New Footage Captures Drone Crash Over Apple Park

It’s been well over two years since monthly drone updates have been shared online covering the construction progress of Apple’s second campus in California, called Apple Park. Over the weekend, drone videographer Matthew Roberts posted his latest video on YouTube, but instead of covering the newest updates to the campus, the video captured a drone that malfunctioned and crashed over Apple Park.

Roberts said the crashed drone’s operator got in touch with him, asking for help in locating the downed drone on Apple’s new campus and sharing the footage from the crash with Roberts. The drone that crashed is said to be one of DJI’s devices, so the owner was able to review a cached version of the video on the DJI app on their phone/tablet following the incident. “There were no signs of premature failure,” the owner said, and it’s still unclear why the drone malfunctioned.

Roberts eventually discovered the drone crashed among the solar panels on the roof of the main Apple Park building. The drone’s owner has contacted Apple and notified them of the incident, and Roberts said that “it remains to be seen” if Apple will return the drone back to its owner. In the video, it appears that the drone has remained mostly intact following the crash.

In the latest monthly update of Apple Park shared by Roberts earlier in February, the new campus was described as seeing increased activity from employees now that more have moved in, with bicycles appearing throughout parking lots and on walkways. The maintenance facility has also been completed, but Apple is still working on landscaping in a large area located between the main building and Steve Jobs Theater.

Tag: Apple Park
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Elon Musk gets Hyperloop digging permit in Washington, DC

Last year, the internet needled Elon Musk for tweeting he had verbal approval to dig a Hyperloop tunnel in Washington, DC, because officials said they granted no such thing. Now, however, The Boring Company does have an honest-to-gosh written permit, albeit only for some preliminary site preparation and excavation, the Washington Post reports.

The Boring Company is working with an as-yet unnamed firm, possibly Hyperloop One, to build a line between New York City and Washington, DC, with stops at Philadelphia and Baltimore — the “NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop.” The total trip time between DC and NYC would be just 29 minutes, which would obviously revolutionize transportation, as you could work in Manhattan and live in Philly for one-tenth the price.

The permit is for a spot at 53 New York Avenue NE in Washington’s trendy NoMa quarter. A Boring Company spokesperson told the WaPo that “a New York Avenue location, if constructed, could become a station” as part of the Hyperloop network of ultra-high-speed main lines and slower city “loops.”

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Jul 25, 2017 at 11:26pm PDT

Again, this is still early days. “We’re just beginning, in the mayor’s office, our conversation to get an understanding of what the general vision is for Hyperloop,” DC Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s chief of staff, John Falcicchio told the WaPo. So far, Elon Musk has backing from the White House and the state of Maryland, which has already granted utility permits.

As you’re no doubt aware by now, the Hyperloop system uses pods that carry passengers and cars between cities at nearly 800 mph in a tube with a partial vacuum. If the Boring Company proceeds with construction, the first phase would be the Washington, DC to Baltimore line. The spot where Musk got the permit to dig is currently an abandoned lot, but could one day be a bustling transportation hub, albeit not on the scale of DC’s Union Station.

“Stations in a Loop or Hyperloop system are small in size and widely distributed in a network,” a spokesperson said. “[That’s] very different from large-station [terminals] considered for train systems.”

Source: Washington Post

Control Volkswagen’s latest concept car with your voice

Today, Volkswagen debuted a new autonomous concept car called the I.D. Vizzion at the Geneva International Motor Show. The interior of the all-electric car doesn’t reflect that of a traditional vehicle; it’s been completely redesigned. There is no steering wheel and it does not have visible controls. It’s the fourth car in Volkswagen’s I.D. line, which is focused on developing electric car technology.

The idea behind the I.D. Vizzion is to create the comfort of being inside a chaffeured vehicle, leaving the driving up to the autonomous systems. Drivers and riders can interact with the car using their voice thanks to a virtual assistant. The VI can remember the preferences of each person who uses the car and adapt accordingly.

