What the United States Navy wants and what the United States Navy will be able to afford in the coming years is unlikely to match up, and as it continues to address increasingly powerful Chinese and Russian navies, this could give a lot of people many a sleepless night. China is currently testing out the Shandong, its first domestically-built aircraft carrier while Russia continues to bolster its fleets in a slow but methodical manner.
As the same time President Trump cut the Navy’s shipbuilding budget by $4 billion, according to the 2021 budget request outlined earlier this year, the Navy would acquire 44 vessels through 2025—down from a planned 55 vessels.
The classic eye exam may be about to get an upgrade. Researchers have developed an online vision test—fueled by artificial intelligence (AI)—that produces much more accurate diagnoses than the sheet of capital letters we’ve been staring at since the 19th century. If perfected, the test could also help patients with eye diseases track their vision at home.
“It’s an intriguing idea” that reveals just how antiquated the classic eye test is, says Laura Green, an ophthalmologist at the Krieger Eye Institute. Green was not involved with the work, but she studies ways to use technology to improve access to health care.
The classic eye exam, known as the Snellen chart, has been around since 1862. The farther down the sheet a person can read, the better their vision. The test is quick and easy to administer, but it has problems, says Chris Piech, a computer scientist at Stanford University. Patients start to guess at letters when they become blurry, he says, which means they can get different scores each time they take the test.
Remote working has meant many people are skipping their morning commute.
COVID-19 has lead to more and more employees working from home.
98% of people surveyed said they would like the option to work remotely for the rest of their careers.
But not everything is positive, with workers finding the biggest challenge is ‘unplugging’ from work.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce, and half of all “information workers”, are able to work from home. Though the number of people working partially or fully remote has been on the rise for years now, the COVID-19 pandemic may have pressed the fast-forward button on this trend.
With millions of people taking part in this work-from-home experiment, it’s worth asking the question – how do people and companies actually feel about working from home?
A OneLogin survey covered how employees are using work devices for a variety of other things.
The transition to working from home has been rocky for millions of people as they adjust to transitioning workplace policies into the privacy of their own home. According to a new report from cybersecurity firm OneLogin, people are using work devices for much more than work, even after they’ve had accounts or passwords compromised.
The company’s 2020 COVID-19 State of Remote Work Survey Report features a global survey of 5,000 employees who started working remotely since the outbreak of COVID-19.
Of those surveyed, 30% have had a corporate device breached and only 10% changed the password afterwards. Half of organizations globally have not established cybersecurity guidelines regarding remote work according to the survey and US remote employees use work devices to access adult entertainment sites more than any other country.
Half of UK respondents had not changed their home Wi-Fi password in the last two years, compared with 36% overall, and 25% never changed their password while 45% of US workers have given their work passwords to their child or spouse, compared to 13% in the UK and 9% in France.
Amid the horrifying loss of jobs brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been one countervailing force: an urgent demand for medical and technology professionals to return to work from retirement or a career break.
Returning physicians and nurses, along with technologists proficient in the “ancient” COBOL coding language that many states still use in processing unemployment claims, are helping society — and this has put these “relaunching” professionals in the spotlight. More than ever before, they are being embraced and brought back to work as fast as they can make themselves available.
Amazon’s ‘Drop In’ feature now works across the entire house.
Amazon Alexa users can now use the “Drop In” feature to talk with all of their Echo devices at once, Amazon announced on its blog. Previously, Drop In messages could only be sent to one other Alexa-enabled device at a time — a user with an Alexa device in the bedroom could “drop in” on a device in the kitchen and have a two-way conversation.
Now, you can use a device to send a message to all Echo devices in the house at once. This could be helpful with asking group questions like, “Does anyone want anything from the grocery store?” according to the Amazon blog. To start a group Drop In conversation, you can ask Alexa to “Drop In everywhere.”
For those living in major cities, one of the tradeoffs is often a lack of windows. It would have been somewhat bearable, if only a certain pandemic isn’t keeping us from going out to get some much-needed sunlight.
A startup called SunnyFive, which is under Samsung’s C-Labs incubator program, might just have a bright solution. Their product is an artificial window designed to mimic the full spectrum of natural light. Although it doesn’t come with a view, it can, however, change the angle of the light that shines through, as though the actual sun is moving and casting shadows in your home.
