Latest Tesla Autopilot-related crash occurs in China

Once again, Tesla’s Autopilot driving assist feature is at the center of another car crash, this time due to a collision that occurred on a highway in Beijing. Reuters reports that a Tesla owned by Luo Zhen hit a car parked on the highway shoulder. Both Luo and Tesla confirmed to the news outlet that Autopilot was engaged at the time, and based on Luo’s dashcam footage above, it’s quite clear that his car didn’t react to the parked vehicle. This resulted in the Tesla grazing the side of the car, knocking off a side mirror and scraping up both vehicles.

A Tesla spokesperson informed Reuters that a key problem here is that Luo did not have his hands on the wheel to avoid a situation like this. This is a condition Tesla requires when using Autopilot, and the company has iterated this before. Luo confirmed to Reuters he didn’t have his hands on the wheel and was checking his phone at the time. But he also said the feature was sold to him as a self-driving function.

This is a chief complaint from Luo, and Reuters heard from four other people that Tesla sales staff portrayed the system as fully autonomous. Tesla, as in many times prior, said the feature is a driving assist, and not for completely autonomous driving. Both Reuters and Financial Times suggest the capability of Autopilot may get misconstrued based on how Autopilot is translated, which makes sense. Both sources report the feature is translated as “zidong jihashi,” a term frequently used for airplane autopilot, and Reuters says it also translates to “self-driving.” Zhong Shi, a Beijing automotive analyst, told Financial Times that the term “wuren jihashi” is more commonly used to describe a “self-driving” system, but added that, regardless, China doesn’t have the clearest terminology for autonomous and semi-autonomous automotive tech.

However, even when taking mistranslation out of the equation, organizations have voiced concern about how clearly Tesla explains the capabilities of Autopilot. Following a fatal crash caused by an Autopilot failure, Consumer Reports called on Tesla to change the name of the tech to prevent misconceptions. For its part, Tesla has said that it’s committed to Autopilot even in the face of setbacks.

Related Video:

Via: Automotive News, YouTube

Source: Reuters, FT

Scientists see gene activation in human brain for the first time

When it comes to neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, along with addiction and depression, a certain enzyme has gotten a lot of attention as a major actor in each: histone deacetylases (HDACs). Scientists recently developed a new imaging technique to see them in action, witnessing changes in gene activity in the brain for the first time.

Dysfunction in epigenetics, or alterations in gene expression that affect organism function, is responsible for many neurological disorders, including those above. Scientists know HDACs are involved in changing those expressions, but lack specific information.. To study the difference in the molecules’ activity in healthy brains versus the afflicted, researchers spent seven years creating a compound, [11C]Martinostat, that would help examine them at work in the brain.

As they explain in their paper released in Science Translational Medicine, the scientists had deployed their compound in rats and primates, but this first group of eight subjects would be its first human test. Martinostat successfully attached to the HDACs, allowing the scientists to track the molecules using PET scans of the subjects’ brains. This showed the researchers where the molecules are in the brain — and the results were surprising, says The Verge.

The HDAC levels were high in the cerebellum, which controls motor functions, and much lower in white matter, the amygdala and the hippocampus. More shocking was the consistency in these assortments between patients, who all had more or less the same amount of the molecule in the same places in the brain, an intriguing connection between the HDACs and gene expressions related to neurological disease.

But it’s still a first step: this version of Martinostat only binds with three of the eleven known HDAC types, leaving the activity of the absent eight uncertain. In addition, it’s unknown how the molecule itself changes its way of affecting gene expression as humans age, if at all.

Via: The Verge

Source: Science Translational Medicine

There’s something weird going on beyond Neptune

Past Neptune, in the outer solar system, astronomers have recently discovered a new mystery object orbiting the sun on a plane nearly perpendicular to the rest of the planets. Adding to the weirdness, the trans-Neptunian object, which has been nicknamed “Niku,” is also spinning around the sun backwards, in the opposite direction of the rest of the planets. So far, astronomers have little idea what could cause such abnormal celestial behavior.

