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Enlarge (credit: Evelyn Wang/MIT)

Luke Skywalker may have been unimpressed with the life of a Tatooine moisture farmer, but a simple device that could economically harvest water from desert air would really be pretty exciting. According to Wookieepedia, the “moisture vaporators” the young Skywalker tended utilized refrigeration coils to chill air to the dew point and collect the water that condensed. We can certainly do that today (as they could “a long time ago... ”), but the amount of energy required makes collecting condensation impractical.

Enter a new study device developed by MIT’s Hyunho Kim. His idea is to work with a unique class of materials called “metal-organic frameworks.” Organic, carbon-based molecules form links between metallic ions to create interesting 3D structures that can have lots of open space internally. This allows the structures to do strange things, like make a high-pressure tank hold far more hydrogen gas after it’s first filled with granules of the right metal-organic framework material.

Kim worked with a zirconium oxide paired with an organic molecule. The combination has the useful quality of grabbing and holding onto water vapor at lower temperatures, but also letting go of that water as the heat rises. So the basic idea is that a device based on this material could passively harvest water vapor from the air at night and then release it (to be collected) in the heat of the day.

Video shot and edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

NEW YORK—As regular readers of Cars Technica know, the auto industry is going full-speed ahead when it comes to self-driving cars. A number of OEMs and their technology company partners have promised us SAE "level 4" self-driving vehicles by 2021. But not all of these organizations are taking the same road to get there. Some, like Ford and Volvo, have decided to go straight to full autonomy by working on vehicles that won't need a human driver at all within specific geofenced areas (these are vehicles that you or I will use through ride-hailing services). Others, notably General Motors and Audi, believe in some degree of returning control to the human driver, who may or may not be giving the road their full attention. At this year's New York International Auto Show, the former group broke cover with its new Super Cruise system, which will be available on the Cadillac CT6 sedan later this year.

To be accurate, unlike the system due to appear in Audi's next A8 flagship, Super Cruise is only a level 2, not level 3, autonomy. There are already plenty of level 2 autonomous systems on the market already, typically cars with a combination of adaptive cruise control—which maintains a car's speed to traffic ahead via the use of radar—and a lane keeping assist that reads the lane markers on the road with an optical sensor and steers to keep the car centered between them. But Super Cruise is closer to level 3 than pretty much every other level 2 system out there, since it combines adaptive cruise control and lane keeping with two notable advances that are going to play a large role in more autonomous cars in the future.

Enlarge (credit: Google Fiber)

Google Fiber and other ISPs that want to build new networks might get good news from the Federal Communications Commission, which is considering rules that would speed up the process of attaching wires to utility poles.

Current FCC rules allow for up to a five-month waiting period before new ISPs can install wires on utility poles that already hold the wires of incumbent providers. This is a problem for Internet users who often don't have any choice of high-speed providers. The new FCC proposal from Chairman Ajit Pai could shave a couple of months off the maximum waiting periods.

The rules wouldn't eliminate all the problems that recently caused Google Fiber to cut its staff and pause fiber operations in 11 cities while it pursues wireless networking technology. But Google Fiber said the initial FCC proposal is a good step.

Enlarge / Meet Fyodor, Russia's new gun-toting robot. (credit: Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter)

The reports this weekend were breathless. Mashable said Russia was sending a "death dealing" robot with the power to shoot guns to the International Space Station. Pravda reported that the Russian cyborg, Fyodor, had frightened the West. It was like the Terminator, only in space, and only for reals.

In reality, probably not. The stories were written after the Russian deputy prime minister overseeing military and space activities, Dmitry Rogozin, posted on Facebook and Twitter about the country's humanoid robot, Fyodor. Rogozin was proud that the robot had demonstrated the ability to shoot from both hands. "Fine motor skills and decision-making algorithms are still being improved," he tweeted. But maybe we shouldn't call upon Arnold Schwarzenegger to save us just yet. "Shooting exercises is a method of teaching the robot to set priorities and make instant decisions," Rogozin added. "We are creating AI, not Terminator."

Rogozin has previously suggested that Russia will send this robot to the space station in 2021. Pravda claims this is still the target date and that Fyodor will ride into space aboard Russia's next-generation spacecraft, named Federation. So should NASA be concerned about an armed and lethal robot coming to the station four years from now?

Enlarge (credit: Verizon)

Just after LG announced its first two smartwatches running Android Wear 2.0 in February, Verizon announced its own competing wearable. Now we know Verizon's Android Wear smartwatch, named Wear24, will be available starting May 11. Coming in silver, black, and rose gold, the Wear24 will be sold on Verizon's website and in its stores for $350. Alternatively, customers can choose to activate a new two-year plan and get the device for $300.

The Wear24 smartwatch has LTE capabilities, so Verizon obviously wants users to start a new plan when they buy it. However, you can add it to an existing Verizon plan and pay an additional $5 per month for LTE access. With that data, the smartwatch can receive notifications and information without your paired smartphone nearby, and it can also take calls, send messages, and stream music on its own. The Wear24 will run Android Wear 2.0 out of the box and it'll have the latest version of Google Assistant as well.

The Wear24 smartwatch is comparable to LG's $350 Watch Sport because it has a 1.39-inch, 290 ppi AMOLED display, a 450 mAh battery, and a water-resistance level that allows it to withstand being submerged in about three feet of water for 30 minutes. There's still no word if the Wear24 will have extra features like an onboard GPS or heart rate monitor like LG's high-end watch has. The feature set (or lack thereof) could make the Wear24 a harder sell at such a high price.

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Intel has cancelled its Intel Developer Forum (IDF) developer events. Earlier in the year, the company said that it wasn't going to hold an IDF in China this year, but now even the San Francisco event (which was to be held in mid-August) has been scrapped. The announcement was spotted by Anandtech.

In the past, Intel has used IDF to launch each year's new processor architecture along with other big product announcements such as Optane non-volatile storage. The difficulties of physics have made it harder for the to offer an annual architecture refresh, however. Intel has experienced delays in deploying new manufacturing processes and slow, extended rollouts of new chip designs.

While the company earlier said that it would not have a Chinese event, the San Francisco IDF was still being planned, albeit with a "new format," in the early months of 2017.  It appears now that this "new format" is in fact "non-existence."

Video shot and edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

NEW YORK—Think of Cadillac and what springs to mind? Unfairly or not, you might already be thinking about an older gentleman, sedately cruising behind the wheel. Or, perhaps you imagine an Escalade with windows tinted, massive wheels, and loud speakers. Some of you might even be picturing the CTS-V wagon—one of the Internet's favorite cars to talk about but not ever buy.

But the brand also goes racing, and in 2017 it's having an excellent year. We wanted to hear more about this aspect of Cadillac, so at this year's New York International Auto Show, we met up with factory driver Jordan Taylor and his Cadillac DPi-V.R race car. They came to the showcase fresh from victory on the streets of Long Beach, California.

Enlarge / No more security bulletins for your neighborhood bulletin board. (credit: Randy Heinitz)

The last three Patch Tuesdays haven't been the straightforward affairs we're used to. February's was a big deal because it was delayed and then cancelled outright, with Microsoft never explaining to us why it didn't happen.

Of course, that decision might have had something to do with the unexpected contents of March's Patch Tuesday: that release fixed a bunch of previously undisclosed flaws that were then publicized by Shadow Brokers when the mysterious group published a cache of NSA exploits.

In a change announced last November, Microsoft originally intended to introduce a new system of describing its patches and their respective security fixes this February. That didn't happen in February, and it also didn't happen in March. The bumper crop of fixes referenced above instead used the company's long-standing security bulletin format. But last week's April release did, at last, make the change.