Month: May 2024

An artist's rendering of the BepiColombo mission, a joint ESA/JAXA project, which will take two spacecraft to the harsh environment of Mercury. (credit: ESA)

This week the European Space Agency posted a slightly ominous note regarding its BepiColombo spacecraft, which consists of two orbiters bound for Mercury.

The online news release cited a "glitch" with the spacecraft that is impairing its ability to generate thrust. The problem was first noted on April 26, when the spacecraft's primary propulsion system was scheduled to undertake an orbital maneuver. Not enough electrical power was delivered to the solar-electric propulsion system at the time.

According to the space agency, a team involving its own engineers and those of its industrial partners began working on the issue. By May 7 they had made some progress, restoring the spacecraft's thrust to about 90 percent of its original level. But this is not full thrust, and the root cause of the problem is still poorly understood.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Spencer Platt)

The North Carolina State Senate on Wednesday voted 30–15, along party lines, in favor of a Republican bill that would make it illegal for people in the state to wear a mask in public for health reasons. The bill is now moving to the House, where it could potentially see changes.

The proposed ban on health-based masking is part of a larger bill otherwise aimed at increasing penalties for people wearing masks to conceal their identity while committing a crime or impeding traffic. The bill was largely spurred by recent protests on university and college campuses across the country, including North Carolina-based schools, against the war in Gaza. In recent months, there have been demonstrations in Raleigh and Durham that have blocked roadways, as well as clashes on the nearby campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some demonstrators were seen wearing masks in those events.

But the bill, House Bill 237, goes a step further by making it illegal to wear a mask in public for health and safety reasons, either to protect the wearer, those around them, or both. Specifically, the bill repeals a 2020 legal exemption enacted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed for public health-based masking for the first time in decades.

Enlarge / Google continues to change what it means to be the "Google" search engine. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Google I/O has come and gone, and with it came an almost exclusive focus on AI. Part of the show was an announcement for Google Search that was so huge it was almost hard to believe: the AI-powered "Search Generative Experience (SGE)" that the company had been trialing for months is rolling out to everyone in the US. The feature, renamed "AI Overview," is here now, and it feels like the biggest change to Google Search ever. The top of many results (especially questions) are now dominated by an AI box that scrapes the web and gives you a sometimes-correct summary without needing to click on a single result.

AI Overview is a bit different from the SGE trials that were happening. First is that AI Overview is a lot faster than SGE. For some popular queries, it seems like Google is caching the AI answer, which should help with the high cost of running generative AI. For queries with cached overviews, you'll see the AI box load instantly, right along with the initial search results pop-in. SGE responses would come in word by word, like they are being typed by a person. When you aren't getting a cached result, you'll see a blank AI overview box that loads with the search page, which will say "searching" while it loads for a second or two. Other times, Google will try loading an AI Overview and fail, with the message "An AI overview is not available for this search." (As if anyone asked.)

Left: The default results show no webpages at all on the first screen. Right: The "Web" filter looks like Old Google. (credit: Ron Amadeo / Google)

When Google decides you have an AI-appropriate query, it now takes a lot of scrolling to see web results. Google scrolls infinitely, so there are no "pages" anymore, but let's consider a "page" to be a full browser viewport height: The first page is an AI overview that takes up half the screen and then another answer box extracted from some website. Page two is a "People also ask" box suggesting other queries, then one search result, then a box for videos. Page three is the bottom half of the video box, then a "Discussions and forums" section with Reddit and Quora posts. It's not until page four and miles of scrolling that we get the traditional 10 blue links. This list isn't even counting an ad block, which would appear first normally. I've yet to see an ad block and AI overview at the same time, but I'm sure that's coming. Despite pushing AI Overviews live into production for everyone on the most premium spot on the Google Search page, Google still notes that "Generative AI is experimental."

Enlarge / The Pedego Moto has serious moped energy. (credit: Eric Bangeman)

I'm not a fat-tire bike guy. My tire tastes run toward the thinner end of the spectrum: 28s on my road bike and 35s on my gravel bike. And I must confess to some distaste for fat-tire e-bikes, which I mostly encounter being ridden (and occasionally even pedaled) on local bike trails. But the $3,995 Pedego Moto caught my eye. The specs were impressive, but more importantly, it looked like it would be a blast to ride.

