Sunday, April 3, 2022

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Tesla's deliveries increased despite supply shortages and plant closures

Posted: 02 Apr 2022 02:41 PM PDT

Tesla delivered 310,048 vehicles over the first three months of 2022, the automaker announced on Saturday. "This was an exceptionally difficult quarter due to supply chain interruptions and China Zero-Covid policy," Musk said on Twitter shortly after Tesla shared the news.

Last month saw the company suspend production at its Shanghai Gigafactory, its largest manufacturing facility, twice. Despite those hiccups, the 310,048 vehicles Tesla delivered in Q1 represent a 68 percent year-on-year increase from Q1 2021 when the company shipped approximately 184,400 cars. According to Tesla, the Model 3 and Model Y made up the majority of its deliveries in Q1 2022, with 295,324 of those cars making their way to consumers since the start of the year. Over the same time frame, the company produced 305,407 vehicles, a not insignificant feat when you consider the supply chain issues that have affected Tesla and many other automakers.  

Q1 also saw Tesla begin shipping vehicles from its $5.5 billion Gigafactory in Grenheide, Germany. The company plans to eventually produce 500,000 cars per year from the plant.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover helps scientists discover sound travels slower on Mars

Posted: 02 Apr 2022 01:09 PM PDT

Since landing on Mars more than a year ago, NASA's Perseverance Rover has used its microphones to capture the sounds of the Red Planet, including its harsh winds and the hum of Ingenuity cutting through the atmosphere. And now those recordings have helped scientists discover that sound travels differently on Mars than it does on Earth.

In a study published on Friday in the journal Nature, researchers said they determined the Red Planet's thin carbon dioxide atmosphere causes sound to travel slower on Mars, with a sound's pitch further affecting its speed. On Earth, sound typically travels at 767 miles per hour. But on Mars, scientists determined that low-pitched travel at approximately 537 miles per hour, while high-pitched ones move at about 559 miles per hour.

Were you to visit Mars, that means you would hear high-pitched sounds slightly earlier. "On Earth, the sounds from an orchestra reach you at the same speed, whether they are low or high. But imagine on Mars, if you are a little far from the stage, there will be a big delay," Sylvestre Maurice, the study's lead author, told France's AFP news agency.

Sounds also carry a shorter distance due to the planet's thin atmosphere. On Earth, they drop off at about 213 feet, whereas on Mars sounds start to falter after only 13 feet. That's something that would make it difficult to have a conversation with someone only 16 feet away from you. If you want to hear how things like birds and ocean waves would sound on Mars, NASA has put together recordings that give a sense of just how much a Martian-like atmosphere would change our perception of the world.

Apple’s ‘Prehistoric Planet’ is a dinosaur documentary narrated by David Attenborough

Posted: 02 Apr 2022 11:36 AM PDT

If you love dinosaurs (and who doesn't?), you'll want to mark May 23rd on your calendar. That's when Prehistoric Planet, a new five-part documentary series narrated by Sir David Attenborough will debut on Apple TV+. Produced by the BBC's Natural History Unit, which previously worked on Planet Earth, the show promises to tell the story of some of the dinosaurs that roamed the Earth more than 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.

It will also feature music from Hans Zimmer and visual work by MPC, the VFX unit that helped Disney create its live-action adaptions of The Jungle Book and The Lion King. Apple said the series would incorporate the latest findings from paleontologists. Among other things, expect to see an "eye-opening" look at how the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex took care of its young. All five episodes of Prehistoric Earth will premiere the week of May 23rd, with one new episode each day.

Epic brings building back to Fortnite’s casual queue

Posted: 02 Apr 2022 09:59 AM PDT

Not two weeks after Epic Games removed the feature, Building is back in Fortnite. On Saturday, Epic re-addedFortnite's classic Battle Royale mode to the game's casual queue. It now lives side-by-side with the recently introduced Zero Build mode, and you can queue for both either individually or as part of a group made up of two or more players.

Epic announced it would temporarily remove building from Fortnite at the start of Chapter Three, Season Two on March 20th. The studio's decision to do so was surprising given that the feature was what made the game stand out when Epic eventually decided to release a battle royale mode in 2017 after seeing the success of PUBG. Judging by the response to Saturday's announcement, most people weren't happy about the change, even if it was always intended to be temporary.

