That’s a fitting title, as we’ve reached that time of year where TV startups are going to be popping up all over. In fact, two of fall’s best arrive Tuesday, as Atlanta (FX, 10 ET/PT) and Queen Sugar (OWN, 10 ET/PT) – both reviewed elsewhere – begin their weekly cable runs. For fans of streaming, however, and of Emmy-winner Martin Freeman, the place to be is Crackle, which launches this new 10-part series starring Freeman as an unscrupulous FBI agent determined to take down a new digital-currency company.
9/11 Inside the Pentagon PBS, 8 ET/PT
There have been a number of documentaries about the 9/11 attacks, but most of them have focused on the destruction of the World Trade Center. This special takes a different approach, looking instead at the attack on the Pentagon. Along with first-person accounts, PBS says, the program includes rarely seen Department of Defense footage from inside the building.
Zoo CBS, 9 ET/PT
With all these new fall shows on the way, obviously summer series have to get out of the way. Tonight, that means the season finale of Difficult People (Hulu), ABC’s Bachelor in Paradise (8 ET/PT) and Mistresses (10 ET/PT), and Zoo, which wraps up with a two-hour finale. The show has already been renewed for a third summer, so don’t expect that wrap-up to be conclusive.
A little over three years ago, the Popslate presented an intriguing idea: What if a case could turn the back of your phone into an E Ink display? Like a lot of first-generation, crowdsourced products, the original didn’t quite live up to the promise. Popslate 2, though, looks like a very promising course correction.
The original Popslate, which finally materialized last spring, worked as advertised. Its limitations, though, made it difficult to justify as an everyday case. It charged with a different cable than the iPhone 6 it was designed to fit, and at launch only displayed still images pushed from an app on the front of the phone. It eventually used IFTTT to prompt screen updates without manual intervention, but even that required a little bit more digital elbow grease–and a little less functionality–than might justify the added bulk and expense.
Popslate 2 doesn’t just promise to address these issues; it actively adds plenty of functionality as well. It’s an evolution, not merely refinement.
To start, Popslate 2 not only ditched microUSB for the Apple-preferred Lightning cable, the case itself provides a backup battery that can add up to nine hours of talk time (or four hours of browsing) to your iPhone. It manages to do so while still reducing the thickness versus the original Popslate by nearly half. The display itself has improved, as well. Still “shatterproof,” it’s now 200 dpi versus the previous version’s 115, and has a pleasant-looking curve to it.
There’s also an easy way to navigate the latest Popslate on the display itself. Three capacitive touch buttons at the bottom of the display let you switch between apps and scroll through content.
More important than the hardware upgrades, though, are the software smarts Popslate has added. Rather than lean on static images and clumsy IFTTT integration, Popslate now pulls directly from a handful of useful apps to maintain a dynamic display. You still need to download and use the Popslate app to customize your black-and-white rear display, but your options have expanded.
“We are leveraging sources with APIs and pulling that content straight into the Popslate app,” says co-founder Greg Moon. “Planned integrations for launch are: NYT, Twitter, Accuweather, and Google Calendar. We are also putting together partnerships around sports and stocks, which likely will also be part of the launch.”
Moon says the company determined what apps and areas to focus on based on people’s IFTTT usage on the original Popslate. In addition to the news, weather, and social functions it has already has–and the sports and stocks to come–you can expect to see wearable and IoT data apps at some point as well. Popslate 2 also comes with a Wallet function that lets you display items with bar or QR codes, like boarding passes or concert tickets.
That’s not to say everything is perfect. While the ideal app might seem to be Kindle–reading E Ink beats reading on an LCD display any day–you won’t find Amazon’s e-reading software here. You can use Popslate 2 as an e-reader, but currently only through Project Gutenberg, a free e-book resource whose catalog features mostly public domain classics. While Moon wouldn’t confirm if there were plans for Kindle down the road, he’s confident that the e-book selection will expand.
“We are also in discussions with additional e-book providers,” says Moon. “Unfortunately we can’t disclose the parties at present for confidentiality purposes. As a result, our e-book sources and supported formats (including EPUB) will expand substantially after launch.”
The “after launch” part is the other small cause for concern. Like its forebear, Popslate 2 is a crowdfunded project. But while it’s generally healthy to be skeptical of Indiegogo concepts, the fact that the Popslate team has already delivered once offers at least some confidence in the second generation. It’s expected to ship this July, at a cost of $149 (or $69 for early backers).
A second E Ink display isn’t a new idea; a company called Yotaphone has even built one into the handset itself. But if Popslate 2 delivers the improvements it’s promising, it will have made a pretty good product pretty great.
Over the past few months, I’ve watched as five of my friends turned in high profile jobs for new directions. In the past, the ritual of “moving on” would have been done discreetly, behind closed doors, and whispered among close friends. But the power of social media, combined with the changing dynamics of work, gave each of them the freedom and power to embrace the newly emerging trend of the Personal Pivot. Each of their stories is different as you might expect, but they share some themes that I suspect will be valuable to explore.
So first, the stories of Robert Scoble, Stephanie Agresta, Bonin Bough, Rob Barnett and Sree Sreenivasan.
Robert Scoble, after seven years as the Futurist at Rackspace, announced to his 5,000 Facebook friends and his blog readership that he was heading out on his own. His passion for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality had convinced him that he’d seen the future of technology. He got a spot as an Entrepreneur in Residence at UploadVR and explained rather publicly about the complexity of piecing together a financial base as an independent. He’s now traveling the world, speaking and learning, and working on his next book with his writing partner Shel Israel.
Stephanie Agresta was global social media and digital leader at MSLGroup – a high-powered PR executive who was spending her life on airplanes. PRWeek named her #6 among digital creators in public relations and Business Insider called her one of the top 25 advertising executives on Twitter. But here too, the power of her personal brand and her network gave her the freedom to launch her own company. Now she’s working with startups and innovative entrepreneurs, closer to the companies where her experience can make a meaningful difference in their rapid growth.
