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13 Oct 00:41

ACT Test Scores For US Students Drop To a 30-Year Low

by BeauHD
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: High school students' scores on the ACT college admissions test have dropped to their lowest in more than three decades, showing a lack of student preparedness for college-level coursework, according to the nonprofit organization that administers the test. Scores have been falling for six consecutive years, but the trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students in the class of 2023 whose scores were reported Wednesday were in their first year of high school when the virus reached the U.S. The average ACT composite score for U.S. students was 19.5 out of 36. Last year, the average score was 19.8. The average scores in reading, science and math all were below benchmarks the ACT says students must reach to have a high probability of success in first-year college courses. The average score in English was just above the benchmark but still declined compared to last year. About 1.4 million students in the U.S. took the ACT this year, an increase from last year. However, the numbers have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. [Janet Godwin, chief executive officer for the nonprofit ACT] said she doesn't believe those numbers will ever fully recover, partly because of test-optional admission policies. Of students who were tested, only 21% met benchmarks for success in college-level classes in all subjects. Research from the nonprofit shows students who meet those benchmarks have a 50% chance of earning a B or better and nearly a 75% chance of earning a C or better in corresponding courses. Further reading: Accounting Graduates Drop By Highest Percentage in Years

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

23 Jun 02:52

E3 2024 and 2025 aren't canceled (yet)

by Sean Buckley

The Electronic Entertainment Expo hasn't been held in person since 2019. Now, it may not be returning for 2024 or 2025 — at least not at the Los Angeles Convention Center. According to an LA City Tourism Commission planning document shared on ResetEra, the video game trade show has canceled its live event for the next two years. The document's Convention Sales data specifically notes that its data “includes E3 cancellations for 2024 & 2025."

Although the city document suggests that E3 2024 won't be hosted at the LA Convention Center, the Electronic Software Association itself seems hesitant to confirm the entire event is canceled. "ESA is currently in conversation with ESA members and other stakeholders about E3 2024 (and beyond)," the group told Engadget. "No final decisions about the events have been made at this time." 

It's unclear what this means for E3 itself. Although the Electronic Software Association hasn't hosted a live trade since the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of E3 2020, the group did put together a digital only event in 2021. Neither the in-person or digital versions of the show returned in 2022.

When the show was canceled again in 2023, ESA President and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis told GamesIndustry that the trade show may need to change to survive. "E3 will iterate to ensure it's meeting the needs of companies that want to market on this global platform." Pierre-Louis said. "That means it will iterate in how people engage with E3. We want to meet the needs of players who view this as an important platform and that's going to evolve over time."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/e3-2024-and-2025-arent-canceled-yet-222141813.html?src=rss
02 Sep 16:13

Many Developed Countries View Online Misinformation as 'Major Threat'

by msmash
Nearly three-quarters of people across 19 countries believe that the spread of false information online is a "major threat," according to a survey released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. From a report: Researchers asked 24,525 people from 19 countries with advanced economies to rate the severity of threats from climate change, infectious diseases, online misinformation, cyberattacks from other countries and the condition of the global economy. Climate change was the highest-rated concern for most countries, with a median of 75 percent of respondents saying it is a major threat. Misinformation trailed closely behind, with a median of 70 percent deeming it a major threat. The findings add to research that Pew released this year focusing on the United States. That survey showed misinformation virtually tied with cyberhacking as the top concern for Americans, with about seven in 10 people saying each is a major threat. In a sharp contrast with the other countries surveyed, the United States rated climate change the lowest threat among the available options. After several bruising years of misinformation about elections and the coronavirus pandemic, 70 percent of Americans now believe that false information spread online is a major threat. Another 26 percent believe it is a minor threat, and just 2 percent say it is not a threat.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11 Jul 05:40

Adding a tiny trap to stop chaos

by John

The tent map is a famous example of a chaotic function. We will show how a tiny modification of the tent maps retains continuity of the function but prevents chaos.

The tent map is the function f: [0, 1] → [0, 1] defined by

f(x) = \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} 2x & \mbox{if } x \leq 1/2 \\ 2 - 2x & \mbox{if } x \geq 1/2 \end{array} \right.

This map has an unstable fixed point at x0 = 2/3.  If you start exactly at x0, then you’ll stay there forever as you keep iteratively applying f. But if you start a tiny bit away from x0, you’ll move away from your starting point and bounce around throughout the interval [0, 1].

