Month: April 2020

Enlarge (credit: Starship)

On the morning of March 30, I set out from my home in Washington, DC, to the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In only a few hours, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam would issue coordinated stay-at-home orders. But I was going to GMU's campus to check out a new technology seemingly tailor-made for the moment—technology that could help people get food without the risks of face-to-face interactions.

Campus was eerily quiet; most students and staff had long been sent home. But as I approached a Starbucks at the northern edge of GMU, I heard a faint buzzing and saw a six-wheeled, microwave-sized robot zip along the sidewalk, turn, and park in front of the coffee shop. The robot looked like—and essentially was—a large white cooler on wheels. It was a delivery robot from Starship, a startup that has been operating on campus since early last year.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, small sidewalk robots like this seemed to be slowly gaining traction here and at large. Generally, these bots are light and slow-moving enough that they're unlikely to hurt anyone. That has allowed companies to start using them in real-world applications, with minimal supervision, at a time when larger autonomous vehicles designed for road use still seem far from mainstream commercial use.

Enlarge / The Electron launch vehicle is ready to soar. (credit: Rocket Lab)

Welcome to Edition 2.41 of the Rocket Report! Lots of news this week, topped by the ascent of the Falcon 9 rocket to the status of "most experienced" rocket now active in the United States. Not bad for a booster that has been flying for less than a decade. We also have news of Iran's surprise launch this week and much more.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Iran Guard reveals secret space program. Iran's Revolutionary Guard launched its first satellite into space Wednesday, the AP reports. This action dramatically showcased what experts described as a secret military space program that could advance its ballistic missile development amid wider tensions between the Islamic Republic and the United States.

• 

  Deafverse replicates many everyday situations, such as buying a new laptop or trying to comprehend the price of the latest iMac. [credit: National Deaf Center ]

The last decade has seen many advancements in video game accessibility. From hardware like the Xbox Adaptive Controller to legislation that requires all communication options in online multiplayer to be as accessible as possible to freely available in-depth development guidelines for interested developers, games have never been more inclusive to disabled players. As the 2010s come to a close, a game called Deafverse is trying to reach another milestone by becoming the first fully American Sign Language (ASL)-accessible game.

Developed through the National Deaf Center (NDC) in Austin, Texas, Deafverse is a browser-based ongoing-narrative adventure about navigating the world as a deaf teenager. Designed first and foremost (but not exclusively) for classroom use, the game seeks to educate and enlighten players about deaf culture through collaborative play and discussion. Players learn about the real-life challenges of deafness in a safe and sincere way designed by and for the deaf community.

Deriving inspiration from choose-your-own-adventure books and games, Deafverse merges aspects of point-and-click sci-fi and fantasy stories from the 1980s and '90s with contemporary standards for accessibility to make something that is as educational as it is engaging.

Enlarge / A little less than $350 buys you a solid color laser printer, scanner, and fax machine that works flawlessly with Android and ChromeOS devices. (credit: Jim Salter)

With social distancing and isolation, many of us are having to find ways to do more with less—in terms of equipment and technical support, as much as anything else. Today, we're going to take a look at one success story in a less-traveled but suddenly very relevant workflow—scanning and printing with a ChromeOS device.

Enter the Chromebox

• 

  We chose Chromeboxes instead of Chromebooks for our kids at home, to give them access to a full-size monitor, keyboard, and mouse. [credit: Jim Salter ]

Chromeboxes are just like the Chromebooks that American schools have almost unanimously adopted as student computers. They're simple, low-powered devices that run ChromeOS—which doesn't look much like an "operating system" at all to the user. The only difference is that, while a Chromebook is a laptop form factor, a Chromebox is a tiny standalone PC which can be bolted right to the back of a standard monitor.

For people who do most of their work online, ChromeOS devices are great—they're inexpensive, they cold boot in seconds, and they manage all of their own software updates. They're also nearly impossible to get infested with malware. The worst "malware" problems I've ever seen on a ChromeOS device are spammy browser notifications, caused by a user clicking "allow" when some ad banner requests the privilege.

SEATTLE—I've kept my eyes on the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN) since its formation in March, in part because I desperately wanted to know whether I might've caught COVID-19. Hence, "coronavirus assessment" sounded good to me. SCAN's pilot program landed in one of the United States' earliest confirmed outbreak regions, and its pitch—hundreds of tests a day, all conducted via free take-home swabbing kits—was open to public sign-ups.

Clearly, I wasn't alone in wondering about possible COVID-19 contraction. (In my case, a seasonal burst of nagging cough and sinus-like chest tightness couldn't have come at a worse time.) SCAN's site was hounded by demand, and it typically informed visitors that a given day's tests were accounted for, please try again tomorrow.

Roughly one month after public sign-ups began, something in the supply-and-demand chain opened up widely enough for me to successfully sign up this past weekend—as a civilian, mind you, not as a member of the press requesting special access. What follows is my anecdotal experience with what remains the United States' only free take-home COVID-19 testing program—and what health officials and citizens alike can learn from it.

Enlarge

Over the past month, seemingly spontaneous protest sites have popped up throughout the country that advocate for an end to lockdowns various states have mandated in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Now, security researchers have tied much of this seemingly grass-roots activity to a single person.

Aaron Dorr is a well-known activist and lobbyist who has long been known for his advocacy of firearms ownership. Over a five-hour span on April 8, he registered six domains—reopenohio.com, reopenpa.com, reopenmn.com, reopeniowa.com, reopenwyoming.com, and reopenmissouri.com—and nine days later purchased reopentxnow.com.

He and his brothers then used a variety of state-specific Facebook groups, which according the the Des Moines Register have a total of more than 200,000 followers, to drive massive amounts of traffic to the newly registered addresses. In turn, the domains redirected visitors to a host of state-specific gun advocacy sites, such as Iowa Gun Owners. Each gun ownership site used a different organization name and prominently displayed banners decrying the lockdowns in their respective states.