Bonin Bough was the chief media and e-commerce officer at Mondelez, the global snack company. After four years at the Kraft spin-off, and years before that at Pepsi – Bough’s drive was focused on startups and innovation. With a book about to be published, and television show with LeBron James called the “Cleveland Hustle” about to have it’s premiere on CNBC – Bough turned in his corporate lifestyle for a job closer to his passions and his beliefs. And he’s just released the book “Txt Me: Your Phone Has Changed Your Life. Let’s Talk About It”
Rob Barnett has been in the media and entertainment business his whole career. In 2006, long before anyone talked about web video or ‘over the top’ channels, he launched My Damn Channel to give talented creators more control over the way they got to make content. Now he’s launching his talent and client focused business with Rob Barnett Media. Sree Sreenivasan was for three years the Chief Digital Officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When that gig came to an end, he shared his job search in a very public way and even went to so far as to publish a page where friends could suggest what gig Sree 3.0 should be looking for. Then, he announced he’d been named New York’s Chief Digital Officer.
While each of their situations is different – there’s a pattern in each of their situations that make for some useful rules that anyone can deploy.
The Five Elements of a Personal Pivot:
Your Network Is Your Most Valuable Asset
Share Passion – Early And Often
Be Humble About Who You Are
Be Honest About What You Need
Be Open To Others, And Their Needs
So, here’s how the Personal Pivot works –
Your Network Is Your Most Valuable Asset. You’re friends and followers are the connecting points to your next potential gig, and their network can be activated to help you find new opportunities, new relationships, and new contacts. So don’t forget you need to be willing to reach out and ask your network to advocate for you – and at the same time always be willing to do the same for anyone in your network. An active network works two ways.
Share Passion – Early And Often. It’s really not possible to overshare within your network, as long as what you’re sharing is relevant to your brand. But putting yourself out there, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook Live, Periscope, and fast growing networks like SnapChat and Musical.ly. In a world with content becoming more nitchified and fractured – you might think that tweeting a comment once is enough – but it’s not. You can fire off the same tweet four times in a day and have little risk of oversharing.
Be Humble About Who You Are. While sharing is critical – it’s also important that you don’t turn sharing into bragging. It’s easy to make your social sharing about what you’ve done, rather than engaging in a conversation with your friends and followers. So rather than pitching yourself, use your engagement with your community to ask questions, get feedback, and share observations.
Be Honest About What You Need. If you’re thinking about joining startup boards, or mentoring young CEO’s, or working with emerging clients – then make sure to let people know what you’re thinking. You can’t get introductions, connections, leads or opportunities if you’re community doesn’t know what you’re looking for.
Be Open To Others And Their Needs. Asking your friends and followers what you can do for them – who they need to be introduced to, and what kinds of support and feedback they need is a great way to build a connection and put some credits in the favor bank.
The new connected world we live in gives you the power to share. Sharing your career goals, and engaging with your friends to help them, is a new behavior. It wasn’t long ago that these kinds of pursuits were kept private. But as I’m learning from watching my friends – being open and honest can be the most effective way to find opportunities. So don’t worry that sharing your next step will turn people off. Far from it – being open and honest in the new world of the Personal Pivot is the surest way to turn people on.
Request for Information (RFI) for the provision of the payload module for the joint ESA-China SMILE mission
18 December 2015
The European Space Agency invites European industry from ESA Member States to declare their interest for the provision of the payload module for the joint ESA-China SMILE mission by replying to this Request For Information (RFI). The submission deadline for the response to this RFI is 29 January 2016, 12:00 CET (noon).
Direct link to this RFI web page: http://sci.esa.int/SMILE-RFI
The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) is a joint mission between ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) with a planned launch date in 2022. The mission aims at increasing our understanding of the connection between the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s magnetosphere by looking at the nose and polar cusps of the magnetosphere and the aurorae at the North Pole while simultaneously monitoring the in situ plasma environment.
The mission was selected by the Science Programme Committee (SPC) in November 2015 within the ESA Science Programme as the first joint mission with the Chinese Academy for Sciences for a nominal launch in 2022. The payload is provided and funded by consortia from a number of ESA Member States and China. ESA and CAS are jointly the Mission Architect.
The total space segment consists of a Propulsion Module (PM) and Service Module (SVM) provided by CAS, and a Payload Module (PLM) containing all the instruments, the PLM Control Unit and X-band communication system provided by ESA. The launch of the complete space segment will be under ESA responsibility. CAS will be in charge of the Mission Operations Centre, with a possible ESA contribution (e.g. ground station), and both ESA and CAS will participate in the Science Operations Centre.
The objective of the present Request For Information (RFI) is to collect preliminary information from potential providers in ESA Member States, in preparation for the corresponding Invitation to Tender planned in 2016. The payload module procurement would be based on a design-to-cost approach featuring low risks and a reliable development schedule.
DOCUMENTATION
The RFI documentation package can be downloaded from the dedicated section in the right-hand menu. The package includes:
• The RFI for the provision of the payload module for the SMILE mission
• Payload Module Requirements Document (PLMRD)
• Four Instrument Interface Control Documents (summary)
• Space-to-Ground Interface Control Document (summary)
• Environmental Specifications (ES)
• Science Requirements Document (SciRD)
• Payload Definition Document (PDD)
• Mission Analysis Guidelines (MAG)
• Summary of the Internal Final Presentation of the SMILE CDF study (IFP)
INFORMATION DELIVERY
The information package in response to this RFI shall be sent by e-mail to the following addresses:
Silicon Valley’s biggest tech firms are bursting at the seams. Apple’s spaceship campus is nearing completion, but it recently purchased property in San Jose and is reportedly eyeing more property north of its newest campus in Cupertino. Google and Facebook are also looking to expand, and every week I hear of a company that needs more space to house a growing tech staff.
So one has to wonder if they know something we don’t. Are we about to enter a strong growth cycle?
At Creative Strategies, we have spent a lot of time researching this question, and I believe we’ve identified several indicators that the tech industry is poised for a major upswing in the next five to 10 years.
The biggest thing I see coming is 5G. Every major telecom company, as well as chip makers like Qualcomm and Intel are betting their futures on 5G networks and the devices that take advantage of it. The amount of money being spent on this buildout will be staggering, and it means more tech jobs and growth not only in Silicon Valley but all over the world. Once a mesh of broadband wireless networks becomes available, the Internet of Things will really take hold.