Now pick some positive ε less than 1/6 [1] and modify the function f on the interval

I =[x0 – ε, x0 + ε]

as described in [2]. To do this, we define fε to be the same as f outside the interval I. We then create a flat spot in the middle of the interval by defining fε to be x0 on

[x0 – ε/2, x0 + ε/2]

and extend fε linearly on the rest of I.

Here’s a plot of fε with ε = 0.05.

Now here’s a cobweb plot of the iterates of f0.05 starting at π – 3.

The iterates of fε always converge to x0 in finite time. If the iterates ever wander into the interval [x0 – ε/2, x0 + ε/2]  then they get trapped at x0. And because the tent map is ergodic, nearly all sequences will wander into the entrapping interval.

Here’s Python code to make the construction of fε explicit.

    def tent(x):
        if x < 0.5:
            return 2*x 
        else:
            return 2*(1 - x) 
    
    def interpolate(x, x1, y1, x2, y2):
        "Linearly interpolate with f(x1) = y1 and f(x2) = y2"
        m = (y2 - y1)/(x2 - x1)
        return y1 + m*(x - x1)
    
    def tent2(x, epsilon):
        x0 = 2/3
        if x < x0 - epsilon or x > x0 + epsilon:
            return tent(x)
    
        x1 = x0 - epsilon/2
        x2 = x0 + epsilon/2    
        
        if x > x1 and x < x2:
            return x0
        
        return interpolate(x, x1, tent(x1), x2, tent(x2))

Revenge of floating point

In theory, almost all starting points should lead to sequences that converge to x0 in finite time. But it took a fair amount of trial and error to come up the plot above that illustrates this. For most starting points that I tried, the sequence of iterates converged to 0.

Now 0 is an unstable fixed point. This is easy to see: if x ever gets close to 0, the next iterate is 2x, twice as far from 0. Iterates keep getting doubled until they're larger than 1/2. How can this be?

Computers can only represent fractions with some power of 2 in the denominator. And I believe the tent map (not the modified tent map with a trap) will always converge to 0 when starting with a floating point number.

Here are the iterates of the tent map starting at (the floating point representation of) π - 3:

0 0.28318530717958623
1 0.5663706143591725
2 0.8672587712816551
3 0.26548245743668986
...
29 0.13050460815429688
30 0.26100921630859375
31 0.5220184326171875
32 0.955963134765625
33 0.08807373046875
34 0.1761474609375
35 0.352294921875
36 0.70458984375
37 0.5908203125
38 0.818359375
39 0.36328125
40 0.7265625
41 0.546875
42 0.90625
43 0.1875
44 0.375
45 0.75
46 0.5
47 1.0
48 0.0

Note that the sequence doesn't sneak up on 0: it leaps from 1 to 0. So this does not contract the argument above that points near zero are repelled away.

[1] Why less than 1/6? So we stay in the same branch of the definition of f. The distance from x0 to 1/2 is 1/6.

[2] Achim Clausing, Ducci Matrices. American Mathematical Monthly, December 2018.

The post Adding a tiny trap to stop chaos first appeared on John D. Cook.
29 May 05:58

AI Attempts Converting Python Code to C++

by Donald Papp

[Alexander] created codex_py2cpp as a way of experimenting with Codex, an AI intended to translate natural language into code. [Alexander] had slightly different ideas, however, and created codex_py2cpp as a way to play with the idea of automagically converting Python into C++. It’s not really intended to create robust code conversions, but as far as experiments go, it’s pretty neat.

The program works by reading a Python script as an input file, setting up a few parameters, then making a request to OpenAI’s Codex API for the conversion. It then attempts to compile the result. If compilation is successful, then hopefully the resulting executable actually works the same way the input file did. If not? Well, learning is fun, too. If you give it a shot, maybe start simple and don’t throw it too many curveballs.

Codex is an interesting idea, and this isn’t the first experiment we’ve seen that plays with the concept of using machine learning in this way. We’ve seen a project that generates Linux commands based on a verbal description, and our own [Maya Posch] took a close look at GitHub Copilot, a project high on promise and concept, but — at least at the time — considerably less so when it came to actual practicality or usefulness.

08 Apr 00:01

The 2022 Hugo Award Nominations Are Here

by Linda Codega

Today the Hugos released its list of nominations for a variety of awards in science fiction and fantasy excellence, and each year, the Hugos get closer and closer to achieving real diversity and inclusion within the nominees. Standout categories that include some incredibly deserved nods are Short-Form Editor, Fan…

Read more...