The car uses 111 kWh lithium batteries and has a driving range of 665 km (about 413 miles) when you take into account regenerative braking. The I.D. Vizzion’s top speed is 180 km per hour, or about 111 miles per hour.

Volkswagen has vowed to introduce 20 electric car models by 2025, and the company aims to put I.D. models into production by 2020. It will start with a small, compact car, and will follow that up with an SUV and a larger sedan. It’s not clear when (or if) the Vizzion will be put into production.

Source: Volkswagen

Industrial Design Experts Say HomePod’s White Ring Issue ‘Shouldn’t Be Too Hard to Fix’ for Apple

Last week, Apple confirmed that the HomePod can potentially leave white rings on the surface of wooden furniture with oil or wax finishes. In an effort to help users prevent seeing these rings appear on their own furniture, Apple shared a support document on “Where to place HomePod,” detailing how the interaction between the HomePod’s vibration-dampening silicone base and a wooden surface has the chance to result in a white ring.

Business Insider recently spoke with a few industrial design experts who believe that the problem “shouldn’t be too hard to fix” for Apple.” Gregor Berkowitz, a product development consultant for numerous consumer electronics brands, expects Apple to “re-tool” its HomePod manufacturing process to address the issue with the silicone base, which could take between two to six weeks. Although the fix could take several weeks, the experts said it’s “likely not very costly” for Apple.

Image via Wirecutter
Senior industrial designer at Y Studios, Cesar Viramontes, referred to the white rings issue as something customers will “probably forget about” in the next few months.

Apple may need to “re-tool” the manufacturing process since silicone is manufactured using a different process than the other kinds of elastomer,” said Berkowitz. If that’s necessary, the process could take anywhere from two weeks to six weeks, he noted.

“It’s an issue, but I think it’s probably going to be one that’ll be corrected in the next round of manufacturing,” said Y Studios’ Viramontes. “I think it will be a minor issue, and people will probably forget about it in the next couple of months when it goes away.”

While the experts see a quick fix for the issue coming from Apple, all were surprised it happened in the first place. Product design expert Ignazio Moresco explained that more is expected from Apple’s well-known attention to detail, and the company “should have caught the issue if they followed a rigorous QA process.” The white marks aren’t an Apple-specific problem, but have appeared with other speakers — like Sonos One — that have similar silicone bases.

Berkowitz believes the white rings could be a result of Apple’s “inexperience” with making stationary speakers, in contrast to the company’s familiarity with making mobile products like the iPhone and MacBook.

“This is sitting on a bookshelf. Is it going to work? Or are there going to be problems? A traditional consumer product company or a speaker company or a traditional Hi-Fi company is going to worry about that and think about those problems and have experience with it,” Berkowitz said. “This shouldn’t be new for Apple but it is.”

“They didn’t test the product enough and in the right variety of circumstances, especially considering that a wood surface is a very likely support for the product,” said Ignazio Moresco, a product design expert who has worked at frog design, Microsoft and Ericsson.

For those who have discovered rings on their furniture, Apple said that these marks “will often go away after several days” once HomePod is removed from the wooden surface. Users can hasten this process by wiping the surface gently with a damp or dry cloth. Still, the company explained that if anyone is concerned about these marks, it recommends “placing your HomePod on a different surface.”

Accessory makers are already creating products to act as a fix for the situation, including new leather coasters for HomePod from Pad & Quill. The $19.95 coasters are advertised as letting users place their HomePod on the wooden surfaces that have the potential to be marked by HomePod, without having to worry about the appearance of such marks.

Related Roundup: HomePodBuyer’s Guide: HomePod (Buy Now)
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England turns to the church to help fix rural internet

Though our cities now teem with fiber optic cables and 4G signals, it’s still common for rural areas to struggle with even basic connectivity. In the UK, a new pact between church and state could help local religious hubs become bastions of faster broadband. The National Church Institutions (NCIs) of the Church of England and the government will work together to promote the use of churches and other church-owned properties as sites for digital infrastructure, improving broadband, mobile and WiFi access for rural communities.

