Month: April 2018

Enlarge (credit: Amazon)

Those with an Amazon Echo device in their home have likely already exposed their children to Alexa. Now, Amazon wants to give kids the opportunity to turn Alexa into their friend with the new Echo Dot Kids Edition. The hockey puck-like smart speaker doesn't look much different than the original Dot, but it comes with new "Amazon FreeTIme" content that gives kids new ways to interact with Alexa and parents more control over over those interactions.

The $79 Echo Dot Kids Edition takes the original device's design and wraps it in a kid-friendly, colorful case. Otherwise, the hardware is the same as the tiny smart speaker that debuted in 2016. While the regular, $49 Dot is considered a more affordable and accessible version of the regular Echo speaker, the Kids Edition costs more thanks to its bundled software. Amazon includes a two-year warranty plus a one-year subscription to the new Amazon FreeTime Unlimited service, an expanded version of Amazon's new FreeTime.

FreeTime gives users "family-focused features" and new parental controls that adults can use to restrict what their kids can do with Alexa. Family features include "Education Q&A," allowing kids to ask Alexa science, math, spelling, and definition questions, "Alexa Speaks 'Kid,'" which gives Alexa kid-appropriate answers to nebulous statements that kids may say such as, "Alexa, I'm bored." Parents can also limit the times during which kids can speak to Alexa (like no talking to it after bedtime), restrict the skills kids can use, filter out songs with explicit lyrics, and more.

Enlarge / False-color image showing the smooth Hapi region connecting the head and body of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (credit: ESA)

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft arrived at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014 and subsequently became the first mission to ever orbit around a comet. Additionally, its small Philae lander became the first to touch down on a comet’s surface—although it was subsequently lost after it was unable to deploy its solar panels in a proper configuration to capture enough energy to continue operations.

During its two years in varying orbits around the comet, which is about 4km on its longest side, Rosetta captured some unprecedented imagery of these Solar System interlopers. Now, a Twitter user named landru79 has combed through the Rosetta image archives and found a striking series of 12.5-second exposure photos taken from about 13km away from the comet. The images from June 1, 2016, are combined into the short video below.

The bright dots travelling from the top of the frame to the bottom, which look something like snow, are in fact background stars. They have that apparent motion as the spacecraft moves and the comet rotates. The more rapidly moving streaks are thought to be dust particles illuminated by the Sun. There also appear to be a few streaking cosmic rays.