25 Feb 21:55

Better Kerf Cuts With A CNC Bit

by Matthew Carlson
bending the wood

Bending wood is a complex affair. Despite the curves inherent in trees, most wood does not naturally want to bend. There are a few tricks you can use to bend it however, such kerf cutting and steaming. [JAR made] has a clever hack to make better kerf cuts using a CNC bit.

Typically kerfs are cut with a table saw or a miter saw set to trench. Many laser-cut box generations use kerfs to allow the piece to bend. The downside is that the cuts are straight cuts that are the same thickness throughout. This means that when the wood is bent into its shape, there are large gaps that need to be filled if you want the wood to look continuous. The hack comes in by using a router (not the networking kind) with a 6.2-degree taper. This means that the kerfs that it makes are angled. By placing the right amount of cuts and spacing them out equally, you get a perfectly rounded curve. To help with that even spacing, he whipped up a quick jig to make the cuts repeatable. Once all the cuts were made, the time to bend came, and [JAR made] used some hot water with fabric softener to assist with the bend. His shelves turned out wonderfully.

He makes the important statement that this CNC bit isn’t designed with this use case in mine and the chances of it snapping or breaking are high. Taking precautions to be safe is key if you try to reproduce this technique. Perhaps you can bust out some framing lumber and bend it into some beautiful furniture.

06 Dec 16:11

Comic: The Moisture Within

by Tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho)
New Comic: The Moisture Within
31 Oct 00:20

Roblox says its extra-long outage can't be blamed on Chipotle

by Jon Fingas

It hasn't been a good weekend for Roblox players. The Vergenotes that the gaming platform has been down since 7PM Eastern on October 28th (nearly two days as of this writing), with no resolution in sight. It's not clear what prompted the failure beyond an "internal system issue," but Roblox Corporation stressed that it wasn't due to a Chipotle promo that launched just half an hour earlier. This wasn't linked to "any specific experiences or partnerships," Roblox explained.

The promo offers a total $1 million in free Chipotle burritos to players as part of a Halloween event. That could prompt a spike in activity on Roblox, but it's not likely to disrupt a game with over 40 million daily users.

The outage certainly won't help the platform, though. Over half of Roblox players are pre-teens, and its surge during the early pandemic helped fuel high-profile concerts and platform-exclusive games. Failures like this could easily anger kids (and their families) that spend much of their time in Roblox's virtual universe. While the downtime likely won't hurt the platform's long-term reputation, the company clearly can't afford many incidents like this.

02 Aug 16:39

VTOL Tailsitter Flies With Quadcopter Control Software

by Danie Conradie

Quadcopters are great for maneuverability and slow, stable flight, but it comes at the cost of efficiency. [Peter Ryseck]’s Mini QBIT quadrotor biplane brings in some of the efficiency of fixed-wing flight, without all the complexity usually associated with VTOL aircraft.

The Mini QBIT is just a 3″ mini quadcopter with a pair of wings mounted below the motors, turning it into a “tailsitter” VTOL aircraft. The wings and nosecone attach to the 3D printed frame using magnets, which allows them to pop off in a crash. There is no need for control surfaces on the wings since all the required control is done by the motors. The QBIT is based on a research project [Peter] was involved in at the University of Maryland. The 2017 paper states that the test aircraft used 68% less power in forward flight than hovering.

Getting the flight controller to do smooth transitions from hover to forward flight can be quite tricky, but the QBIT does this using a normal quadcopter flight controller running Betaflight. The quadcopter hovers in self-leveling mode (angle mode) and switches to acro mode for forward flight. However, as the drone pitches over for forward flight, the roll axis becomes the yaw axis and the yaw axis becomes the reversed roll axis. To compensate for this, the controller set up to swap these two channels at the flip of a switch. For FPV flying, the QBIT uses two cameras for the two different modes, each with its own on-screen display (OSD). The flight controller is configured to use the same mode switch to change the camera feed and OSD.

[Peter] is selling the parts and STL files for V2 on his website, but you can download the V1 files for free. However, the control setup is really the defining feature of this project, and can be implemented by anyone on their own builds.

For another simple VTOL project, check out [Nicholas Rehm]’s F-35 which runs on his dRehmFlight flight control software.

 

13 Jul 03:42

Intruder-Blasting Sprinkler Is an AI-Powered Substitute for an Old Man Yelling at Kids to Get Off His Lawn

by Andrew Liszewski

Growing grass is a delicate process that requires diligent watering and a lack of people stomping across your lawn all day. Ryder from YouTube’s Ryder Calm Down channel had the former but struggled with the latter until he built an AI-powered sprinkler to scare the neighbors off his lawn.