Individual dioceses and parishes will continue to make the final call on whether it’s appropriate for the local church spire to host a new 4G mini-mast or not. The NCIs will be responsible for educating decision makers on the benefits better connectivity brings to the community, and how it can provide new ways for the church to communicate with its parishioners. There could be other benefits, too, such as income for the church or an agreement to share the cost of maintaining the buildings that host the infrastructure. The NCIs will also work with providers to draw up a sort of standard contract that should help take some of the administrative strain off the individual parishes.

The government will support the NCIs in all of this, as well as encourage providers to take advantage of these opportunities. While this is a broad initiative, some dioceses had the same bright idea many years ago. As it stands, however, only around 120 churches play host to broadband and mobile infrastructure. In all, the Church of England has over 16,000 buildings in 12,500 parishes, with nearly two-thirds of those situated in rural areas, so there are still plenty of spires to populate.

Off the back of this accord, which could help connect the last few percent to faster services, the government hopes there’s a possibility agreements “could be made with other faith communities that have similar estates.”

Via: Bloomberg

Source: UK government

APFS Bug in macOS High Sierra Can Cause Data Loss When Writing to Disk Images

Apple’s APFS file system included in macOS High Sierra suffers from a disk image vulnerability that in certain circumstances can lead to data loss, according to the creator of Carbon Copy Cloner.

In a blog post last Thursday, software developer Mike Bombich explained that he had uncovered the data writing flaw in the Apple File System, or APFS, through his regular work with “sparse” disk images.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, a sparse disk image is basically a file that macOS mounts on the desktop and treats as if it was a physically attached drive with a classic disk volume structure. The flexibility of sparse disk images means they are commonly used in the course of performing backup and disk cloning operations, hence Bombich’s extensive experience with them.

Earlier this week I noticed that an APFS-formatted sparsebundle disk image volume showed ample free space, despite that the underlying disk was completely full. Curious, I copied a video file to the disk image volume to see what would happen. The whole file copied without error! I opened the file, verified that the video played back start to finish, checksummed the file – as far as I could tell, the file was intact and whole on the disk image. When I unmounted and remounted the disk image, however, the video was corrupted. If you’ve ever lost data, you know the kick-in-the-gut feeling that would have ensued. Thankfully, I was just running some tests and the file that disappeared was just test data.

Two related problems are identified by Bombich, above. The first is that the free space on the APFS-formatted sparse disk image doesn’t update as it should when the free space on the underlying physical host disk is reduced. The second problem is the lack of error reports when write requests fail to dynamically grow the disk image, resulting in data being “written” into a void. Bombich tracks both bugs back to macOS’s background “diskimages-helper” application service, which he has since reported to Apple.

Bombich’s video demonstrating the APFS bug
Every installation of High Sierra converts the existing file system to APFS, which is optimized for modern storage systems like solid-state drives. However, as Bombich notes, ordinary APFS volumes like SSD startup disks are not affected by the problem described above, so the vast majority of users won’t be affected by it – the flaw is most applicable when making backups to network volumes. Bombich says Carbon Copy Cloner will not support AFPS-formatted sparse disk images until Apple resolves the issue.

The APFS flaw follows the discovery of another bug in Apple’s operating systems that received extensive coverage last week. That bug is induced by sending a specific character in the Indian language Telugu, which causes certain apps on iPhones, iPads, and Macs to freeze up and become unresponsive. The Telugu character bug has already been fixed in Apple’s upcoming iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4 software updates.

Related Roundup: macOS High SierraTag: APFS
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Feral Announces ‘Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia’ Coming to Mac

Feral Interactive today announced that epic historical strategy game Thrones of Britannia will be released for macOS “shortly after” the upcoming Windows release on April 19.

Originally developed by Creative Assembly, the game is the first in the new Total War Saga series of standalone titles inspired by great turning points in history.

