Today was supposed to be a day of celebration for Boeing — after years of development, the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft was due to make its first trip to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission started smoothly with a textbook launch, but things went wrong when the CST-100 tried to align its orbit with the ISS. According to NASA, the Starliner , making this test yet another major setback for Boeing and the Commercial Crew Program. The uncrewed test mission started smoothly with the Atlas V rocket carrying the spacecraft high into the atmosphere. The Atlas V performed as intended, depositing the Starliner in the upper atmosphere.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang announced some exciting autonomous vehicle news at the company’s GTC keynote. First, the company is making its pre-trained Drive models publicly available for research and development. Along with that comes a set of transfer learning tools to make the models customizable and deployable. Second, a new family of automotive SoCs called ORIN is on the way. Also in the keynote, Huang unveiled version 7 of TensorRT, with dramatically improved support for conversational AI. Nvidia Drive Models Now Available to All Nvidia has spent a tremendous amount of time and money creating and training a wide variety of models for use in creating automated driving systems.
There’s a new space telescope orbiting Earth today, and it has a very specific mission: to assess distant planets for habitability. The CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) will be the first mission to . That could include small gas giants, super-Earths, and even small rocky planets like Earth and Mars. CHEOPS is backed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Swiss Space Office. It has a Ritchey–Chrétien telescope, which is the same design used in the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. However, CHEOPS is smaller than either with an aperture of just 32cm. CHEOPS launched from French Guiana early Wednesday morning after a brief delay.
Microsoft has spent years warning everyone around the world to stop using Windows XP, but there are still millions of systems running the now ancient operating system. One of those computers, inexplicably, sits on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s desk. Putin’s preference for the golden age of Windows was , which clearly shows the XP machine in the world leader’s office. The image in question is from November, taken during a meeting Putin had with the WorldSkills Union. The monitor shows what is unmistakably the Windows XP desktop. It might not have the classic Bliss wallpaper, but you can tell from the color of the taskbar that this is Microsoft’s circa 2001 OS.
Help keep your home clean this Christmas by picking up a little robotic helper to clean the floors. You can also save today on a 5TB external HDD. The Roomba 675 offers solid performance at a price that won’t break the bank. It utilizes a three-stage cleaning system to thoroughly clean your floors as it navigates your home. It also has a battery that can last up to 90 minutes, after which the robot returns to its charging station automatically. You can get one now from Amazon marked down from $299.99 to $199.99 with a clickable coupon.
Cadillac plans to rock the world Feb. 4 when it unveils the 2021 Escalade SUV with a curved, 38-inch OLED screen stretching across the instrument panel and center stack. It will be the largest screen among vehicles, excluding specialty automakers such as Byton, which reports it will have a 48-inch screen on its EV SUV. It’s not clear about the shape or the curves, since the teaser image appears to be a cloth draped over the dash with a Cadillac logo. OLED, or organic light-emitting display, is the brightest display currently available. That’s important in dealing with outside light that affects an LCD’s image quality.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it will investigate the 12th Tesla car crash where Autopilot, its semi-autonomous driver-assist, may have been involved. This one took place Dec. 7 in Norwalk, Connecticut. A 2018 Tesla Model 3 driving Interstate 95 rear-ended a parked police car early Saturday. There were no injuries to the occupants of either car, including a dog in the Tesla’s back seat. According to police, the 33-year-old driver had Autoplot activated as he drove I-95. Just before the accident, the driver said, he turned his attention to the back seat to make sure the dog was okay.
We’ve all forgotten to charge something at one time or another. JBL has a new pair of Bluetooth headphones that claim to eliminate the disappointment of an empty battery. The have a strip of solar panels on the band, allowing them to trickle charge throughout the day. JBL says a few hours outside is enough to keep the Reflect Eternal playing indefinitely. Like some other large companies, JBL has chosen to run pre-orders for the Reflect Eternal through Indiegogo. It certainly has the money to make these devices as a Samsung subsidiary. However, this way it knows the exact demand for a new product and doesn’t have to produce more than it needs for the initial launch.
Microsoft has moved with uncharacteristic speed since it announced the end of its fully custom Edge browser. The company said in late 2018 that it would move to a Chromium-based browser, designed to integrate Microsoft services instead of Google’s. After months of toil, you can try Chromium Edge right now. Microsoft says the stable version of its new browser will come as . Microsoft tried for years to pull people away from Chrome, which dominates the browser market. Microsoft even resorted to nagging Windows users with questionable warnings about Chrome that touted Edge’s battery efficiency. Still, Chrome was faster and had generally better support across the web.
