Month: August 2020

Enlarge / This is your skeleton. This is your skeleton working from home. Any questions? (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

With offices shuttered around the world, many people are experiencing working from home for the first time—or experiencing it in much longer doses than they were used to. Many companies are planning to keep employees working remotely at least part of the time well into 2021. And some are considering making it permanent.

Countless people have had to improvise their work-at-home workspaces. But now that we're several months in, some of that improvisation may be wearing thin. And one of the things that often gets pushed to the back burner in all this improvisation is ergonomics. If you haven't worked from home regularly in the past, and you're now sitting at the kitchen table every day working from a corporate-issued laptop, you're probably feeling the physical strains of this never-going-to-be-normal reality.

As someone who has worked primarily from home for a quarter of a century, I've had a lot of time to figure out what does and does not work in a home office. The changes that have come with COVID-19—including having my wife and daughter in lockdown with me, both working from home themselves—have required some adjustments and some re-equipping. We needed our home workspaces to support the new world of work while maintaining comfort and a reasonable level of sanity mid-pandemic.

Enlarge / A test vehicle collides with a dummy car at a AAA test track in California. (credit: AAA)

In recent years, a number of car companies have—like Tesla—begun offering driver assistance systems that offer lane-keeping as well as adaptive cruise control. This might seem like a big step toward a "self-driving car," since a system like this can travel down the freeway for miles without human intervention. But a new report from AAA underscores the limitations of these systems.

Its most dramatic finding: the advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) on the latest cars still struggle to avoid collisions with parked vehicles. They tested cars from BMW, Kia, and Subaru; none consistently avoided running into a fake car partially blocking the travel lane.

The researchers also examined the ADAS in the Cadillac CT6 and the Ford Edge, but these cars' systems weren't included in the parked-vehicle test because their driver assistance systems wouldn't engage on AAA's closed course. They were included in other tests conducted on public highways.

Enlarge / An overview of Astra's picturesque launch site for Rocket 3.1. (credit: John Kraus for Astra)

Welcome to Edition 3.11 of the Rocket Report! A lot of the most interesting news this week came in the world of small launch, with Electron announcing a quick return to flight as well as boosting the capacity of its Electron booster. We were also surprised to see such a robust fundraising effort by ABL Space Systems.

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.

Astra attempts launch of second orbital rocket. The launch window for launching Rocket 3.1 from the company's spaceport on Kodiak Island, Alaska, opened Sunday night. A combination of technical issues with the rocket and ground systems, as well as weather issues, precluded launches on Sunday through Wednesday.

Enlarge / Try not to get whacked on your way to this race's finish line. (credit: Mediatonic / Devolver Digital)

Have you been looking for a good online multiplayer game that's accessible to anyone who can use a joystick and three buttons? Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is that game. Imagine the minigame zaniness of Mario Party combined with the simple, squishy controls of Gang Beasts, then remixed to deliver the kind of fun that won't have you screaming in sheer anger at your friends. (Meaning, much better than Mario Party.)

The biggest catch, as those comparisons hint at, is Fall Guys' weakness as a solo game. Every match you'll play in the game's launch version is a battle against up to 59 online strangers, and the same design elements that make this a fun game with friends will leave you frustrated and furious when it's just you versus the world.

Fall Guys is a must-play with friends in your online party, a more tiring slog when played alone, and a party game that currently lacks any form of local-multiplayer functionality. If that sales pitch hasn't lost you, read on.

Tails, balls, and whacks

Each Fall Guys session takes place over five rounds of elimination contests, whittling the fray down from 60 competitors to a single winner. In every round, you control a slow, bean-shaped "fall guy," likely named after its floppy balance issues. You'll run and jump through obstacle courses, between swinging pendulums and platforms, and across soccer-like arenas, and anything less than a smooth landing will see your colorful, squeaky character topple over, get up, and try again.