Month: March 2017

Enlarge / SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks with White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon at a Policy Forum in February. (credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

SpaceX founder Elon Musk criticizes NASA and Congress in public only very rarely—which isn't surprising given that NASA has supported his company with more than $3 billion in contracts for cargo and crew delivery to the International Space Station. But he broke that rule on Tuesday night when asked on Twitter about the new NASA authorization legislation.

"This bill changes almost nothing about what NASA is doing. Existing programs stay in place and there is no added funding for Mars," Musk tweeted. "Perhaps there will be some future bill that makes a difference for Mars, but this is not it," he added.

Musk is absolutely correct on two counts. First, an "authorization" bill does not provide funding. That comes from appropriations committees. Secondly, while Congress has been interested in building rockets and spacecraft, it is far less interested in investing in the kinds of technology and research that would actually enable a full-fledged Mars exploration program.

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Google Now isn't the only digital assistant available on Huawei's Mate 9 anymore. Today, the company announced an over-the-air update that will bring Amazon's Alexa to all Mate 9 smartphones. The move comes not even a week after Amazon updated its Shopping app for iOS to include Alexa, allowing Apple smartphone users access to the assistant even if they don't own an Alexa-enabled Amazon device.

Alexa won't interfere with Google Now, the default digital assistant on Android smartphones, primarily because using Alexa on a Mate 9 requires two apps: the Huawei Alexa app and the Amazon Alexa app. The Amazon Alexa is necessary when you buy an Echo, Tap, or other Amazon smart home device, and without a device, it lets you install Alexa Skills and set preferences for the digital assistant. Huawei's Alexa app, on the other hand, is simply a controller—you need to launch this app before you can ask Alexa anything.

This is similar to how Alexa works on an iOS device: you need to open the Amazon Shopping app, tap the microphone button, and then wake Alexa with a command. Both tout the on-the-go usage of Alexa thanks to this kind of integration, but while you can use Alexa anywhere you can bring your smartphone, it's certainly not a hands-free service. Huawei hasn't ruled out the possibility of hotword recognition, which would allow the handset to "hear" you asking Alexa for help even when the app isn't open, but that feature isn't available right now.

Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

Samsung continues to compete with Apple's iPad with the revamped Galaxy Tab S3. Two years ago, the company released 8.0-inch and 9.7-inch models of the Tab S2, but Samsung is now simplifying with just one 9.7-inch model of the updated tablet. The $599/£599 tablet has an HDR-ready display, a sleek glass design, a faster processor, a fingerprint sensor, and an included and improved S Pen, just to name a few of its features.

The new S3 continues Samsung's efforts to persuade those who want a high-end, all-purpose tablet to choose its Android device over an iPad, and Samsung padded this attempt with a couple of features geared toward users of its Galaxy smartphones. But Android's tablet app gap, among other things, continues to make premium Android tablets a hard sell.

Enlarge / If it's dark outside seemingly all the time, you must find ways to cope. (credit: Sara Andreasson)

How do Scandinavians deal with long, dark winters? For Mosaic, Linda Geddes explores what this might teach us about the relationship between our moods and sunlight. The story is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The inhabitants of Rjukan in southern Norway have a complex relationship with the Sun. “More than other places I’ve lived, they like to talk about the Sun: when it’s coming back, if it’s a long time since they’ve seen the Sun,” says artist Martin Andersen. “They’re a little obsessed with it.” Possibly, he speculates, it’s because for approximately half the year, you can see the sunlight shining high up on the north wall of the valley: “It is very close, but you can’t touch it,” he says. As autumn wears on, the light moves higher up the wall each day, like a calendar marking off the dates to the winter solstice. And then as January, February, and March progress, the sunlight slowly starts to inch its way back down again.

Rjukan was built between 1905 and 1916, after an entrepreneur called Sam Eyde bought the local waterfall (known as the smoking waterfall) and constructed a hydroelectric power plant there. Factories producing artificial fertiliser followed. But the managers of these worried that their staff weren’t getting enough Sun—and eventually they constructed a cable car in order to give them access to it.

Enlarge (credit: Bruce Leighty / Getty Images News)

In the wake of recommendations that were part of a recent study of its red-light cameras, the Chicago Department of Transportation has agreed to immediately increase the so-called “grace period”—the time between when a traffic light turns red to when a ticket is automatically issued.

Under the new policy, which was announced Monday, the grace period for Chicago’s red lights will move from 0.1 seconds to 0.3 seconds. This will bring the Windy City in line with other Americans metropolises, including New York City and Philadelphia. In a statement, the city agency said that this increase would “maintain the safety benefits of the program while ensuring the program’s fairness.”

On Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune reported that the city would lose $17 million in revenue this year alone as a result of the expanded grace period. Michael Claffey, a CDOT spokesman, confirmed that figure to Ars.