Unlike most of the other e-bikes I've reviewed, the Pedego Moto requires little in the way of assembly. The Moto arrived in a massive box strapped to a pallet, but once the box was cut away and the bike exposed, all I had to do was adjust the handlebars with a hex key and the Moto was good to go.

From the headlight to the bench seat, Moto sports a rugged moped vibe. There's a bright color display attached to the handlebars with four control buttons. The two on the front tweak the assist level and navigate setup screens, while the ones on the top and bottom handle power and confirming setup options. There's another controller just below and to the left of the display that handles the turn signals and headlights.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | SOPA Images)

A federal judge ruled yesterday that Tesla must face a lawsuit alleging that it committed fraud by misrepresenting the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles.

California resident Thomas LoSavio's lawsuit points to claims made by Tesla and CEO Elon Musk starting in October 2016, a few months before LoSavio bought a 2017 Tesla Model S with "Enhanced Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving Capability." US District Judge Rita Lin in the Northern District of California dismissed some of LoSavio's claims but ruled that the lawsuit can move forward on allegations of fraud:

The remaining claims, which arise out of Tesla's alleged fraud and related negligence, may go forward to the extent they are based on two alleged representations: (1) representations that Tesla vehicles have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability and, (2) representations that a Tesla car would be able to drive itself cross-country in the coming year. While the Rule 9(b) pleading requirements are less stringent here, where Tesla allegedly engaged in a systematic pattern of fraud over a long period of time, LoSavio alleges, plausibly and with sufficient detail, that he relied on these representations before buying his car.

Tesla previously won a significant ruling in the case when a different judge upheld the carmaker's arbitration agreement and ruled that four plaintiffs would have to go to arbitration. But LoSavio had opted out of the arbitration agreement and was given the option of filing an amended complaint.

Enlarge (credit: The Serial Code/YouTube)

It's amazing, and a little sad, to think that something created in 1989 that changed how people used and viewed the then-nascent Internet had nearly vanished by 2024.

Nearly, that is, because the dogged researchers and enthusiasts at The Serial Port channel on YouTube have found what is likely the last existing copy of Archie. Archie, first crafted by Alan Emtage while a student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, allowed for the searching of various "anonymous" FTP servers around what was then a very small web of universities, researchers, and government and military nodes. It was groundbreaking; it was the first echo of the "anything, anywhere" Internet to come. And when The Serial Port went looking, it very much did not exist.

While Archie would eventually be supplanted by Gopher, web portals, and search engines, it remains a useful way to index FTP sites and certainly should be preserved. The Serial Port did this, and the road to get there is remarkable and intriguing. You are best off watching the video of their rescue, along with its explanatory preamble. But I present here some notable bits of the tale, perhaps to tempt you into digging further.

Enlarge (credit: Tommy Gilligan/USMA PAO/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

University of Rochester linguist Andrew Bray started out studying the evolution of the trademark sports jargon used in hockey for his master's thesis. For instance, a hockey arena is a "barn," while the puck is a "biscuit." When he would tell people about the project, however, they kept asking if he was trying to determine why American hockey players sound like "fake Canadians." Intrigued, Bray decided to shift his research focus to find out if hockey players did indeed have distinctively Canadian speech patterns and, if so, why this might be the case.

He discovered that US hockey players borrow certain aspects of the Canadian English accent, particularly when it comes to hockey jargon. But they don't follow the typical rules of pronunciation. In short, "American hockey players are not trying to shift their speech to sound more Canadian," Bray said during a press briefing. "They're trying to sound more like a hockey player. That's why it's most evident in hockey-specific terms."

It's a concept known as a "linguistic persona," a means of communicating how one identifies—in this case, as a hockey player— through speech. Bray gave a talk about his research today at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Ottawa, Canada, held in conjunction with the Canadian Acoustical Association.

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

For the past decade, the dating app Bumble has claimed to be all about empowering women. But under a new CEO, Lidiane Jones, Bumble is now apologizing for a tone-deaf ad campaign that many users said seemed to channel incel ideology by telling women to stop denying sex.

"You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer,” one Bumble billboard seen in Los Angeles read. "Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun," read another.

Bumble intended these ads to bring "joy and humor," the company said in an apology posted on Instagram after the backlash on social media began.