Elon Musk posts pics of huge Falcon Heavy rocket ahead of debut launch

Launching and landing a rocket would’ve seemed like a fanciful idea just a few years ago, but companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have shown how it’s done as they work to develop their separate reusable rocket systems.

Having pretty much perfected the procedure with the Falcon 9, SpaceX is getting ready to take its technology to the next level with the debut launch in January of what will be the world’s most powerful operational rocket.

The man who made it all possible, SpaceX CEO and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, on Wednesday tweeted several shots of the massive Falcon Heavy rocket as it awaits its big day in a hangar at Cape Canaveral in Florida. When it lifts off next month, it’ll be from the very same launchpad that marked the start of the famous Apollo 11 mission that put the first astronauts on the moon in 1969.

Falcon Heavy at the Cape pic.twitter.com/hizfDVsU7X

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2017

SpaceX’s 70-meter-high reusable rocket comprises three booster cores compared to the single one used by its current Falcon 9 rocket, with each core containing nine Merlin engines. With all that power, it’s little surprise that its thrust at lift-off will be twice that of the next largest rocket and equal to about eighteen 747 aircraft.

It has enough power to lift into orbit more than 54 metric tons (119,000 pounds), a mass “equivalent to a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage,” the company says on its website.

While future Falcon Heavy missions are expected to involve delivering payloads to space as well as manned missions to the moon and beyond, the maiden voyage, which is heading to Mars, is taking with it a somewhat offbeat cargo: Musk’s own cherry-red Tesla Roadster. And if that wasn’t bizarre enough, it’ll be playing David Bowie’s 1969 classic Space Oddity as it heads toward the red planet, powered by the Heavy’s second-stage engines.

Teaser

Earlier this year, Musk posted a teaser showing how the Falcon Heavy launch might look when it takes place in a matter of weeks. The animation shows the rocket going through various separation steps soon after launch, and ends with its booster cores landing back on Earth.

But whereas the animation shows the boosters landing on terra firma within a short distance of each other, Musk confirmed this week that “if things go perfectly,” the two side cores will return to land while the central core will come down on SpaceX’s drone ship, which has already successfully handled plenty of Falcon 9 landings.

But the SpaceX CEO isn’t getting carried away with all the excitement surrounding the imminent Falcon Heavy launch, pointing out earlier this year that a lot “can go wrong” with the enormous rocket during its initial, highly complicated missions. In other words, don’t be surprised if it ends up in an updated version of Musk’s blooper video.

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The first 5G spec has been approved

Carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are pushing for the implementation of 5G by 2019. Yet, despite the flurry of 5G pilot announcements and spectrum purchases, none of them really know what they’ll be working with. But, that’s about to change, as the 3GPP (the organization that oversees cellular standards) has agreed on the specification for Non-Standalone 5G NR (New Radio) at a meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, reports Fierce Wireless.

Armed with the specs, suppliers and hardware manufacturers will be able to bring real (not faux) 5G to consumers. The completed specs will encompass support for low-frequency (600MHz, 700MHz), mid-range (3.5GHz) and high-frequency (50GHz) spectrum. We should have a better grasp on the precise details for 5G once they’re published later this week.

Getting these standards finalized before the end of the year was the mission of carriers, such as AT&T. Facilitating the approval, means that chip-makers can start developing the silicon-based parts that will work with 5G networks. Next up, the 3GPP members will try to pin down the specs for what will eventually be the replacement for 4G LTE: Standalone 5G.

Source: Fierce Wireless

Listen to a 1950s era computer sing ‘Jingle Bells’

Here’s a new version of Jingle Bells you won’t hear played in malls, and it’s courtesy of one of the oldest computers in history. Turing archive director Jack Copeland and composer Jason Long have recreated Ferranti Mark 1’s Christmas performance for the BBC back in 1951. During that broadcast, the first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer (housed at Alan Turing’s Computing Machine Laboratory) performed several melodies created using the sounds it used to emit.

