Month: November 2021

Enlarge / The crescent-shaped balls of cells would travel in circles, piling up cells that could grow into mobile clusters. (credit: Sam Kriegman and Douglas Blackiston)

Scientists on Monday announced that they'd optimized a way of getting mobile clusters of cells to organize other cells into smaller clusters that, under the right conditions, could be mobile themselves. The researchers call this process "kinematic self-replication," although that's not entirely right—the copies need help from humans to start moving on their own, are smaller than the originals, and the copying process grinds to a halt after just a couple of cycles.

So, of course, CNN headlined its coverage "World's first living robots can now reproduce."

This is a case when something genuinely interesting is going on, but both the scientists and some of the coverage of the developments are promoting it as far more than it actually is. So, let's take a look at what's really been done.

Enlarge / WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 29: Anthony Fauci (R), Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to the President, speaks alongside US President Joe Biden as he delivers remarks on the Omicron COVID-19 variant following a meeting of the COVID-19 response team at the White House. (credit: Getty | Anna Moneymaker)

Amid global panic over the recently identified omicron coronavirus variant, US President Joe Biden on Monday urged Americans to stay calm and continue following health measures known to be highly effective at combating COVID-19—namely, masking, vaccination, and boosting.

"This variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic," Biden said in remarks delivered from the White House Monday. He touted the power of current vaccines and America's scientific prowess in being able to address the potential threat. "We'll fight this variant with scientific and knowledgeable actions and speed—not chaos and confusion."

Flanking Biden during the remarks was top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci. Earlier today, Biden huddled with Dr. Fauci and the rest of the White House COVID-19 Response Team to discuss the threat of omicron. Biden reported that, so far, Fauci and the team believe that current vaccines will "provide at least some protection" against omicron—particularly against severe disease—and that booster doses "strengthen that protection significantly."

Enlarge / Yes, that's a pickup with a tailgate that displays pixelated emoji. Nissan introduced this and three other concepts alongside its EV strategy. While they may hint at some future designs, they're so full of the usual concept-car fare (suicide doors, swiveling seats) and absent any interesting features that they're not worth discussing here. (credit: Nissan)

As more and more automakers have turned their attention to electric vehicles, one-time leader Nissan finds itself playing a game of catch-up. In an attempt to make up for lost time, the company announced on Monday that it will invest $17.6 billion over the next five years “to accelerate the electrification of its vehicle lineup and rate of technology innovation.”

The plan, called “Nissan Ambition 2030,” is notable for its lack of ambition.

The company says it will introduce 15 new EVs, though it gave itself a generous deadline of 2030. Nissan also said that, by the end of the decade, 50 percent of Nissan and Infiniti sales will be “electrified,” which is industry-speak for adding electric motors, not necessarily supplanting internal combustion engines. Much of Nissan’s strategy relies on series hybrids, where a range-extending gas engine will recharge a small battery. It’s a strategy that looks good on paper but has largely been abandoned by other automakers either because of mediocre sales (Chevy Volt) or looming government regulations.

Enlarge / AirPower, as announced in 2017 before its ultimate cancellation. (credit: Samuel Axon)

A newsletter from Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman claims that Apple is still working on a multi-device wireless charger that would fulfill the promise of the company's long-canceled AirPower charging mat.

The newsletter that Gurman sent out yesterday claims that Apple is still working on a charger that could handle three devices at once—iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch—despite its failures with the AirPower. Apple publicly announced the AirPower alongside the iPhone X in 2017, but the product was reportedly plagued with development problems like overheating and was ultimately scrapped.

Bloomberg previously reported that Apple was working on both an AirPower successor and true wireless technology in an article published last June. (That article also outed, among other things, the iPad mini redesign.)

Enlarge / Artist's conception of voders staring in awe at the raw C code that generates Ocarina of Time. (credit: Nintendo)

A team of volunteer coders has reportedly completed its nearly two-year-long quest to fully decompile a version of The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, turning the executable ROM back into human-readable (and editable) C code.

"We thought for a time that we may never be able to match every function completely, so this is an incredibly exciting accomplishment," Zelda Reverse Engineering Team (ZRET) member Kenix wrote on the project's Discord server Sunday. "Dozens of people helped work on this project, and together we were able to achieve something amazing."

The final decompiled functions still need to be merged with the ZRET Github repository before the open source project is officially considered 100 percent complete, Kenix wrote. Once that submission is reviewed, though, the team should be able to run its tens of thousands of lines of C code through a compiler (alongside graphics and sound assets derived from a legitimate cartridge) to generate a bit-for-bit copy of the original Ocarina of Time ROM.