Read more...

22 May 00:35

Iran Uses Crypto Mining To Lessen Impact of Sanctions, Study Finds

by BeauHD
Around 4.5% of all bitcoin mining takes place in Iran, allowing the country to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies that can be used to buy imports and lessen the impact of sanctions, a new study has found. At its current level of mining, Iran's bitcoin production would amount to revenues close $1 billion a year, according to figures from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Reuters reports: The United States imposes an almost total economic embargo on Iran, including a ban on all imports including those from the country's oil, banking and shipping sectors. While, exact figures are "very challenging to determine," Elliptic estimates are based on data collected from bitcoin miners by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance up to April 2020, and statements from Iran's state-controlled power generation company in January that up to 600 MW of electricity was being consumed by miners. "Iran has recognised that bitcoin mining represents an attractive opportunity for a sanctions-hit economy suffering from a shortage of hard cash, but with a surplus of oil and natural gas," the study finds. The electricity being used by miners in Iran would require the equivalent of around 10 million barrels of crude oil each year to generate, around 4% of total Iranian oil exports in 2020, according to the study. "The Iranian state is therefore effectively selling its energy reserves on the global markets, using the Bitcoin mining process to bypass trade embargoes," the study reads. "Iran-based miners are paid directly in Bitcoin, which can then be used to pay for imports - allowing sanctions on payments through Iranian financial institutions to be circumvented."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

12 May 21:15

Otters Deliver a High Power Stationary Audio Experience

by Kerry Scharfglass

Our favorite raft of otters is back at it again with another display of open source audio prowess as they bring us the OtterCastAmp, the newest member of the OtterCast family of open source audio multitools. If you looked at the previous entry in the series – the OtterCastAudio – and thought it was nice but lacking in the pixel count or output power departments then this is the device for you.

The Amp is fundamentally a very similar device to the OtterCastAudio. It shares the same Allwinner S3 Cortex-A application processor and runs the same embedded Linux build assembled with Buildroot. In turn it offers the same substantial set of features and audio protocol support. It can be targeted by Snapcast, Spotify Connect or AirPlay if those are your tools of choice, or act as a generic PulseAudio sink for your Linux audio needs. And there’s still a separate line in so it source audio as well.

One look at the chassis and it’s clear that unlike the OtterCastAudio this is not a simple Chromecast Audio replacement. The face of the OtterCastAmp is graced by a luscious 340×800 LCD for all the cover art your listening ear can enjoy. And the raft of connectors in the back (and mountain of inductors on the PCBA) make it clear that this is a fully fledged class D amplifier, driving up to 120W of power across four channels. Though it may drive a theoretical 30W or 60W peak across its various outputs, with a maximum supply power of 100W (via USB-C power delivery, naturally) the true maximum output will be a little lower. Rounding out the feature set is an Ethernet jack and some wonderfully designed copper PCB otters to enjoy inside and out.

As before, it looks like this design is very close to ready for prime time but not quite there yet, so order at your own risk. Full fab files and some hints are linked in the repo mentioned above. If home fabrication is a little much it looks like there might be a small manufacturing run of these devices coming soon.

06 Mar 09:14

Open-DIP Surgery Cuts Retro Chips Down to Size

by Dan Maloney

At least by today’s standards, some of the early chips were really, really big. They may have been revolutionary and they certainly did shrink the size of electronic devices, but integrating a 40-pin DIP into a modern design can be problematic. The solution: cut off all the extra plastic and just work with the die within.

When [Redherring32] alerted us to this innovation, he didn’t include much information — just a couple of photos of the mod and a few brief words about the target chip, an RP2A03 from the glorious NES 8-bit days. Living as it does within the relatively enormous DIP-40 package, it stood to take up far too much space in compact, more modern designs. So the hapless chip fell under the knife, or rather the Dremel tool diamond cutoff wheel. [Redherring32] left a generous boundary around the die. Cutting through the package left the lead frame of the die exposed enough to solder 34AWG (0.02 mm²) magnet wire to bring the leads out for connection. We’d have worried that vibration from the cutting process would have damaged the silicon, but the video in the tweet tells otherwise.

For now, the liberated die is connected to a piece of perfboard, which ironically enough actually makes it larger than the original chip. But this is a proof-of-concept, and given that the operation shrunk the footprint of the chip by about 93%, it should enable some interesting applications. Perhaps a smaller, better version of [Redherring32]’s OpenTendo is in the works.

