Month: March 2023

Enlarge / This is a prototype of the new Kia EV9 electric SUV, which goes on sale in the latter half of 2023. (credit: Kia)

SEOUL, KOREA—In 2021, Kia used that year's Los Angeles Auto Show to debut a new electric concept called the EV9. Today, Kia took the wraps off the production version, which goes on sale in the second half of this year. The production EV9 is definitely an evolution of the show car but with some of the concept's more outrageous design details toned down a bit.

It's a large three-row SUV that uses Kia and Hyundai's advanced new electric vehicle platform called E-GMP, which has already impressed us and many others in new EVs like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia's EV6. Those two are smaller crossovers, but the EV9 is bringing that 800 V technology to a larger vehicle, one that should be well-suited to North American tastes.

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  The production EV9 has much less scalloped doors than the concept we saw in 2021. It's a little shorter than the Kia Telluride but with a much longer wheelbase. [credit: Kia ]

"The journey over the last couple of years to get to where we are now in terms of design could only happen when designers and brands work together, and this design philosophy—opposites united—is very much based on that idea of movement and richness through movement," explained Karim Habib, head of Kia Global Design. "It's about the juxtaposition of [a] man-made structure in nature and how that contrast actually can be very beautiful or even within nature itself."

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Microsoft marching on regulators with fresh evidence of its cross-platform intentions for Call of Duty. (credit: Activision)

Microsoft announced Tuesday that it has signed a 10-year deal to bring its Xbox PC games to little-known Ukraine-based streaming platform Boosteroid. The move is being positioned in part to "mak[e] even more clear to regulators that our acquisition of Activision Blizzard will make Call of Duty available on far more devices than before," as Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said in a statement.

Started in 2017, Boosteroid boasts 4 million streaming customers using servers based in nine European countries and six US states. Those customers pay 7.50 euro per month to stream games from those servers to any smartphone, Windows/Mac/Linux-based PC, or Android TV device.

Boosteroid currently links to users' accounts on other PC-based platforms—including Steam, the Epic Games Store, Blizzard's Battle.net, EA's Origin, the Rockstar Game Launcher, and Wargaming—and lets them play games from those services without having to install them on a local gaming PC. With this new deal, that access will expand to include games available through Microsoft's Xbox app on the PC.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Microsoft on Tuesday profiled software for sale in online forums that makes it easy for criminals to deploy phishing campaigns that successfully compromise accounts, even when they’re protected by the most common form of multi-factor authentication.

The phishing kit is the engine that’s powering more than 1 million malicious emails each day, researchers with the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said. The software, which sells for $300 for a standard version and $1,000 for VIP users, offers a variety of advanced features for streamlining the deployment of phishing campaigns and increasing their chances of bypassing anti-phishing defenses.

One of the most salient features is the built-in ability to bypass some forms of multi-factor authentication. Also known as MFA, two-factor authentication, or 2FA, this protection requires account holders to prove their identity not only with a password but also by using something only they own (such as a security key or authenticator app) or something only they are (such as a fingerprint or facial scan). MFA has become a major defense against account takeovers because the theft of a password alone isn’t sufficient for an attacker to gain control.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Today, the federal government's Joint Office of Energy and Transportation opened up applications for a $2.5 billion program to expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure in underserved communities. The Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program was authorized along with the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.

For starters, the Joint Office is making $700 million available for EV chargers—but also other alternative fuels including hydrogen and natural gas.

The CFI program actually encompasses two discrete $1.25 billion grant programs. The first is for community charging and fueling grants in both urban and rural areas, particularly in underserved and disadvantaged communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods as well as neighborhoods with a low ratio of private parking.

Enlarge / Brown University scientists used two 3D-printed plastic disks to explore the Cheerios effect. (credit: A. Hooshanginejad et al., 2023)

Scientific research often produces striking visuals, and this year's winners of the Gallery of Soft Matter Physics are no exception. Selected during the American Physical Society March Meeting last week in Las Vegas, Nevada, the winning video entries featured the Cheerios effect, the physics of clogs, and exploiting the physics behind wine tears to make bubbles last longer. Submissions were judged on the basis of both striking visual qualities and scientific interest. The gallery contest was first established last year, inspired in part by the society's hugely successful annual Gallery of Fluid Motion. All five of this year's winners will have the chance to present their work at next year's March meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Mermaid Cereal

As we've previously reported, the "Cheerios effect" describes the physics behind why those last few tasty little "O"s of cereal tend to clump together in the bowl: either drifting to the center or to the outer edge. The effect can also be found in grains of pollen (or mosquito eggs) floating on top of a pond or small coins floating in a bowl of water. The culprit is a combination of buoyancy, surface tension, and the so-called "meniscus effect." It all adds up to a type of capillary action. Basically, the mass of the Cheerios is insufficient to break the milk's surface tension. But it's enough to put a tiny dent in the surface of the milk in the bowl, such that if two Cheerios are sufficiently close, they will naturally drift toward each other. The "dents" merge and the "O"s clump together. Add another Cheerio into the mix, and it, too, will follow the curvature in the milk to drift toward its fellow "O"s.

Measuring the actual forces at play on such a small scale is daunting, since they're on about the same scale as the weight of a mosquito. Typically, this is done by placing sensors on objects and setting them afloat in a container, using the sensors to deflect the natural motion. But Cheerios are small enough that this was not a feasible approach. So Brown University postdoc Alireza Hooshanginejad and cohorts used two 3D-printed plastic disks, roughly the size of a Cheerio, and placed a small magnet in one of them. Then they set the disks afloat in a small tub of water, surrounded by electric coils, and let them drift together (attraction). The coils in turn produced magnetic fields, pulling the magnetized disk away from its non-magnetized partner (repulsion).

Enlarge / Customizing a Mesh for Teams avatar. Like many people on real-life video calls, the avatars only feature business attire from the waist up. (credit: Microsoft)

There are plenty of reasons to turn your camera off during a Zoom or Teams meeting—maybe you're cleaning your office and you don't want to look like you're not paying attention, or your kid is climbing all over you, or you just haven't managed to shower yet and you don't want to show your coworkers how disheveled you are.

For people who want to split the difference between appearing on camera and switching it off, Microsoft will be adding animated 3D avatars to Microsoft Teams in May, according to Microsoft's product roadmap. The 3D avatars are a component of "Mesh," an initiative Microsoft announced back in late 2021 when the "metaverse" hype had reached a fever pitch. As originally envisioned, Mesh will include not just 3D Teams avatars, but virtual workspaces accessible via VR, so that people working remotely can experience the joy of sitting in a meeting room while someone drones on in front of a PowerPoint deck.

The roadmap update doesn't include a complete list of features, but previous announcements about Mesh for Teams have shown avatars with customizable body types, skin tones, hair colors and hairstyles, clothes, and facial features. Microsoft said in late 2021 that the initial versions of these avatars would only animate when users were speaking, but eventually the company wants them to be able to mimic users' real-world facial expressions and movements as captured by their webcams.