A recent Business Insider report estimated that IoT investment will hit $6 trillion over the next five years, with 24 billion IoT devices installed by 2020. Close to $3 trillion will be spent on application development, device hardware, system integration, data storage, security and connectivity between now and 2020. If true, you can see why Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel, Qualcomm, and many other tech companies are prepping for explosive growth.
But the IoT is not just for the home; cars and city infrastructure stand to benefit, too. We are already seeing major moves to put sensors and wireless cameras in light poles, streets, and buildings. While these will be important for city management and services, they will also be critical for use by autonomous vehicles. These costly infrastructure buildouts will take time and demand the help of many engineers and specialty personnel.
A fourth growth area will be data centers, from data mining to data analytic skills and data-specific engineers. Right now, almost every company is in need of more staff to deal with these disciplines, especially data analysis. Each day, these companies collect terabytes or petabytes of data that needs to be searched, analyzed, and used to enhance the ability to create products and services.
All these connected devices, however, will need to be secure. In years past, my career advice has been to become an IT professional or engineer. Now my answer is to become a security expert. This area will only grow as hackers and rogue nations try to steal identifies, state secrets, or intellectual property.
Don’t forget about virtual and augmented reality, or more likely a mix of the two. There is no doubt that VR and AR will revolutionize the computing experience and offer new ways to interact with technology. It’s still early days, but this sector will bring new jobs and new levels of innovation.
Finally, keep an eye on the digitization of the health market and how trackers and smartwatches will link patients to health professionals. At every level of the healthcare system, digital technology will be an important tool for diagnoses, records, and disease prevention.
As one who has tracked the tech market for the last 35 years, I am excited about what’s to come. Clearly, the country’s top tech firms are getting ready for the next great era in technology.
If the Michael Kors Access has taught me anything, it’s that Android Wear watches from fashion-first brands–like Michael Kors–can’t spin Google’s smartwatch story in an entirely different direction. I’ve been testing the Dylan version of the Access for the last two weeks, and while it’s a perfectly good-looking watch, I can’t say it offers dramatically better materials or design compared to the best Android Wear watches from tech-first manufacturers like LG, Huawei, and Motorola.
The Dylan version of the Access bears the familiar “MK” logo on the top of its crown, but that almost invisible flourish will always be a little secret between you and your watch. Beyond that, we can admire the Dylan’s chunky lugs, chiseled bezel, and stark, monochrome palette. The design is effectively butch for anyone who needs that vibe from a watch, but unless you’re already familiar with Michael Kors timepieces, no one will spot the Access on your wrist and ask, “Yo, brah, are you wearing Michael Kors?”
Jon Phillips
Chunky and architectural, the Dylan protrudes just about 12mm off of your wrist. And those aren’t screw heads on the lugs. They’re buttons, and you press them to pop out the strap pins.
Nonetheless, the Access version of Dylan looks very similar to the analog Dylan: more or less the same case and silicone strap, but with two fewer buttons, and, of course, a digital display for Android Wear. The Access also comes pre-loaded with various watch faces that preach the Michael Kors aesthetic a bit more loudly. So, if you just can’t lower yourself to buy a smartwatch from a tech-first manufacturer, you can jump aboard the Michael Kors train, confident that one of the designer’s watch faces will telegraph your brand affinities.
And the Access costs only $350 for the Dylan model I reviewed. That’s a notable–but not egregious–pricing premium compared to Wear watches from the tech companies.
Big, bulky and brand-correct
The Dylan version of Michael Kors Access has a bulky 46mm case. It’s big. There’s also a 44.5mm Bradshaw version that’s more gender-neutral. Both watches have stainless steel cases, but you can choose from a variety of finishes and straps. My review specimen came with a black case and silicone strap, but the Dylan is also sold with silver- and rose gold-colored cases and a leather strap.
Jon Phillips
This still photo of the Falling Glitz watch face can’t even begin to illustate the showy animation that plays in real life. This one definitely belongs on the rose gold Bradshaw version of the watch.
The Bradshaw has a much wider variety of case colors, and comes with either metal bracelets or leather straps. Prices vary across the line-up, and the most expensive version is a $395 Bradshaw model with a gold-tone case and matching pavé bracelet.
Do you want more than one strap? Michael Kors says the only “supported” options are Michael Kors silicone bands at $40 a pop, and leather bands at $50. For what it’s worth, the lug width of the Dylan model is 28mm, but its strap pins measure 12.5mm.
Michael Kors
The Bradshaw version of the Michael Kors Access is slightly smaller at 44.5mm, and comes in many more looks. At the far right we see the gold-tone look with pavé bracelet–the most expensive model at $395.
But let’s go back to that really big case. Because the Dylan is so thick (about 12mm), I actually found it difficult to fit inside the cuffs of some long-sleeved shirts. That’s a first for me, and I’ve worn scads of analog watches, smartwatches and activity trackers.
The Michael Kors Access is also the heaviest wearable I’ve ever put on my wrist. Android Wear supports a few gestures that let you navigate its user interface with a flick of your wrist, and none of them are comfortable with a watch this heavy. Maybe if I had the wrists of Brock Lester I wouldn’t mind, but with my tech-journo anatomy, I see repetitive stress disorder in my future.
Jon Phillips
The Dylan’s silicone strap is comfortable and grippy.
If you can get past the size and weight, you’re left with a design that aligns just about right with the Dylan’s $350 price tag. The black steel case looks almost glossy but held up very well when I whapped it repeatedly with the sharp edge of a metal ruler. I also like the silicon strap. Its grooved texturing helps give the watch a bit more visual ID, and I love all silicone straps for their form-fitting grippiness. Just be prepared to keep it clean, as those grooves are magnets for dirt and debris.
For my own watches, I pick much more traditional, classic designs. But if I styled my hair with a razor-fade pompadour or maybe listened to Pitbull, I could totally see myself wearing the Dylan Access.
Strong battery life and a sun-friendly display
OK, let’s get into the guts. I won’t rehash Android Wear software specifics, but I will share that the Michael Kors Access was running Android Wear 1.5, so it’s definitely not a launch platform for the imminent Android Wear 2.0, which you can read about here. But there’s still a surprise hiding inside the watch: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor.
