supercomputers and transportation equipment.The way to improve a chip's performance is to increase the number of transistors — the core elements that process data — without increasing its overall size. The new 2-nanometer chips are roughly the size of a fingernail, and contain 50 billion transistors, each about the size of two DNA strands, according to IBM vice president of hybrid cloud research Mukesh Khare.

The new chip is expected to achieve 45% higher performance — and about 75% lower energy usage — than today's most advanced 7-nanometer chips. With 2-nanometer chips, cell phone batteries could last four times longer, laptops could get markedly faster and the carbon footprints of data centers could be slashed as they rely on more energy efficient chips. The 2-nanometer chips are expected to go into production starting in late 2024 or 2025, which won't be soon enough to make a dent in the current global chip shortage. Wanna learn how chips are made? Click here



Credits:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/06/tech/ibm-semiconductor-two-nanometer/index.html

Robot Can Make 300 Pizzas in an Hour

Seattle-based Picnic says its automated food assembly system will produce up to 300 12-inch customized pizzas an hour on the CES show floor. The company ran a test pilot with the robot at Seattle's T-Mobile Park baseball stadium in October. The robot is initially focused on the production of high-volume, customizable pizzas.  But the company says it could be used for many types of food, whether it uses a bun, bowl, tortilla or plate.

The machine uses deep learning AI technology to continually learn as it functions. "[The company] continues to experience increasing interest in our technology and solutions from large chains to ‘mom and pop’ storefronts, and emerging foodservice venues, such as virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens," said the company's CEO. The company says the machine is safe to work around and only minimal training is required.

Credits:

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/robot-can-make-300-pizzas-an-hour

Microchip Shortage Impact Car Manufacturers

As the U.S. economy rebounds from its pandemic slump, a vital cog is in short supply: the computer chips that power a wide range of products that connect, transport and entertain us in a world increasingly dependent on technology. The shortage has already been rippling through various markets since last summer. It has made it difficult for schools to buy enough laptops for students forced to learn from home, delayed the release of popular products such as the iPhone 12 and created mad scrambles to find the latest video game consoles such as the PlayStation 5.

But things have been getting even worse in recent weeks, particularly in the auto industry, where factories are shutting down because there aren’t enough chips to finish building vehicles that are starting to look like computers on wheels. These snags are likely to frustrate consumers who can’t find the vehicle they want and sometimes find themselves settling for a lower-end models without as many fancy electronic features. And it threatens to leave a big dent in the auto industry, which by some estimates stands to lose $60 billion in sales during the first half of his year.

Most microchips in the world are made in Taiwan. Should China invade Taiwan, China would control the chips essential for the US economy. Some fear that should China invade, the United States would have to get involved to defend Taiwan in order to prevent China from acquiring the corner on the chip market.

Credits:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/04/02/chip-shortage-car-prices-tech-items/4849838001/