Month: October 2016

Enlarge / Two of these EasyMile driverless people movers will be allowed to drive on public roads in a privately owned business park in Contra Costa, California. (credit: EasyMile)

The testing of autonomous vehicles took a leap forward in California on Thursday, when Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that allows for the testing of self-driving vehicles that lack a driver's seat, steering wheel, or pedals. Before anyone starts freaking out too much, the addition to California's Vehicle Code only applies to a handful of roads in and around a privately owned business park in Contra Costa, and the vehicles must travel at speeds below 35mph.

The new bill is an important step for the state, however. California was one of the first states in the nation to enact legislation that allowed the testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads with the proviso that all such vehicles have a driver's seat and controls. While this hasn't been too much of a handicap for Google, Delphi, and others, it has meant that vehicles like Local Motors' driverless shuttle have been banned from testing their vehicles in California.

EasyMile has already been testing its driverless people movers in Europe. (credit: EasyMile)

Many other states have been waiting on the federal government before crafting their own autonomous driving regulations, and the feds took a first step last month with the release of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Federal Automated Vehicles Policy. That policy guidance includes a section on state regulations. There is a strong desire at the federal level, as well as with stakeholders in the industry, for state guidelines to be harmonized and not in conflict with one another, lest we end up with a patchwork system where cars can legally drive themselves through one state and then have to hand over control to a human driver after crossing a state line.

Nearly everything about Google's Pixel and Pixel XL has leaked in some form or another, but a few more tidbits on the eve of the product launch can't hurt. Carphone Warehouse went live with a product listing a little early for the Pixel and Pixel XL, giving us lots of new images and a dubious spec list.

The press images definitely look like an official Google production and present the Pixel and Pixel XL (which look identical) in all their glory, and they really look like iPhones.

The pictures give us a good look at the sides and the bottom speaker arrangement, which we really haven't seen before. Also interesting is a shot promoting Google Allo and Duo, which seems to indicate that they will be packed-in apps. Will the Pixels also include Hangouts?

Blue Origin's propulsion module lands in West Texas. (credit: Blue Origin)

Blue Origin has launched and landed its New Shepard booster four times, but the reusable rocket party may come to an end Wednesday morning (Note: Poor weather in West Texas forced the company to delay the test for one day). That's because the company plans an in-flight test of its launch abort system and will intentionally trigger it about 45 seconds after launch at an altitude of 16,000 feet. Such systems are designed to fire quickly and separate the crew capsule from the booster during an emergency.

"The high-acceleration portion of the escape lasts less than two seconds, but by then the capsule will be hundreds of feet away and diverging quickly," Bezos wrote last month. "It will traverse twice through transonic velocities—the most difficult control region—during the acceleration burn and subsequent deceleration. The capsule will then coast, stabilized by reaction control thrusters, until it starts descending."

But the booster will likely not be so lucky. The propulsion module, powered by a single BE-3 engine, was not designed to survive an in-flight escape, as it will be slammed with 70,000 pounds of off-axis force and hot exhaust. At Max-Q, it is not clear whether the propulsion module will break apart. If it somehow survives, the booster will likely be placed in a museum. If not, it's expected to produce some fireworks upon impact with the Texas desert floor.

Enlarge / Google's event invitation.

It's almost time for what promises to be one of the biggest Google announcements of the year. On Oct. 4 at 9:00 am Pacific/Noon eastern/5:00 pm UK, Google will launch its newest line of smartphones and maybe a whole bunch of other hardware products. We'll be live in San Francisco bringing you the latest news from the event.

If you're wondering what to expect, we've got a rundown of all the rumors here. If everything plausible comes true, we'll be looking at five devices: Pixel Phones, Google Home, Google Wi-Fi, Daydream VR, and a 4K Chromecast. Regardless of how many of these come true, the announcement will be the coming out party for the new Google Hardware division. Earlier this year, former Motorola President Rick Osterloh was tasked with revamping Google's hardware strategy into a cohesive offering, and we should see the start of that initiative at this event.

The show promises to be a wild ride. For the latest info during the presentation, be sure to follow along with our liveblog below.

Enlarge

Do you remember the days of flicking through racks of CDs on a Saturday afternoon, looking for the album of an artist you just heard about, perhaps a £3 bargain, or even just cruising for eye-catching covers? Bliss. While the advent of the iTunes store all but ended the need for physical media, there was for a short while an element of bragging rights attached to having a multi-gigabyte music collection on your iPod—but even the idea of owning digital music is fading. Our once-vast music collections have been culled in favour of convenient streaming music services that give us access to all the music we could ever dream of in just a few taps.

But were we better off before? I'm going to find out.

Let's make MP3s great again

My journey down the MP3 rabbit hole started during an afternoon spent reminiscing about the various music players I've owned over the years—the iPod Classics, an iRiver H140, a brief stint with a forgotten 20GB Philips box, and a Rio Riot, the Atari Lynx of unloved MP3 players. Each has a charm you no longer see, now that everything fits into an Android or iOS slab. Well, apart from the assortment of weird and wacky audiophile players (I'm looked at you Pono Player), some of which could have been beamed straight from 1998.