Jon Phillips
The Notes complication has a very subtle star scene animation, and reveals steps progress, the current weather and time zone differentials.
As the name suggests, this chip was designed expressly for next-generation Android Wear watches. Its 30 percent smaller than Qualcomm’s previous-generation chip, and in theory allows for thinner case designs (though, clearly, Michael Kors didn’t get the message). The Wear 2100 also has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support, and consumes 25 percent less power than Qualcomm’s previous silicon. I never hammered the watch with excessive use, but I was happy with battery life, and finished all my days of testing with at least 30 percent battery capacity remaining.
Just like all other Android Wear watches, the Access comes with 4GB of storage for apps and music files. The watch is water-resistant to only 1 ATM, so it’s definitely not as rugged as, say, the Nixon Mission, which is good for 10 ATM.
Jon Phillips
Note the “flat tire” of missing pixels at the bottom of the display.
In terms of raw components, the watch’s 1.4-inch TFT LCD display may be the star of the show. With a resolution of 320×290, it has a “flat tire” of missing pixels at the bottom of the display. The touch display is also just a tad slow to respond to swipe gestures. These are negatives, for sure, but damn this watch is legible in sunlight.
For this we can thank transflective display tech. Colors are washed out under a bright sun, but, hey, you can easily read the screen, and that fixes a major pain point of first- and second-generation Wear watches.
Jon Phillips
This image accurately illustrates how that transflective display appears on a bright, sunny day.
Customizable watch faces, heavy on glitz
You can only add so many design elements to a watch case before the hardware gets too loud and gaudy. It’s the watch face that carries at least half of the visual ID, and this puts all digital-display smartwatches at a disadvantage. Lacking moving hands and dials, they can look like sci-fi movie props instead of sophisticated accessories.
Jon Phillips
Here we see the demure ambient mode of the Heart watch face. The full-color mode is gold, animated splendor.
Michael Kors tries to shore up the deficit with a collection of branded watch faces that communicate the designer’s somewhat cheesy Real Housewives aesthetic. The faces aimed at men look techy and mechanical. The ones aimed at women are heavy on costume glitz, with lots of gold accents and rendered pavé insets, and even brief animations. They’re unapologetically trashy, but like NeNe Leakes, Michael Kors appears to be in on the joke.
Jon Phillips
Here’s a custom-designed color scheme for the Digital watch face (the stock black version appears in an image above). The outer ring shows step progress. The thick yellow ring shows the hour, and then we see rings for minutes and even seconds in finer increments.
In the Access settings panel, you can customize the watch faces for different colored backgrounds, hands and accents. You can even define auto-timing modes that set one watch face for daytime (6am to 6pm), and another look that runs at night. It’s a great idea that should be built directly into Android Wear itself. Unfortunately, Michael Kors’ customization interface is confusing, and there are no help notes for customization in the app.
I was also irked by the Access’ feeble charging system. It’s just a flimsy-floppy little puck that attaches to the back of the watch with a weak magnet. It doesn’t sit flat and confidently on a nightstand until you plop on the watch, and I always had to check twice to make sure the watch was actually seated on the puck, and charging.
Jon Phillips
The charging puck forms a weak magnetic bond to the watch, and slips off easily.
What’s in a name? For some, everything
When Android Wear was announced in March 2014, the available models were painfully frumpy. Even the original Moto 360, the most stylish of the bunch, looked more like a tech toy, thanks to its bizarre lug-less design. But that was more than two years ago. Tech brands like Motorola have improved their looks dramatically, and Android Wear watches like the TAG Heuer Connected ($1,500) and Fossil Q Marshal ($295-$315) provide options for consumers who simply must have a lifestyle brand on their wrists.
This is the competitive environment that Michael Kors finds itself in, and despite a fair number of drawbacks, the Access accounts for itself fairly well.
Jon Phillips
Push the crown to access settings, apps and contacts. The crown may bear the only visible Michael Kors logo on the physical design, but, hey, it’s there for those who care.
To be sure, the Access is big and bulky, and its charging adapter feels like an afterthought. But I give props to Michael Kors for imbuing the Access Dylan with essentially the same design as the analog Dylan, and releasing a wide range of woman-friendly Wear watches via the Access Bradshaw. The Dylan is also made of hardy, durable materials, boasts solid battery life, and is easy to read outside.
Are their better values in Android Wear? Most definitely. Do other models offer more features? Sure. But those watches can’t claim a fashion-first pedigree, and for some consumers–however dubious their logic may be–that could a deal-breaker.
HAWTHORNE, Calif. – A well-known Southern California MMA fighter and his wife have decided to donate their baby son’s organs, after the 15-month-old was disconnected from life support systems Sunday, CBS Los Angeles reported.
Liam Mikael Kowal was being pushed in a stroller by his 15-year-old aunt when both were struck by an SUV Saturday afternoon. The pair was in a crosswalk at an intersection. The intersection has flashing yellow lights, but is not a stoplight.
Liam was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he was stabilized. The family decided to remove him from life support Sunday.
The baby’s aunt recovering from leg injuries and is in stable condition.
Liam was the son of MMA fighter Marcus Kowal, a mixed martial arts athlete who owns Systems Training Centers. Kowal announced on hisFacebook page Monday that he and his wife had decided to donate the baby’s organs.
“This isn’t easy to write but Liam is going to donate his organs, so that his little heart can make another child live,” Kowal wrote.
“They made the decision, I think it’s a beautiful decision, and it’s based on the fact that if they can have a set of parents that doesn’t have to go what they’re doing through,” said Thomas Kowal, the baby’s uncle.
Donna Marie Higgins, 72, was arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run and felony drunk driving Saturday. Hawthorne police said witnesses followed Higgins after she left the scene.
Suspect Donna Marie Higgins.
Hawthorne PD via CBS Los Angeles
Higgins was released from the Hawthorne jail on $100,000 bail. Since Liam has died, Higgins may now be charged with felony vehicular manslaughter. The district attorney was expected to make a decision about the charges against Higgins Tuesday.