Planetary systems are defined by the flat plane of dust and gas that forms around a star. Thanks to angular momentum, all of the object circle around the sun in the same direction. But as the astronomers who discovered Niku using the Pan-STARRS telescope on Haleakala, Maui noticed, the object is currently above the plane of the solar system and moving upwards. That means some other force must have acted upon the object in order to set it on this path.

“It suggests that there’s more going on in the outer solar system than we’re fully aware of,” Matthew Holman, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center told The New Scientist. Although Holman’s team initially thought the other mysterious object beyond Neptune, Planet Nine might have influenced Niku’s orbit, further analysis showed Niku is too close for any possible Planet Nine to have an impact. The team did, however, discover that Niku, which is estimated to be less than 200 kilometers in diameter, is actually a part of a group of objects, all of which are circling the sun backwards on the same 110-degree plane.

Although this data is all just hinting towards some unknown conclusion for now, Konstantin Batygin, one of the researchers who first theorized about a Planet Nine, is excited by the new trans-Neptunian object. “Whenever you have some feature that you can’t explain in the outer solar system,” Batygin told the New Scientist, “it’s immensely exciting because it’s in some sense foreshadowing a new development.”

Canadian court ruling on SMS privacy means you shouldn’t be using SMS

Having nothing to hide doesn’t mean you should ignore your privacy. Especially when keeping messages secure and private is so easy.

An Ontario Court of Appeals has ruled that your SMS messages are not private and once “sent to the ether” are no longer under your control. Vice has a full write up about the decision that interested parties should read, but the short version is this: SMS messages are like email and not subject to the same protection that voice calls have. They aren’t a private conversation, and you shouldn’t keep thinking they are private.

An Ontario Court of Appeals has ruled that your SMS messages are not private and once “sent to the ether” are no longer under your control.

This has some far-reaching implications for some folks, while others won’t care because they “have nothing to hide” or don’t care what happens in a Canadian court. But we all should be concerned, and now is a perfect time for you and the people you talk with to switch to something else. Preferably something that’s cross-platform and offers encryption. I’ve got nothing to hide either, but I still expect and demand a little bit of privacy.

We don’t have the perfect suggestion for a messenger app. Different people will want different things, after all. But we do know there are more than a handful of cross-platform (iOS and Android, sometimes Windows as well) messenger apps that can be used to keep private conversations private regardless of what a judge thinks. WhatsApp comes to mind, as does Signal or Telegram.

We should all be concerned about this ruling, and now is a perfect time for you and the people you talk with to switch to another form of messaging.

If you’re the go-to person for all things tech in your circle of family and friends, have a look and see what you like and would recommend. If you’re not, point them here.

Stay safe. And stay private.

Dlodlo V1 is a VR headset that doesn’t look like a headset at all

Finally! A virtual reality headset that won’t take over your whole head nor kill your neck after five minutes of use.

Chinese VR startup Dlodlo plans to offer a $559 headset this October called the V1 headset. It looks like a thick pair of goggles rather than a massive headset. It’s definitely got a slimmer profile than the Rift or Vive. It weighs 88g, whereas the Vive is over 500g, and it has a 1200 x 1200-pixel screen for each eye (105-degree field of view), making it more high-res than both than the Rift and Vive.

The V1 doesn’t have any built-in processing power, so it must connect to a PC or an iPhone-like device called the D1, meaning the whole setup can squeeze into a small bag and be used while on the go. It can supposedly deliver a decent experience with minimal juddering and a crisp screen. Demos include one where you can shoot from a pirate ship and 360-degree shots of tourist spots.

The D1 will be sold separately from the headset (the price is an unknown for now), and it runs software called Dlodlo OS, which is based on Android 5.0 Lollipop. It will also feature its own app store that’ll include 139 3D movies and 76 “independent sports, action adventure, and shooting games”. To interact with the game, you’ll need a standard game controller. There’s no integrated gamepad like Google’s Daydream remote.

Keep in mind this is first-generation stuff. The games and film catalogue should improve over time, and Dlodlo suggested you’ll be able to connect the V1 to iOS or Android devices at some point down the road to presumably run more apps.

Dlodlo

This ring lets you feel your loved one’s heartbeat in real time

If you buy your partner TheTouch’s HB ring, you’ll always know if he or she is alive and well – no matter where they are.