Thrones of Britannia is set in the British Isles in 878 AD, as Anglo-Saxons, Gaelic clans and Viking settlers vie for supremacy. Players will command one of ten factions, each with a unique branching narrative, and make decisions that reshape history in unexpected ways.

Combining huge real-time battles with engrossing turn-based strategy, Thrones of Britannia challenges players to build and defend a kingdom. Players will forge alliances, manage settlements, raise armies and embark on a campaign of conquest from the snowbound highlands of Gaelic Scotland to the green fields of Anglo-Saxon Kent.

Focusing on a specific historical flashpoint, Thrones diverges from typical Total War fare, and is expected to feature some changes to the series’ standard game mechanics, including variations in building construction and military training to better reflect geographical differences.

No specific release date or system requirements are available yet, but today’s announcement is a good indicator that Feral is aiming to keep pace with new cross-platform releases. Thrones of Britannia can be pre-ordered now for $35.99/£26.99 from the Feral Store or Steam.

Tag: Feral
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How to Add, Remove, and Rearrange Menu Bar Icons in macOS

The macOS menu bar is a great place for quickly accessing system and application functions using menu extras or “menulets”, but it can get cluttered pretty quickly as more and more icons vie for a space there.

If the corner of your Mac’s screen is fast becoming an eyesore, here are some quick and simple actions you can perform to bring order to the chaos, plus a few additional tips for making the most of Apple’s menu bar extras.

How to Rearrange Icons in the Menu Bar

Plenty of menu bar icons offer useful shortcuts to app and system functions, and may take up permanent residence on your screen. But left to their own devices, the arrangement of said icons is likely to become haphazard. Fortunately, re-organizing them is simple, once you know how to do it.

Hold down the Command (⌘) key.
Hover your mouse cursor over the icon you want to move.
Holding down the left mouse button, drag the icon into your preferred position on the menu bar. Other icons will step aside to make space for it.
Let go of the left mouse button.
Note that the Notifications icon in macOS is designed to sit in the far right corner of the menu bar and cannot be moved elsewhere.

How to Remove System Icons From the Menu Bar

Icons linked to system controls can be easily removed from the menu bar in the following way:

Hold down the Command (⌘) key.
Hover your mouse cursor over the icon you want to remove.
Holding down the left mouse button, drag the icon out of the menu bar and onto the desktop.
Let go of the left mouse button.
If the icon doesn’t vanish with a “whoosh” sound, then it was likely put there by a third-party app you or another user installed. In that case, look for an option in the associated app’s settings such as “Show in Menu Bar” and uncheck it.

How to Add System Icons to the Menu Bar

If you removed a system icon from the menu bar and would like it back, or if you’d like to add a fresh one, you can find options in the associated preference panes. For example, to reinstate the AirPlay icon in the menu bar:

Click the apple symbol in the far left of the menu bar and select System Preferences….

Select the Display preference pane.

At the bottom of the pane, check the box to “Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available”.
Similar menu bar options relating to Sound volume, Bluetooth, Siri, Time Machine, and Accessibility status can be found in their respective preference panes. In addition to Wi-Fi status (listed below), the Network pane will also offer “menulet” options for things like modems and VPNs if you have them set up, while menu bar icons related to keyboard, battery, user account, and date/time are located less obviously in the following preference pane menus and tabs:

• Keyboard -> Input Sources -> Show Input menu in menu bar.
• Energy Saver -> Show battery status in menu bar.
• Network -> Wi-Fi -> Show Wi-Fi status in menu bar.
• Users & Groups -> Login Options -> Show fast user switching menu as Full Name / Account Name / Icon.
• Date & Time -> Clock -> Show date and time in menu bar.

Menu Bar Extras

For one reason or another, some menulet options remain hidden in System Preferences by default. Interested users can find the full collection in the System folder: Open a Finder window, from the menu bar select Go -> Go to Folder…, and then navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras.