Less than a month before the end of the mission, Rosetta’s high-resolution camera has revealed the Philae lander wedged into a dark crack on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Philae found. Credit: Main image and lander inset: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA; context: ESA/Rosetta/ NavCam – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
The images were taken on 2 September by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera as the orbiter came within 2.7 km of the surface and clearly show the main body of the lander, along with two of its three legs.
Philae close-up. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
The images also provide proof of Philae’s orientation, making it clear why establishing communications was so difficult following its landing on 12 November 2014.
“With only a month left of the Rosetta mission, we are so happy to have finally imaged Philae, and to see it in such amazing detail,” says Cecilia Tubiana of the OSIRIS camera team, the first person to see the images when they were downlinked from Rosetta yesterday.
“After months of work, with the focus and the evidence pointing more and more to this lander candidate, I’m very excited and thrilled that we finally have this all-important picture of Philae sitting in Abydos,” says ESA’s Laurence O’Rourke, who has been coordinating the search efforts over the last months at ESA, with the OSIRIS and SONC/CNES teams.
Philae was last seen when it first touched down at Agilkia, bounced and then flew for another two hours before ending up at a location later named Abydos, on the comet’s smaller lobe.
OSIRIS image with Philae, 2 September. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
After three days, Philae’s primary battery was exhausted and the lander went into hibernation, only to wake up again and communicate briefly with Rosetta in June and July 2015 as the comet came closer to the Sun and more power was available.
However, until today, the precise location was not known. Radio ranging data tied its location down to an area spanning a few tens of metres, but a number of potential candidate objects identified in relatively low-resolution images taken from larger distances could not be analysed in detail until recently.
While most candidates could be discarded from analysis of the imagery and other techniques, evidence continued to build towards one particular target, which is now confirmed in images taken unprecedentedly close to the surface of the comet.
At 2.7 km, the resolution of the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera is about 5 cm/pixel, sufficient to reveal characteristic features of Philae’s 1 m-sized body and its legs, as seen in these definitive pictures.
Philae close-up, labelled. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
“This remarkable discovery comes at the end of a long, painstaking search,” says Patrick Martin, ESA’s Rosetta Mission Manager. “We were beginning to think that Philae would remain lost forever. It is incredible we have captured this at the final hour.“
“This wonderful news means that we now have the missing ‘ground-truth’ information needed to put Philae’s three days of science into proper context, now that we know where that ground actually is!” says Matt Taylor, ESA’s Rosetta project scientist.
“Now that the lander search is finished we feel ready for Rosetta’s landing, and look forward to capturing even closer images of Rosetta’s touchdown site,” adds Holger Sierks, principal investigator of the OSIRIS camera.
The discovery comes less than a month before Rosetta descends to the comet’s surface. On 30 September, the orbiter will be sent on a final one-way mission to investigate the comet from close up, including the open pits in the Ma’at region, where it is hoped that critical observations will help to reveal secrets of the body’s interior structure.
Further information on the search that led to the discovery of Philae, along with additional images, will be made available soon.
For further information, please contact:
Markus Bauer
ESA Science and Robotic Exploration Communication Officer
Former Harvard biology professor E.O. Wilson is one of the most respected and revered conservationists alive today.
So you might find it curious that his biggest fear isn’t climate change or the ongoing mass extinction that destroys an estimated 150-200 species every day.
Nope. It’s Donald Trump.
“My main worry right now is that the Republican candidate might win the election,” Wilson said in an interview with The Huffington Post and its Hawaii partner Honolulu Civil Beat at the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress in Honolulu.
Rick Friedman via Getty Images
Retired Harvard University professor E.O. Wilson, pictured here in his campus office, sat down with The Huffington Post and Hawaii partner Honolulu Civil Beat during the world’s largest conservation event.
The congress, which is being held in the U.S. for the first time in IUCN’s 68-year history, is the world’s largest environmental and nature conservation event and is often referred to as the Olympics of conservation. This year’s event drew more than 9,000 delegates from 190 nations.
Many in the environmental community would place Wilson in the same pantheon as John Muir, Aldo Leopold and Henry David Thoreau.
Wilson has won two Pulitzer Prizes for his insights into nature and how it influences the human condition. The 87-year-old is commonly referred to as the “Father of Biodiversity” for his dogged determination to protect plant and animal species and preserve the overall health of the planet.
In the interview, Wilson dismissed the notion of a Trump presidency with a chuckle, predicting the businessman won’t prove victorious over Hillary Clinton in November.
For that reason, he offered a second “greatest fear.”
“My main worry is nuclear war, as it should be for everybody,” Wilson said, adding it could come as a result of “some stupid mistake.”
“If we had a conflict with nuclear weapons use it would be horribly damaging,” he stressed. “So my main concern – notice I bounced away from biological diversity, because I am concerned about the human species too – would be nuclear war.”
Nukes aside, Wilson said climate change is the biggest environmental challenge facing the globe. Second to that is the loss of plant and animal species to extinction, which he said makes the globe less stable and is a “terrible, needless destruction of our most sanctioned heritage.”
The scientific community has overwhelmingly accepted the realities of climate change, including the role human beings have played in driving global temperatures.
Still, many, including a large percent of Republican politicians, continue to deny its existence. Wilson said he thinks that denial is not a result of ignorance but “willful opposition” by people who would be negatively impacted, either financially or politically, by efforts to stop climate change.
Wilson now advocates for setting aside half the Earth’s surface for nature so that it can remain undisturbed by humans. It was the subject of his latest book, Half-Earth, and his address to the IUCN World Conservation Congress.
Although the world faces many threats, Wilson wasn’t all doom and gloom. There’s been a shift in public awareness, which he said gives him great hope for the future.
“We’re going green,” he said. “It’s pastel green, but it’s still green.”
Nick Grube of Honolulu Civil Beat contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims – 1.6 billion members of an entire religion – from entering the U.S.
At a select few Aloft Hotels, adjusting the air conditioning or turning off the lights is as easy as saying, “Hey, Siri!” Bloomberg reports the hotel chain has launched iPhone-based voice activation in its rooms in Boston and in San Jose, California (a stone’s throw from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino).
