Month: October 2019

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  This is Audi's new lineup of TFSI e plug-in hybrid EVs. We'll be getting the A7, A8, and Q5 PHEVs in the United States, but probably not that Q7. [credit: Audi ]

MUNICH—That we need to do something about the transportation sector's carbon impact should be beyond clear by now. With luck, that means a lot more people walking, cycling, and taking public transport for the short trips that make up so much of our lives. But America's infrastructure and culture is heavily biased toward the personal automobile. And the need to make road trips, even if few drive more than 100 miles a day.

But even if we can't get to a full battery EV fleet any time soon, there's still plenty of low-hanging fruit. Like the big and inefficient luxury vehicles bought by the upper-middle class—if there's a way to make the short trips that people do in those less actively damaging to the planet, I think that's a positive. Which is where these two Audis come in.

I was in Munich to learn more about PPE, the modular electric-car architecture that Audi, Porsche, and perhaps Bentley and Lamborghini will use to build EVs to escape the massive fines looming for OEMs that can't get their European fleet CO2 average down to below 95g/km. But not everyone can or will want a BEV as their next car. Fortunately for those with serious range anxiety, there's always the option of a plug-in hybrid EV. So it was handy that the company had some of its new PHEVs on hand for us to try out.

Enlarge / US Army troopers assigned to the Field Artillery Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, fire their M777 Howitzer. The Army is looking for a gun with a bit more range—over 1,000 nautical miles. (credit: US Army)

In 2017, the US Army established a collection of cross-functional teams (CFTs) aimed at rapidly pushing forward key technologies to advance the services' next generation of capabilities. One of those teams was the Long Range Precision Fires "pilot," an effort to develop the next generation of Army artillery—including "deep fires," an artillery capability that can strike at strategic targets well within an adversary's defenses.

That effort has spawned what Army Futures Command chief Gen. John Murray described to Congress last year as "the Strategic Long Range Cannon, which conceivably could have a range of up to 1,000 nautical miles" (1,150 miles, or 1,850 kilometers).

The Strategic Long Range Cannon program is now advancing through its first set of technical hurdles. Col. John Rafferty, head of the Long Range Precision Fires CFT, told Defense News in advance of this week's Association of the US Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting that the Army wants to demonstrate a prototype of the gun system by 2023. Currently, the Army is working with the Center for Army Analysis and the Research and Analysis Center at White Sands Missile Range to confirm the technical feasibility of the cannon. The Army is preparing to perform early tests at Naval Support Facility Dahlgren, the site of the Navy's test range for naval artillery.

Enlarge / Washington State Capitol building in Olympia, Washington. (credit: Getty Images | Richard Cummins)

Although the Federal Communications Commission abandoned its regulation of net neutrality, it wouldn't be accurate to say there are no net neutrality laws anywhere in the United States.

No one enforces net neutrality in Washington, DC, but on the opposite coast, the state of Washington imposed a net neutrality law in June 2018 that remains in effect today. The Washington State law prohibits home and mobile Internet providers from blocking or throttling lawful Internet traffic and from charging online services for prioritization.

The Washington State law cleared its biggest hurdle on October 1 when a federal appeals court vacated the Federal Communications Commission's decision to preempt all state net neutrality laws.

Enlarge (credit: Mighty Travels / Flickr)

A thriving online bazaar selling stolen payment card data has been hacked in a heist that leaked the records for more than 26 million cards, KrebsOnSecurity reported on Tuesday.

The 26 million figure isn't significant only to the legitimate consumers and businesses who own the stolen cards or the financial institutions that issued them. Fortunately for the card owners, the database is now in the hands of affected financial institutions who can invalidate and replace the cards.

The number, therefore, is perhaps a bigger deal because it represents a significant fraction of the world's stolen-card inventory. Krebs said that Gemini Advisory, a company that monitors dozens of underground markets trafficking stolen card data, currently tracks a total of 87 million credit and debit card records. The haul of 26 million cards means that about a third of that supply has been taken out of circulation in a single swipe.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

NASA is renowned for doing really difficult stuff. You want to drop a Mini-sized lander on Mars using a sky crane? Well, NASA will do that for you. There is a view of NASA as staid and conservative but, on the whole, I think the agency is full of innovative problem solvers, albeit sometimes crippled by political oversight.

The side-effect of being innovative is that some rather strange and unphysical ideas sometimes escape from NASA. This probably explains the Helical Drive.

Twisting the laws of physics

The basic idea of the Helical Drive, according to the author of that link, is simple. Imagine that you have a mass in a cylinder that is oscillating back and forth. Every time the mass hits the end of the cylinder, it will impart some momentum, accelerating it. Because the mass sequentially collides with each end of the cylinder, the net force is zero, and the only outcome is that the cylinder gets a massive headache.

Enlarge / A stack of plant-based Impossible Burgers. (credit: Impossible Foods)

Plant-based meat alternatives are having a moment—from Burger King’s Impossible Whoppers, White Castle’s Impossible sliders, McDonald’s Beyond Meat PLT, and Subway’s Beyond Meatball Marinara, not to mention the growing shelf space for meatless-meat in grocery stores nationwide.

Though veggie burgers have been around for ages, the more meat-like generation of products has clearly piqued the appetite of the public. And that has another group—perhaps a surprising one—salivating over the profit potential: the meat industry.

Big names in meaty-meat products—including Tyson, Perdue, Hormel, Smithfield, and Nestlé—are all trying to get a cut of the fake and alternative-meat products world, according to The New York Times. Following the juicy success of Impossible Foods (with its Impossible Burgers) and Beyond Meat, meat producers have carved out their own plant-based versions of burgers, chicken nuggets, sausages, and more.