Russia won’t cooperate on the International Space Station until sanctions are lifted

Posted: 02 Apr 2022 08:35 AM PDT

Russia's Roscosmos will stop working with NASA and other western space agencies on the International Space Station. On early Saturday morning, Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin slammed international sanctions against Russia and said normal cooperation between the space agency and its western counterparts would only be possible after they were lifted.

"The purpose of the sanctions is to kill the Russian economy, plunge our people into despair and hunger, and bring our country to its knees. It's clear they won't succeed, but the intentions are clear." Rogozin said in a tweet spotted by Reuters. "That's why I believe that the restoration of normal relations between the partners at the International Space Station and other projects is possible only with full and unconditional removal of illegal sanctions."

Rogozin said Roscosmos would submit proposals on ending its work with NASA and other international space agencies to Russian authorities. It's unclear how the decision would affect the space station. The ISS is not owned by any single country. The US, European Union, Russia, Canada and Japan operate the station through a cooperative agreement between the countries. Roscosmos, however, is critical to the ISS. The Russian Orbital Segment handles guidance control for the entire station.

The US and many other countries imposed harsh sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th. Among other effects, those sanctions have seen average Russians lose access to many western-made services, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. They have also made it difficult for Russian businesses to cash out their earnings from online marketplaces platforms like Steam.

The ISS isn't the first joint space program to see its future thrown into uncertainty due to rising tensions between the West and Russia. In March, Roscosmos said it would not ferry OneWeb's internet satellites to space until the UK government sold its stake in the company. That same month, the European Space Agency announced it was suspending its joint ExoMars mission with Roscosmos.

Bored Ape and other major NFT Discord servers targeted by scammers

Posted: 02 Apr 2022 07:09 AM PDT

The Discord servers of popular NFT projects, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club, were targeted by scammers in the early hours of April Fools'. Some users reported losing money to the bad actors who hacked the projects' bots to post fake offers with links to their phishing websites, Motherboard reports. One of the phishing posts by a compromised Bored Ape bot read: "Oh no, our dogs are mutating. MAKC can be staked for our $APE token. Holders of MAYC + BAYC will be able to claim exclusive rewards just by simply minting and holding our mutant dogs."

If a user clicks on the link in the post, they're taken to a website where they're tricked into minting a fake NFT in exchange for Ethereum. Other versions trick victims into sending the scammers NFTs by making them think their collectible was going to be wrapped. Two wallet addresses were tied to the hacks, one of which sold a stolen Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT and then sent the other 19.85 ETH, or around $69,000 based on current exchange rates. The recipient wallet reportedly sent 61 ETH ($213,000) to a mixing service, which can obscure the origin and trail of potentially identifiable crypto coins. 

It's unclear how many people fell victim to the scams, but the projects' administrators quickly caught on and posted a warning to their fans. Bored Ape asked users not to mint anything from its Discord and clarified that it wasn't doing "any April Fools stealth mints." Nyoki Cub posted a similar warning and admitted that its "server was also compromised... due to a recent large-scale hack." It said it was able to take control of the situation within 30 minutes.

NFTs are making their way into mainstream popularity, with big-name celebs such as Justin Bieber and Madonna putting the spotlight on the digital collectibles. Schemes such as these are bound to become more as long as people keep pouring money into non-fungible tokens. 

Recommended Reading: Tracking migratory birds

Posted: 02 Apr 2022 07:00 AM PDT

The extraordinary lives of migratory birds

Fresh Air, NPR

In this recommended listening, Author Scott Weidensaul discusses how new tracking tech may help keep migratory birds alive and how one species, bar-tailed godwit, can fly over water for more than a week.

Musicians are begging fans to mask up at concerts. Here's why.

Nina Corcoran, Pitchfork

SXSW returned earlier this month, two years after being the first big music event to be canceled due to COVID-19. The festival required proof of vaccination or proof of negative test and masks in conference rooms and exhibit halls, but those rules for music venues were left to the owners of those places to decide. A lot of people got COVID just as their touring schedules started to ramp back up and many can't afford to miss shows after the last two years of missed income. 

Am I being tracked? Anti-stalking tech from Apple, Tile falls short.

Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post

By now, you've likely heard stories of things like Apple's AirTags being used to stalk people. The Washington Post took a look at the anti-stalking features Apple, Samsung and Tile offer to try to prohibit this only to find those tools still aren't good enough. 
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