Month: April 2020

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  The Polestar Precept isn't destined for production, but many of the ideas we see here will show up in the Polestar 3, a performance electric SUV due in late 2021. [credit: Polestar ]

The Polestar Precept was one of the cars I was most looking forward to seeing in person before the Geneva auto show got cancelled. The brand is a new one, spun out of Volvo with a fully funded mission to build exciting electric vehicles. And the Precept is a statement in that regard, with some interesting things to say about the way an EV can look, both outside and inside, that aren't just a rehash of decades-old conventions. Polestar was evidently sad that it couldn't show off its latest design study to the wider world, too, and so it sent us a bunch of new images of the car while designer Max Missoni hopped on a phone in Sweden to talk to me about the Precept.

Although the Precept is just a design study, it's been designed in parallel with the Polestar 3, a coupe-like SUV that should arrive before the end of 2021. "However, we are always careful to not overpromise and do design studies that are so far away from reality that none of it could be imagined in production," Missoni told me. "A lot of the elements of the Precept are going to resurface in Polestar 3. So, the dimensions and features and design language is quite realistic."

The car's shape has been heavily influenced by the demands of aerodynamic efficiency, which is why there's what looks to be a floating-wing element over the nose, as well as a rather unusual rear end.

Enlarge / "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!" Monty Python' and the Holy Grail's family-friendly approach to swearing handily avoids the F-word. (credit: YouTube/Funny or Die/Monty Python)

Scotland has much to recommend it: impressive architecture, gorgeous Highlands, and a long, distinguished intellectual tradition that has spawned some of the Western world's greatest thinkers over several centuries. It's also, apparently, home to a medieval manuscript that contains the earliest known usage of the swear word "F#$%."

The profanity appears in a poem recorded by a bored student in Edinburgh while under lockdown as the plague ravaged Europe—something we can all relate to these days. The poem is getting renewed attention thanks to its inclusion in a forthcoming BBC Scotland documentary exploring the country's long, proud tradition of swearing, Scotland—Contains Strong Language.

The Bannatyne Manuscript gets its name from a young 16th-century Edinburgh merchant named George Bannatyne, who compiled the roughly 400 poems while stuck at home in late 1568, as the plague ravaged his city. It's an anthology of Scottish literature, particularly the texts of poems by some of the country's greatest bards (known as makars) in the 15th and 16th centuries. According to a spokeswoman for the National Library of Scotland (where the manuscript is housed), "It has long been known that the manuscript contains some strong swearwords that are now common in everyday language, although at the time, they were very much used in good-natured jest."

Enlarge / A closeup view of the Starliner capsule with its service module immediately beneath it. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann )

Boeing announced on Monday evening that it will refly its Starliner spacecraft, without astronauts, to demonstrate the vehicle's safety for NASA.

"We are committed to the safety of the men and women who design, build and ultimately will fly on the Starliner just as we have on every crewed mission to space," Boeing said in a statement. "We have chosen to refly our Orbital Flight Test to demonstrate the quality of the Starliner system. Flying another uncrewed flight will allow us to complete all flight test objectives and evaluate the performance of the second Starliner vehicle at no cost to the taxpayer."

The decision follows the initial uncrewed flight of Starliner in late December, when what was supposed to be a week-long mission was cut to two days and a plan to dock with the International Space Station was abandoned due to a "mission elapsed time" error.

Enlarge / When Bubba Wallace (top left, #43 car) got into a wreck with Clint Boyer (middle, #14 car) during an iRacing event on Sunday night, he rage-quit after respawning in the pit lane. (credit: iRacing/NASCAR)

As NASCAR turns to esports as a way to continue racing in an age of social isolation, one up-and-coming driver has found out there are consequences for rage-quitting. Bubba Wallace, whose regular job is driving the #43 Richard Petty Motorsports car, was wrecked in a race held at a virtual Bristol Motor Speedway in iRacing. When his car respawned in the pitlane, Wallace told his Twitch stream "That's it. That's why I don't take this shit seriously. Peace out," as he quit the game instead of rejoining a lap or three down on the leaders.

Fans on Twitter weren't shy of criticizing Wallace's move, which is where things went quickly downhill. After Wallace made light of the fact that he "ruined so many peoples [sic] day by quiting.. [sic] a video game", his major sponsor for the race, Blue Emu, quit him, replying to his tweet with the news that "We're interested in drivers, not quitters."

GTK where you stand. Bye bye Bubba. We're interested in drivers, not quitters.