The rooms have thermostats, lights, and more that can be accessed through your phone or the in-room iPad provided. You can set mood lighting to preset options designed for morning, night, and movie watching. While you’re at it, you can ask Siri to play you some music, check the weather, or find a good restaurant nearby, though you could do that anywhere else you carry your iPhone, too.
Aloft’s Silicon Valley and Boston hotels are also the company’s test sites for its other high-tech “Project Jetson” initiatives, like a robotic butler named Boltr, an emoji-based room service system, and a keyless system that lets you open your room with your phone.
However, there are still a few hurdles before making Aloft’s hotels truly Jetsons-tastic, including the fact that equipping every room with WiFi-based controls requires big upgrades in the location’s bandwidth. One day the system will be compatible with Android-based voice activation, according to Bloomberg, but for now, guests who haven’t hopped on the iOS train will have to stick with the iPad provided in each room.
[h/t Bloomberg]
Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.
September 6, 2016 – 1:00am
Shaunacy Ferro is a senior staff writer for MentalFloss.com. Her work has previously appeared in Fast Company, Popular Science, and Architect magazine, among others. She lives in Brooklyn and spends most of her free time taking photos of her cat.
Logitech has rebranded its general consumer products division as the friendlier-sounding, “tech”-less Logi for its non-PC-related products. The idea is for Logi to represent simpler, easier, more accessible devices, and its first home security camera under this name certainly fits those criteria. The Logi Circle ($199.99) boasts an attractive, cordless design, a very un-intimidating app, and two-way voice communication, making it something you can use to keep in touch with your home instead of just keeping track of it. Logi has added 1080p video capture and cloud storage for keeping footage for longer than 24 hours since the camera launched, though it still lacks a few of the more useful features you’ll find in cameras like the Editors’ Choice Piper nv or the Nest Cam.
Editors’ Note: This review has been updated to reflect features added since the launch of the product. The score has been changed to reflect those additions.
Design The Circle looks more like a webcam than a security cam, though the differences between the two categories have blurred a great deal in the last few years. It’s a plastic sphere, about the size of a baseball, mounted on a small, cylindrical base. The front of the camera has a glossy plastic ring surrounding the lens, with a speaker grille surrounding the ring. An indicator light sits just above the lens, turning different colors to show its status. The camera can pivot up and down on its base, but it can’t twist left or right unless it’s on its magnetic base plate and charger, which you’ll want to keep it on whenever possible for sheer convenience.
The base plate attaches an eight-foot USB charger securely to the camera, making sure its contact points touch the pins hidden in the camera’s base. The magnetic plate also attaches securely to nearly any steel surface. With the plate connected to the camera’s base, I was able to position it sideways or upside-down in a variety of places our test lab an my apartment, including on wire shelves and under fixtures.
You can use the Logi Circle without the power cable attached, thanks to a built-in battery. However, it will only last up to 12 hours on a charge, so it isn’t feasible to keep it off of the charging ring for a long period of time. If you really want a wireless home security camera, the Netgear Arlo VMS3230 boasts a battery life of six months before you have to switch out its CR123 cells.
A small Power switch located on the underside of the Circle’s base is the only real physical control on the camera, with the exception of a very well-hidden pinhole Reset button on the back of the base. Besides the connection pins for the charger, there are no ports, slots, or buttons anywhere on the Circle.
Setup and App Setup is extremely simple through the free iOS or Android apps. Turn the camera on, wait for the light to blink blue, then follow the directions in the app to connect it to your Wi-Fi network. I got it to work with both my home DSL network and the test lab’s FiOS network, though to switch from one to the other I had to use the Reset button to configure it again. Since, as a home camera, you’ll likely set it up to work with your home network and not bother changing locations, this is not a big deal.
The Circle app is very easy to navigate, thanks to a simple interface that focuses on a handful of unobtrusive icons and a scrolling wheel of recordings. All video is recorded to Logi’s cloud, so you can access it from any mobile device with the app installed (no Web portal is available yet). The main screen shows the live feed from your selected camera, with a series of time stamps on the right side of the display. Swiping down plays videos related to those time stamps, which are triggered and filed automatically when the camera detects motion. You can also swipe up on the list to generate a Day Brief, a compilation of clips from the last day showing what the camera recorded over just one minute.
Swiping to the left brings up the app’s options, which are relatively sparse. You can turn the camera on and off (or add additional cameras), flip the video 180 degrees (useful if the camera is mounted upside down), and individually toggle the indicator LED, automatic night vision, the microphone, the speaker, and even a Power Save mode to prolong battery life when it’s not connected to the charger.
The live feed includes audio, so you can hear whatever’s going on through the camera. The Circle also features a built-in speaker, so you can talk through the app to whoever is nearby. The voice communication is push-to-talk; press and hold the voice icon on the lower left corner of the screen to speak through the camera.
Logi claims an instant, real-time video feed with voice chat, but that’s dependent on the status of your network. Realistically, the Circle lags about a half-second between what it captures and what the app shows, and if you have network congestion or a weak signal with either the Circle or your mobile device, that can balloon to five to ten seconds. Fortunately, the app has a signal indicator to show if the camera is dealing with any network issues, and it generally kept a strong connection with both of the networks I tested on.
The speaker itself is also fairly weak. My normal speaking voice came out of the Circle a bit softer than ideal. It sounded better than a mumble, but you really need to be close to the camera to hear anything coming out of the speaker. Unfortunately, there’s no way to adjust speaker volume on the Circle, or microphone sensitivity through the app.
That’s the main weakness of the Circle: a lack of app functionality. It’s designed to be very easy to use, but that means many functions are out of your hands. It will automatically record video clips when it detects movement, and can send you push alerts, but you can’t manually set up specific zones or times for the alerts to be active. The most you can do is enable the automatic Smart Location geofence feature, which disables notifications if it detects that your mobile device is near the camera, or selectively enable or disable notifications for motion, low battery, and disrupted Internet connection. More manual control and some scheduling options for the notifications would really help the Circle work as a home surveillance camera.
Besides the mobile app, you can now access your Circle through a Web portal, a welcome addition to the service. The Web portal offers most of the same controls for the camera, and all of the live and recorded viewing options of the app.