While three of the songs were recorded, its rendition of Jingle Bells and Good King Wenceslas weren’t. Thankfully, one of the engineers present during the event saved a copy of the recording, and that’s what Long and Copeland used to recreate the missing Christmas tunes.

They started by manually cutting up the audio to get access to the 152 individual computer-generated notes in the recording. However, those notes still weren’t enough for the songs they wanted to create, so they manufactured new sounds by calculating the closest frequency that the Ferranti computer could generate. There were times when they had to settle for the closest ones, since they couldn’t always get the right notes.

They also had to stretch or squish some of the notes they extracted from the recording to be able to get the right sound, use different specimens of the same note to make the finished product sound more like a song and less like a machine gun, among other things. It wasn’t a straightforward process at all, but in the end, they achieved something unique — Christmas carols that sound like they were crossed with The Imperial March.

Check out Mark 1’s Jingle Bells below:

Via: Atlas Obscura

Source: British Library

Walmart is testing personal shopping and cashier-free stores

Walmart’s quest to counter Amazon at every turn has taken its next logical step: helping you avoid as much human interaction as possible. Recode has learned that Walmart has started testing a pair of services that cut the usual retail staff out of the equation. The first, from a new Code Eight subsidiary, is a personal shopping service for the “high net worth urban consumer” that uses text messages to get recommendations and make purchases — you can even send a photo to show what you want. Send some texts and you’ll get typical household items in 24 hours, and anything else within 2 business days. There would eventually be a membership fee, although testers are using it at no cost.

The other test, from Walmart’s Store No. 8 incubator, may be more ambitious. Project Kepler, as it’s called, would use computer vision and other technologies to eliminate the need for cashiers, similar to Amazon Go. While the exact details haven’t been mentioned, it would reportedly share Amazon’s use of cameras and sensors to automatically charge you when you pull an item off the shelf.

Walmart isn’t commenting, and it’s not certain how far along either project might be. Amazon Go still isn’t public (it has problems with crowds), and we wouldn’t be surprised if Walmart has plenty of issues to solve as well.

The personal shopping feature is slightly odd for Walmart — if you’re the sort who can afford a personal shopper, you’re probably more interested in fetching luxury goods. However, this and the cashier-free research make sense in light of Walmart’s competition with Amazon. And like it or not, this also hints that the days of human staffing might be numbered. If Walmart can run cashier-free stores with maintenance robots handling the remaining work, there would be very little need for fleshy employees.

Source: Recode

Facebook swaps fake article flags for fact-checked links

After getting dragged around the time of the general election, Facebook has spent much of this year taking steps to combat the spread of misinformation on its site. Transparency has been a staple of its mission, and so it’s kept the public up to date with all the features and experiments it’s juggling. One of these is the disputed flags stamped on articles identified as false — first spotted back in March. But, it seems the feature isn’t working as Facebook would’ve liked, which means it has to go. In a new post, the company claims it is ditching disputed flags in favor of an improved version of its related articles feature, which it originally began testing in April.

Seeing as fake news has become a rallying cry in itself, some people just don’t buy the company’s label (even if it comes by way of two third-party fact checkers). As evidence, Facebook points to a 2012 academic study (co-authored by researchers from the University of West Australia and University of Michigan) that suggests a strong image — like a red flag — next to an article may entrench held beliefs, instead of debunking them. Why it didn’t consult the study in the first place is a mystery.

Facebook boils down the feature’s failure to four factors: it was overly complicated for users, it didn’t always have the intended end result, it took too long to implement worldwide, and was too stringent in its labelling. In comparison, the addition of related articles below a hoax resulted in less people sharing it, although click-throughs remained unchanged.

The social network has other (more successful) tools in its arsenal as well. Burying bogus items at the bottom of the News Feed typically results in the demoted info losing 80 percent of traffic, according to Facebook. As reports have shown, fake news is big business for elaborate troll farms in Russia and parts of Europe. Butchering their reach gives the nefarious folks behind the misinformation less of a financial incentive to create it, adds the company.