— Blue-Emu (@BlueEmu1) April 5, 2020

During our last visit to a NASCAR race, a visibly angry Wallace burned rubber in the paddock (and nearly sideswiped this writer) after being wrecked and having to retire early. As we've noted before, the sport is aiming to bring as much of a sense of normality as possible in its temporary switch to esports, and in that regard Wallace's rage-quit seems par for the course. Only that time, it didn't cost him a sponsor.

Enlarge (credit: Christiaan Colen / Flickr)

NASA has experienced an exponential increase in malware attacks and a doubling of agency devices trying to access malicious sites in the past few days as personnel work from home, the space agency’s Office of the Chief Information Officer said on Monday.

A new wave

“A new wave of cyber-attacks is targeting Federal Agency Personnel, required to telework from home, during the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak,” officials wrote in a memo. The wave over the past few days includes a(n):

• Doubling of email phishing attempts
• Exponential increase in malware attacks on NASA systems
• Double the number of mitigation-blocking of NASA systems trying to access malicious sites (often unknowingly) due to users accessing the Internet

The last item is particularly concerning because it suggests that NASA employees and contractors are clicking on malicious links sent in email and text messages at twice the rate as normal. Tricking people into clicking on malicious links or opening malicious email attachments remains one of the easiest ways to gain entry into enterprise networks and individual computers users alike.

Everyone who is (or wants to be) anyone seems to have some opinion or advice about the current COVID-19 crisis. Many of those opinions have been, frankly, quite bad. And someone who makes his money from media appearances trying to disappear those opinions from the Internet after realizing those opinions were, in fact, quite bad, doesn't help matters any.

Dr. Drew Pinsky is up there with Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil on the list of "celebrity doctors whose name you probably know." He soared to fame in the 1990s and 2000s on the back of his TV and radio advice show Loveline. Pinsky, who performs and markets himself as Dr. Drew, is indeed a medical doctor—but he is not an epidemiologist or specialist in infectious disease. He earned his MD from the University of Southern California in 1984 and went to work as a physician, specializing in the treatment of addiction and chemical dependencies, in the decades that followed.

But not being an expert in infectious disease did not stop him from being widely dismissive of the potential threat from COVID-19 throughout the year, even as the threat continued to grow. Dr. Drew is taking the threat seriously now that more than 330,000 people inside the United States have tested positive for the disease and more than 10,000 have died. On Saturday, he released a video apologizing for his earlier comments, which he said were "wrong."

Enlarge / President Donald Trump holds a press briefing with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force on April 5, 2020, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Sarah Silbiger)

The Federal Communications Commission has rejected a request to investigate TV stations' handling of President Donald Trump's coronavirus press conferences.

Advocacy group Free Press' emergency petition asking the FCC to investigate said that TV broadcasters' "context-less coverage of President Donald Trump's press conferences and other statements" may violate the broadcast-hoax rule. Denying the petition today, the FCC said that Free Press "misconstrues the Commission's rules and seeks remedies that would dangerously curtail the freedom of the press embodied in the First Amendment."

Free Press' petition said that "broadcasters are prohibited from knowingly airing false information about a catastrophe that causes 'substantial public harm.'" Under FCC guidelines, broadcasters can avoid violating the hoax rule by including a disclaimer that "clearly characterizes the program as a fiction and is presented in a way that is reasonable under the circumstances."

Enlarge / WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 21: Acting US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly. (credit: Mark Wilson / Getty Images)

There were two major developments in the saga of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which saw its captain relieved of command after an email leaked in which he argued that he needed more assistance in dealing with a coronavirus outbreak among his crew. The first is that the former captain, Brett Crozier, has now had a positive test result for coronavirus. According to The New York Times' sources, Crozier had already been experiencing symptoms when he was removed from command. In that, he joins at least 155 members of his crew, based on numbers provided by the Department of Defense on Sunday.

The second is that the man who relieved him, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly, visited the Theodore Roosevelt to give a talk that was sent over the ship's intercom system to the entire crew. In it, Modly blasted Captain Crozier, telling the crew he "put you at great risk." Modly said that the former captain's actions caused problems for the Navy staff that was caring for sick crew members, as well as for the government of Guam, where the ship is currently docked. "Think about that when you cheer the man off the ship who exposed you to that," Modly told the crew.

"I understand that you love the guy," Modly said, speaking of the captain's warm send-off. "It's good that you love him, but you're not required to love him." Instead, he reminded the crew that their duty was to the Navy and the US public.