Circle Safe Video recorded by the Circle originally only lasted 24 hours unless downloaded to a connected mobile device. That’s still the case out of the box, but you can optionally subscribe to the Circle Safe service to extend the camera’s cloud storage significantly. Circle Safe records 31 days of video to your Logi Circle account, so you can access video long after you get a notification about an event.
Currently Circle Safe subscriptions start at $9.99 per month, and users can try the service out with a free 31-day trial.
Performance and Conclusions The Circle’s hardware is capable of handling 1080p video, and as of a recent update can now stream and capture video in that resolution (it was limited by software to 720p at launch). Video quality is very good, though the wide, 135-degree lens produces an almost fisheye-like level of barrel distortion. The live video stream is dependent on your network connection, so it can easily develop compression artifacts. However, video clips after the Circle has uploaded them to cloud storage look consistently sharp. In normal light, colors are bright and vivid, and a built-in set of infrared LEDs combined with an automatic night vision mode showed all of the strange things my cat did (in green-gray monochrome) when I was asleep.
Both the mobile app and Web portal worked flawlessly, with only a half-second of video lag. Both were very responsive to navigate, and I could easily download clips or take snapshots from either interface.
Logi has answered several complaints and added much-needed features to the Circle since launch, so we’ve bumped up our score to reflect that. However, the Nest Cam and the Flir FX are each available for the same price, and offer more configuration options (the Flir FX also includes a microSD card slot for simple local recording). The pricier Piper nv, meanwhile, remains our Editors’ Choice for its ability to serve as a Z-Wave home automation hub on top of its already powerful home surveillance functionality.
A total solar eclipse is one of the most otherworldly experiences a person can have on Earth. By an almost incredible coincidence, the the tiny, humdrum moon and the gigantic, raging sun are arranged in such a way so that the former can blot out the latter. Although the moon is about 400 times smaller, it covers the sun’s disc because it’s about 400 times closer to the Earth.
A small group of dedicated travelers follow eclipses around the world, chasing the spectacle of the blackened sun’s corona and the umbra, the conical shadow the moon casts over Earth. The community is tightly knit, bonded over the life-altering experience of losing the sun. Many “umbraphiles” are self-described eclipse addicts, having witnessed a dozen or more eclipses. Several gathered this week in equatorial Africa for an annular eclipse, and are already planning their itineraries for what they’ve dubbed the Great American Eclipse of 2017. Next August will be the first time the path of a solar eclipse will cross the nation since the year of its founding.
Midday on August 21, those fortunate enough to have a clear sky will see the sun slowly but inexorably consumed. A dark circle will slide over it, and the air will turn colder in an instant, as though someone had opened an Earth-sized freezer door. Warm air will stop rising from the ground and the wind will change direction, all while the umbra sweeps the land, making the sky so dark that stars emerge. Birds will hasten back to their roosts. At the moment of total eclipse, the sun will darken entirely, leaving only a halo of fire.
Order your eclipse glasses now, in other words, and book a trip to my part of the country, where we will have the best view.
Of course, there is another, less literal way to experience the mystery of an eclipse. For thousands of years, people in cultures around the world have depicted eclipses in art, imbuing them with fear and dread and a heavy dose of the supernatural. A Chinese myth held that eclipses happened when a sky dragon dined on our star. In the Americas, the Inca had a similar tale, only the hungry beast was a jaguar.
In Western Europe during the Middle Ages, eclipses took on a dual meaning, and became a means for expressing varieties of both religious and scientific experience.
Georg von Peurbach, Theoricæ nouæ planetarum, 1423-1461
Science Museum / SSPL
“In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, astronomy and solar eclipses were a huge craze. Virtually anyone who considered himself an educated person then took an interest in art and science, in a way that doesn’t really happen anymore,” says Ian Blatchford, director of the Science Museum in London. The popularization of telescopes and printing presses brought astronomical knowledge into middle class homes, he says. It was also a time of discovery, with new planets like Uranus and Neptune brought into the celestial fold, as well as new moons around distant worlds.
By the time of the Enlightenment, eclipse artwork played a surprisingly important role in science, he says: “There are intriguing occasions when the artistic eye has been of real utility to the scientific process.”
An art historian who runs the UK’s national science museum, Blatchford recently searched the museum’s collections for representations of eclipses, for a paper on their role in the history of astronomy. He says he was especially struck by artists’ ability to capture the ethereal nature of an eclipse in a way that even photographs can’t.
“When an eclipse happens, you only have a tiny amount of time to observe what’s going on. But of course artists have a great skill of absorbing everything,” he says.
In early Christian art, eclipses appeared in scenes of the crucifixion to signify the anger of God and to represent the collective grief of the universe, Blatchford says. The Gospels tell of a darkened sky at the time of Christ’s death, which some scholars have interpreted as an eclipse. From Luke 23: 44-45: “It was now about the sixth hour and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, because the sun was obscured and the veil of the temple was torn in two.”
By the Italian Renaissance, paintings still held religious meaning, but their depictions of the sky and stars were drawn from early modern astronomy, Blatchford says.
Of all Blatchford’s finds, my favorite is a 1735 painting by German painter Cosmas Damian Asam. It depicts St. Benedict, who is said to have experienced a vision of the whole world “gathered together under a sunbeam.” This is a fitting analogy for a solar eclipse, but what astonishes me about this painting is its rich detail. You can see not only the eclipse, but the solar corona, and the so-called “diamond ring effect,” which occurs when sunlight streams through lunar mountains. Here it falls right on the saint’s head.
Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, has written that this painting may be the first accurate depiction of a total solar eclipse. He thinks Asam himself might have witnessed at least one, or maybe each, of the total solar eclipses that took place in 1706, 1724 and 1733. “In one picture, you’ve got a lot of religion and a lot of science,” says Blatchford.
Even after the advent of photography, artists played a role in capturing eclipses, he says. He points to this lithograph of a total eclipse in Wyoming in 1878, produced by a French artist named Etienne Trouvelot. It is less detailed than modern photographs, but arguably more beautiful. The lithograph leaves some room for interpretation, letting your eye and brain do the work. A photograph is more passive, simply collecting light through a lens.