The HB ring works like this: as long as you’re wearing the ring, and your partner is wearing one too, you’ll both be able to feel and see each other’s heartbeat in real time through the rings themselves, which can be made of sapphire or rose gold, thanks to a built-in heart-rate sensor.

Most wearables come with a heart-rate sensor, but these rings are unique because they not only detect your pulse but also instantly broadcast it with lights and vibrations to another paired ring anywhere in the world. They work with a companion iOS and Android app and sync via Bluetooth. 

The whole idea is that you’ll always feel connected to your loved one. It’s kind of creepy, but also romantic, if you’re into this sort of thing (and can afford it). These rings cost $599 a pair at the low end, but the more expensive rose gold versions retail at $2,990 for two. Ouch.

“HB Ring is simply great for people who are deeply in love,” TheTouch’s website explained, while also noting that the rings can also come in handy when it comes to tracking loved ones. “[It] can be also a very useful tool for people in dangerous professions such as the military, police and etc., whose lives are daily in danger, allowing their close ones to worry less, without disturbing them.

Let’s just hope your loved one’s battery never dies, because then you’ll have a mini heart-attack too. The rings are currently available for preorder and should start shipping in 2017.

Cassini spacecraft finds flooded canyons on Saturn’s moon Titan 

It’s official: Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has canyons that are flooded with liquid. Well, liquid hydrocarbons, anyway: Scientists analyzed images from a flyby of the Ligeia Mare sea of methane that the spacecraft did in 2013 and found channels branching out from it. Some of these were narrow and deep but it wasn’t until further examination that they confirmed the steep troughs were carved out by liquid.

In previous flybys, NASA scientists used Cassini’s radar as an imager to peer through the thick haze covering the surface of Titan. But in 2013, they used it as an altimeter to measure the depth of geological features around Ligeia Mare. The spacecraft’s signals reflected off the canyon floors in unique ways, glinting like the bottom of the moon’s methane seas, indicating a surface smoothed by liquid. Scientists counted the seconds it took radar pings (demonstrated in the GIF below) to get back to the spacecraft and estimated the channels’ depths to range from 790 to 1,870 feet below sea level.

Such deep cuts in the surface imply either a long-running process or that the canyon geography was worn down much more quickly than others on Titan. In a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters studying the image analysis, researchers gave Earthly comparisons to the competing theories about what cut the Saturn moon’s channels. In an uplift powering erosion, rising terrain altitude sent water punching deeply down, creating the Grand Canyon. Variations in the water level, like those creating Lake Powell, increase the river’s rate of erosion.

Though Cassini is currently making its last pass around Titan before it concludes its 20-year journey in Saturn’s atmosphere in September 2017, researchers will likely apply this imagery-and-depth radar combination to analyze other channels leading out of the Ligeia Mare sea.

Source: NASA

Sex toy sends intimate data to its creator

Connected sex toys that track your habits can be helpful, but at least one of them is a little too willing to transmit your personal data. Presenters at Def Con have revealed that at least one toy, the We-Vibe 4 Plus, regularly shares sensitive info with its creators at Standard Innovations Corporation. The couple-oriented vibrator sends its temperature to the manufacturer every minute, and reports whenever you change the vibration level. While it’s not calling you out by name, it wouldn’t take much to piece together details you probably don’t want to share beyond your partner, such as when you climax and what it takes to get there.

As our columnist Violet Blue learned at Def Con, it’s not helped by SIC’s vague policies on how it handles your data. The policy you get in the necessary app covers information from the website, and there aren’t any notices to tell you where that data is going and why.

SIC tells Fusion that it collects the vibration information for “market research” to determine which settings are the most effective, and temperature for “hardware diagnostic purposes.” It’s probably not selling your sex life to the highest bidder, and the company adds that it’s “in the process of reviewing” its data collection policy to improve transparency. Until then, though, it’s hard to know whether or not that data stays entirely within the company, and whether that data is sufficiently anonymized and protected. Whatever is the case, this is a reminder to think carefully about sex toys — if you’re not comfortable with the idea of someone else knowing about your behavior, you might want to stick to offline pleasure gear.

Via: Fusion

Source: DEF CON