Some of the extras in this folder are pretty obscure, but one or two might come in handy – like Eject if you use an optical drive, or Ink if you connect a graphics tablet to your Mac, for example. Just double-click any that look useful and they’ll be added to the menu bar. They can be removed just as easily using the Command (⌘) key method described above.

Finally, users looking for a more comprehensive method of managing menu bar icons should consider third-party app Bartender 3 ($15).

Related Roundup: macOS High Sierra
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India inches ahead in the race to build a Hyperloop

Plenty of places have committed to exploring the economic viability of building a Hyperloop, but nobody has been brave enough to say they’ll actually construct one. It’s why the news coming out of India’s latest announcement is such a big deal, because it includes a pledge to build a working test track.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sir Richard Branson announced the partnership between Virgin Hyperloop One and the Indian state of Maharashtra. The deal will see the pair look into developing a high-speed link between the cities of Pune and Mumbai, with the route going via Mumbai International Airport.

At current speeds, it takes around three and a half hours to make the 100-mile journey, either on a train or by car. Hyperloop One believes that it can shrink that journey time down to a slender 25 minutes, as well as dramatically reducing freight times between Mumbai’s port and the inland Pune.

That’s important, since around a quarter of all the freight that passes through Mumbai’s ports has Pune as its destination or place of origin. A Hyperloop that carries freight between the two cities would potentially reduce 25 percent of all the heavy goods traffic on the roads.

New @Virgin @HyperloopOne in India could connect 26 million people, support 150 million passenger trips per year & help create a thriving, competitive megaregion https://t.co/IkYbfIs2yi pic.twitter.com/G4fh2WZ5TY

— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) February 18, 2018

Much like so many other nascent Hyperloop projects, the Mumbai – Pune project will begin with a six-month feasibility study. But, if the numbers come up right, then the state will press ahead to build a test track that will form a segment of the final planned route.

The test track is expected to be built within three years, meaning that India could be running test journeys by 2021. After plenty of further research and development work, and the economics work out, additional sections will be added to the line, which could be fully working as early as 2028.

Plans to build a longer test track as the first segment of a finished Hyperloop route were first floated by co-founder Josh Giegel early last year.

Source: Virgin

Tesla is bringing its home batteries to Canada

Tesla

Tesla is bringing its smart power grids to Canada. Tesla and Nova Scotia Power have agreed to take part in a pilot program, which would use a combination of Tesla’s Powerwall 2 home batteries and utility-grade Powerpack batteries to bolster the reliability of the region’s wind power production, Engadget reported.

The Elmsdale Intelligent Feeder project seeks to make use of excess power created by wind turbines to fill in the gaps of the area’s electrical grid. Whenever one of the area’s wind turbines generates excess power, it will be sent to one of Tesla’s Powerpacks. From there, the power will be distributed to local homes whenever there is an outage or one of the wind turbines fails to produce enough energy.

The test program is partially backed by the Canadian government, and is expected to go live before the end of February and run through 2019. The Tesla batteries will remain regardless of the outcome of the experiment. The decision to expand the program to other parts of the country will largely depend on Nova Scotia power. The company will likely judge the program based on how well it serves the interest of consumers and itself.

Regardless of the success or failure of this project, its initial impact will be rather limited, given the small size of it. Only about 300 homes will be served by Tesla’s smart power grid and, out of those 300, only 10 customers have installed Tesla’s Powerwall 2 home batteries. The other homes will be relying on the Powerpacks to distribute the power in the event of a shortage or an outage.

While the scope of this initial experiment isn’t particularly large, it does signal a growing interest in alternative forms of energy. These products do rely on power produced by traditional energy companies, but they can provide some security against blackouts and other outages.

This also can serve as a useful showcase for Elon Musk’s Tesla power batteries. The company has made gains in the area of electric cars, but many consumers may not be aware of the company’s home batteries. A successful test case in Elmsdale could be just what the company needs to expand the brand’s reach.

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