Source: Facebook Newsroom, Facebook Design (Medium)

CEO suspects foul play after bitcoin cash value soars prior to Coinbase trading

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said on Wednesday, December 20, that the company will conduct a full investigation into the inflated price of bitcoin cash (BCH). The digital currency’s value increased on other markets prior to Coinbase’s announcement to offer the new Bitcoin variant. Armstrong said all employees and contractors found responsible for inflating the value will find themselves unemployed and facing legal action.

Coinbase is a digital currency exchange located in San Francisco. Launched in 2012, the company provides a secure online platform for buying, selling, and trading digital currencies including bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin. The company opened its doors to bitcoin cash trading on Tuesday, December 19, but the currency’s skyrocketing pre-Coinbase launch value indicated that someone related to the online exchange spilled the beans early to make a profit.

“The policy prohibits employees and contractors from trading on ‘material non-public information,’ such as when a new asset will be added to our platform,” he said. “In addition to trading restrictions, it prohibits communication of material non-public information outside the company. This includes to friends and family.”

For an entire month, all Coinbase employees and contractors knew about the impending bitcoin cash launch. All parties with knowledge of the event were prohibited from disclosing the information, and from trading bitcoin cash. By last Friday, Armstrong had conducted Q&A sessions and distributed emails regarding the dos and don’ts prior to the bitcoin cash announcement.

Bitcoin cash is an “improved” version of bitcoin that emerged in August. It’s a peer-to-peer platform for delivering money that is fully decentralized, meaning no banks or third parties are involved. What makes it different than bitcoin is that it has “upgraded consensus rules,” enabling the digital currency to “grow and scale.” Due to its technological roots, bitcoin simply stopped growing, thus bitcoin cash was born.

Coinbase pulled the plug just four minutes after opening its doors to bitcoin cash trading due to inflated values spotted on other markets. According to reports, a single bitcoin cash coin was valued at $3,500 when Coinbase opened trading, but had already skyrocketed to $8,500 per coin once Coinbase suspended trading. Immediate speculation pointed to software glitches, but the timing of the inflation indicates a possible information leak.

“Given the price increase in the hours leading up the announcement, we will be conducting an investigation into this matter,” Armstrong added. “Our goal is to make Coinbase the most trusted and easiest to use digital currency exchange. We will only accomplish this goal by ensuring that we (the employees and contractors at Coinbase) all hold ourselves to a high standard of conduct.”

Coinbase re-opened trading at 9 a.m. PT on Wednesday for exactly one hour to “establish liquidity.” By 11 a.m., the company re-opened trading and said it would halt the service if “significant volatility” is observed.

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LG’s three new cutting-edge Nano IPS monitors will wow your eyeballs

Ahead of CES 2018, LG has given us a sneak peek of a few upcoming monitors — all of which feature cutting-edge technology to deliver imagery with unparalleled detail and fidelity. The trick behind these high-quality HDR displays is in a technology LG calls Nano IPS.

By applying nanometer-sized particles to the display panels themselves, LG claims their displays will absorb excess light wavelengths and deliver stunning picture quality. On top of that, each of these monitors will feature support for Thunderbolt 3 and HDR 600.

LG 32UK950

The first of LG’s 2018 monitor lineup is a 32-inch, UHD 4K monitor. It’s not unlike the recent LG 32UD99, but this one has a few new tricks up its sleeves. First off, it will be the first display to offer LG’s aforementioned, Nano IPS technology. By enhancing the intensity and purity of on-screen colors, LG claims this monitor will be able to deliver a more accurate and lifelike viewing experience. According to LG, the 32UK950 can display 98 percent of the DCI-P3 color space, putting it in league with the kinds of displays used to master Hollywood films.