Etienne Trouvelot, Lithograph in colour, Total eclipse of sun; observed 29 July 1878
Science Museum / SSPL
“Even in the 20th century, as photography improved, scientists still asked artists to accompany them on eclipse expeditions. They felt photography was still a bit crude in capturing the full magnificence,” Blatchford says. “It’s about the atmospherics you get. Really a long time after the first official photograph of an eclipse in 1851, artists were still valued for their insights.”
In 1918, the US Naval Observatory invited the American portrait painter Howard Russell Butler to paint a solar eclipse. His work depicted the corona, the glowing, wispy ring visible beyond the dark circle of the moon. The painting’s perspective work supported the hypothesis that the corona was the sun’s atmosphere, and not the moon’s.
In the latter half of the 20th century, artists’ depictions of eclipses were less important to scientific discovery and more important as a means of interpretation. For a cosmic event of such rarity and strangeness, an artist’s eye seems like a useful tool indeed. Though eclipses are well-understood physical phenomena, they are still imbued with mystery, and that’s something an artist can capture better than any camera.
Blatchford told me he visited an installation by the artist Michael Benson, who produces planetary landscape images from spacecraft data. A picture at his exhibition, “Otherworlds: Visions of Our Solar System,” featured a view of a solar eclipse taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Blatchford said from that perspective, it seemed impossible that the wee moon should blot out the sun.
“Even though rationally we understand an eclipse, I would say most people still find it, in a way, a sign of some kind of providence. They still can’t quite believe it’s happening,” he says. “Even if you know what is happening, why it’s happening is a different question, isn’t it? I think some of my colleagues get annoyed when I make that distinction. But I think most of our fellow human beings do make a distinction between understanding a technical explanation and wanting to look at even deeper explanations behind it.”
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month and our color is gold. We gild our profile pictures and status updates with it in solidarity, driven to highlight the tiny warriors in our lives–the survivors, those still fighting and the dear ones we’ve lost.
The stories vary from child to child, family to family, connecting us from the moment we get that first, terrible diagnosis. They usually start with the words, “Your child has cancer.”
Ours started with the word “tumor.”
My family was initiated into this club five Septembers ago. Back then, I thought I was aware. I thought donating to charities like Make A Wish and St. Jude made me aware. I thought that since my younger daughter (I’ll call her E) had been through three surgeries by the age of seven for her cleft lip and palate, I was aware. Kids get sick, sometimes really sick. I’ve had to stay with my child in the hospital. I get it.
This month you’ll see many statistics laid out neatly in black text. You can read about them here, or here, or here.
Statistics don’t tell the whole story, so what I want to do is make you aware–just a little bit–of what it’s like to watch your child live with this devastating illness.
It’s important to understand that cancer isn’t just one disease. Its many forms and iterations are as unique as the children who get it. Cancer plays out differently depending on the age of the child, the type of cancer, the stage of cancer and the prevalence of the disease. That last one is important, because rare cancers tend to have much lower survival rates than cancers with clinically proven protocols.
So, for example, the 5-year survival rate for acute lymphocytic leukemia is 85%. The survival rate for juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (a much rarer cancer) is only about 50%.
The disease trajectory for each child varies greatly. Some children get treatment, go into remission and grow up. Some children die within days, weeks or months of diagnosis. Some children, like my older daughter (I’ll call her A), struggle with cancer for years before being categorized as terminal.
If you think the words, “Your child has cancer” are bad, try getting out of bed after your child’s oncologist says, “There’s nothing more we can do.”
For A, the disease has become the defining characteristic of her childhood. Diagnosed at 11, she was just beginning adolescence when we discovered the tumor. She has clear memories of a time before she was sick–memories that fade with each passing year–but these formative adolescent years are dominated by her illness.
How it lingers. How it forces you to change your life. How it feels never ending, intractable, unyielding in its demands–that’s something I didn’t get before A’s diagnosis. My limited experience with childhood cancer came from the brief glimpses I’d seen on the news or third hand, from people who posted fundraisers on social media. People rally around children who are newly diagnosed, they support the family with prayers, money, meals and more through the intense months of initial treatment, hospitalization and recovery.
Our children’s stories float into your awareness briefly, then swirl away again. I understand this. It’s so hard to live in this state of constant sorrow, of near desperation. Why would anyone want to stay here longer than they have to?
As we embark on our fifth year of A’s illness, it strikes me (yet again) how little I was aware of the hardship aspect of a disease that lasts for years. It’s not one trauma, it’s many. There’s no getting over this because it’s still happening. We’re still living with the reality that we’re probably going to lose her–that each season, each holiday, each birthday and all the small moments in between might be her last.
“This sucks, but I don’t want it to end,” my husband said the other day.
My daughter had a particularly rough August. She started a new oral chemotherapy medication–a last hope kind of thing–in combination with a medication she was already taking.
The two potent drugs are causing profound anemia to the extent that she needed a blood transfusion during the first week of August. She might need another one soon. Because her body is so depleted, she got strep throat and has been sick for weeks. Her mouth hurts from sores (a side effect of the medication). She’s tired, weak, and frustrated. She wants to travel, but we can’t go far. She wants to see Iceland, Thailand, San Francisco, The Grand Canyon and so much more, but we have to stay in New York, close to her doctors and to our support system.
I’ve never been an incredibly ambitious person. But now I’m finding myself envious of those with the means to travel. I gaze out my window and fantasize about booking trips with a private nurse at our side, sitting in first class so my daughter is comfortable, and taking her wherever she wants to go.
We’re in limbo and limbo is lonely. We can’t plan, can’t talk about the future, can only watch through the lens of social media as other families teach their kids to drive, send them off to college, walk them down the aisle…
Childhood cancer is holding us all hostage.
We live differently, but we haven’t stopped living. My daughter still goes to school. She’s still learning the guitar, going to parties, and going out with her friends.
Gold ribbons have an entirely new meaning for me these days–they are a reminder to cherish the moments and to share our children’s stories.
My kids, now 15 and 12, have spent the long summer days together painting, swimming, and playing video games. This is a course correction for them. A few years ago, all they did was fight. A few months ago, E wouldn’t come out of her room where she preferred the companionship of her computer and her sketchbook to her big sister.
The joy in watching my girls reconnect is overshadowed by the reality of this disease, but I’ll take what I can get.