DARPA’s Sea Train concept hopes to enable a convoy of medium-sized unmanned vessels to travel across the ocean without refueling, before splitting up to conduct independent operations. (Courtesy of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
Imagine the following scenario.
Four medium-sized U.S. Navy vessels depart from a port along the United States’ coast. There’s no crew aboard any of them.
About 15 nautical miles off the coast, the four vessels rendezvous, autonomously arranging themselves in a line. Using custom mechanisms, they attach to each other to form a train, except they’re in the water and there’s no railroad to guide them. In this configuration the vessels travel 6,500 nautical miles across the open ocean to Southeast Asia. But as they approach their destination, they disconnect, splitting up as each unmanned ship goes its own way to conduct independent operations, such as collecting data with a variety of onboard sensors.
Once those operations are complete, the four reunite, form a train and make the return journey home.
This is the Sea Train, and it may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is investing in several technologies to make it a reality.
More moms are working from home than ever before in history. Without child care and school, it’s been a struggle. But many are also realizing that pursuing their careers while being present with their kids has its benefits, too.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was rare: An estimated 7% of employers offered permanent work-from-home options. Today, mid-crisis, that number has exploded to 57%. While the transition was ugly and disruptive, employers are now warming up to the idea, and some are making work-from-home options permanent.
On a large scale, this shift would have dramatic impacts on the economy, the workforce, real estate, the environment, and more. It would also be a game changer for working moms.
As long as there aren’t enough fast plugs in enough places, buyers and big automakers will stay away.
Rods and waders were already packed into the electric Jaguar I-Pace as it gorged a few more electrons from the wall of my New Jersey garage. A quick glance at a map of northeastern Pennsylvania revealed charging stations clinging to the Delaware River like so many spots on the brown trout I was hoping to catch.
A few days later, I pulled up to one of those chargers on the picturesque main street of Honesdale, only to realize it was a level 2 unit—one step above a standard outlet. It would take four hours before the car had enough juice to make the 100-mile trip home. Eleven miles down the road, it was the same story. And while that spot had a superfast Tesla charger, it was incompatible with the I-Pace. The nearest level 3 charger that would work was 58 miles away. So I gave up and settled in for a while.
Electric car-range anxiety revolves around a brutal equation: Remaining miles of battery life (as estimated by the car) minus miles to destination equals hope (or despair). Making matters worse, the answer varies from one minute to the next, depending on terrain and speed. Desperate battery-powered travelers can be easy to spot: They are often sweaty (no air conditioning), driving slowly and—when going uphill—instinctively leaning forward in their seats.
Failing to note the difference between a level 2 charger and a harder-to-find level 3 charger is often the mistake of an electric vehicle rookie. Had I realized the distinction, I would never have considered a car such as the I-Pace (it was a loaner), or any of the dozens of Tesla rivals set to debut in coming years. For the future of electric vehicles in America, that’s a really big problem.
Surface of Seabed Manganese Nodule from South Korea
There are trillions of potato-sized metal nodules on the floor of the ocean around the world.
Some of these nodules are being explored for economic potential. A major vote by a UN body on the commercial exploitation of these minerals is planned in October 2020 (postponed from July 2020).
However, the formation of these metallic nodules is radically different from the processes used to create such metals on land i.e., they are biological in origin rather the geological.
This has profound implications for what the true value of life around these metallic nodules could be.
Plus smart glasses from Google, transforming drones, AR clothing and other patents from Big Tech.
It’s the weekend! Time to switch my digital avatar’s outfit from a suit to lounge pants. I don’t actually live in VR yet (though I did try working in it this week), but a new patent from Amazon might make that a reality sooner rather than later. The company’s also working on drones that could get deliveries to me even quicker than its other drones, and Facebook is working on making immersive videos work on any screen in my house. Who needs to go outside when I can bring the entire world to my couch? Big Tech’s patents this week seem very on board with me staying at home as long as I want to.
And remember: The big tech companies file all kinds of crazy patents for things, and though most never amount to anything, some end up defining the future.