The LG 32UK950 also features razor-slim bezels thanks to a 4-Side Edge Borderless design and a built-in Thunderbolt 3 dock. That means you can plug in a Thunderbolt 3-compatible laptop like a MacBook Pro 15 to charge your computer over the same cable used to plug into the monitor.

5G gets closer to reality as initial standard is finalized

5G is a little bit closer to being the real deal.

We keep hearing about the impending launch of 5G, but the reality is that the reported 2019 launch is still quite far away. In the meantime, work continues behind the scenes to ensure that, when carriers and phone manufacturers are ready to roll it out, they know exactly what they’re working with.

To that end, a 5G milestone was hit today at the 3GPP RAN Plenary meeting in Lisbon, Portugal where all the companies involved in creating mobile standards get together and party soberly discuss the future of our mobile universe. While the so-called 5G NR (New Radio) standard was already formed, today’s meeting — largely led by Qualcomm, which has been pushing to accelerate the rollout of 5G — finalized it, putting a line in the sand on what it deems Non-Standalone 5G NR, which will rely on existing LTE core networks to function.

NSA 5G NR specs were approved today at RAN#78. Balazs Bertenyi , RAN Chair called it “an Impressive achievement in a remarkably short time, with credit due particularly to the Working Groups”. News article to follow on the 3GPP site and from 3GPP Member announcements. pic.twitter.com/b10fTV5V5n

— 3GPP Live (@3GPPLive) December 20, 2017

NSA 5G will be the wireless standard’s initial form when it launches in 2019, leveraging mature LTE networks for much of the backbone and utilizing sub-6GHz 5G for additional capacity where necessary. Because 5G’s initial focus will be on facilitating enormous amounts of data backhaul, NSA 5G omits calling and other aspects of the 3G and 4G LTE spec we take for granted today.

Standalone 5G (SA), which the 3GPP expects to finalize by next summer, will eventually be the replacement for 4G LTE, though according to Qualcomm, “NSA and SA 5G NR will share common physical layer specifications for the air interface” and won’t require enormous additional investment by carrier partners.

So why should you get excited about 5G today? Mainly because data usage in many parts of the world is going way up, especially with the proliferation of video services, and even in its infancy will offer fast speeds of between 1Gbps and 5Gbps, plus much lower latency than current 4G LTE networks, at fractional costs to wireless carriers. While carriers will, of course, need to monetize 5G — they are businesses, after all — it’s possible that unlimited plans will be truly unlimited, at costs considerably lower than what we’re paying today.

Carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T have already spent billions of dollars purchasing potential 5G spectrum to spur growth in the sub-6GHz and so-called mmWave (24GHz and above), and have plans to launch 5G networks for both mobile and fixed wireless customers.

Until then, there’s always fake 5G.

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NSA surveillance reauthorization bill won’t go to a vote just yet

House Republicans’ plans to vote on a bill reauthorizing and expanding the NSA’s data surveillance have been put on ice, at least for a while. Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes has informed the media that the vote to extend FISA Section 702, which lets the NSA and FBI collect online communications of foreign targets from US companies, won’t happen “for now.” Just what will happen next isn’t clear — the choice is “above my pay grade,” Nunes said. Approval could fold into a necessary government spending bill, but that doesn’t seem as likely when there are serious challenges to the bill within the Republican party.

While the Senate has only demanded that the FBI require a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling (which is fairly easy to obtain) to clear requests for data about US residents, the House proposal would ask the agency to obtain a court order for any criminal cases. Something has to give if both sides of Congress are going to reconcile the bills, and there isn’t enough support to make that happen at this stage.

If the surveillance reauthorization doesn’t get a vote in some form, Section 702 will officially expire at the end of 2017. That may not mean the end to the program when the White House believes it could technically run until April, but it does leave the surveillance approach in a gray area. As it stands, April still doesn’t provide a lot of time to negotiate a compromise, especially if either side of Congress needs to go back to the drawing board. That’s good news for privacy advocates who believe the program is a gross overreach, but it certainly won’t make the intelligence community happy.

Source: Washington Post