09 Feb 20:29

Apple fixes a bug that prevented some older MacBook Pros from charging

by Igor Bonifacic
One week after pushing macOS 11.2 to the public, Apple has released 11.2.1. Spotted by Apple Insider, the update includes a single change, but it's an important one if you own an older MacBook Pro. Some people with 2016 and 2017 models recently found...
07 Dec 15:14

These Micro Mice have Macro Control

by Kerry Scharfglass

Few things fascinate a simple Hackaday writer as much as a tiny robot. We’ve been watching [Keri]’s utterly beguiling micromouse builds for a while now, but the fifth version of the KERISE series (machine translation) of ‘bots takes the design to new heights.

A family of mice v1 (largest) to v5 (smallest)

For context, micromouse is a competition where robots complete to solve mazes of varying pattern but standardized size by driving through them with no guidance or compute offboard of the robot itself. Historically the mazes were 3 meter squares composed of a 16 x 16 grid of cells, each 180mm on a side and 50mm tall, which puts bounds on the size of the robots involved.

What are the hallmarks of a [Keri] micromouse design? Well this is micromouse, so everything is pretty small. But [Keri]’s attention to detail in forming miniaturized mechanisms and 3D structures out of PCBs really stands out. They’ve been building micromouse robots since 2016, testing new design features with each iteration. Versions three and four had a wild suction fan to improve traction for faster maneuvering, but the KERISE v5 removes this to emphasize light weight and small size. The resulting vehicle is a shocking 30mm x 32mm! We’re following along through a translation to English, but we gather that [Keri] feels that there is still plenty of space on the main PCBA now that the fan is gone.

The KERISE v5 front end

The processor is a now familiar ESP32-PICO-D4, though the wireless radios are unused so far. As far as environmental sensing is concerned the v5 has an impressive compliment given its micro size. For position sensing there are custom magnetic encoders and a 3 DOF IMU. And for sensing the maze there are four side-looking IR emitter/receiver pairs and one forward-looking VL6180X laser rangefinder for measurements out to 100 or 150mm. Most of these sensors are mounted on little PCB ‘blades’ which are double sided (check out how the PCB shields the IR emitter from it’s receiver!) and soldered into slots perpendicular to the PCBA that makes up the main chassis. It goes without saying that the rest of the frame is built up of custom 3D printed parts and gearboxes.

If you’d like to build a KERISE yourself, [Keri] has what looks to be complete mechanical, electrical, and firmware sources for v1, v2, and v3 on their Github. To see the KERISE v5 dance on a spinning sheet of paper, check out the video after the break. You don’t want to miss it!

24 Nov 06:30

Every Day, The Chiefs Write The Book (On Epic Comebacks)

by A FiveThirtyEight Chat

sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): Week 11 of this NFL season was a doozy. We saw yet another quarterback lost to injury, a touchdown catch that truly defied physics and two matches between playoff contenders that each needed overtime.

But let’s start in Sin City, where the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Las Vegas Raiders in a seesaw affair. Patrick Mahomes made another epic comeback look way too easy, while Derek Carr stared us all down from the sideline:

The Chiefs needed just one minute and 15 seconds to drive the field for the game-winning touchdown. That would be stunning for most teams … but for this era of the Chiefs, I think we would have been more surprised if they hadn’t come back and scored. How do they keep doing this?

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor): What was weird is that even though we all sorta knew that Mahomes was going to win the game, he had never done that before. How can that be?

neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): Yeah, Mike, I was stunned by that stat as well. Technically, he missed it by 44 seconds in last year’s Super Bowl.

Salfino: I guess he’s so prolific that he doesn’t usually need late comebacks.

neil: And they score too fast! He’s breaking our stat-keeping.

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): Last postseason, when the Chiefs had all those comebacks, the deficits were large fairly early. I don’t think that makes them any less spectacular though.

Mahomes is incomparable. On Sunday night, 63 percent of the plays the Chiefs ran were a success. It’s unfair.

neil: Agreed. This is the advantage of having the best QB — and best passing attack — on the planet. No lead is ever safe against them.

Although credit to Carr and the Raiders for hanging in there almost punch for punch. They just left too much time for K.C. to work with.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Right. I have heard some pundits say that you can’t win a boat race with Kansas City. That may be true, but it’s still your best shot. And man, it makes for good football.

Salfino: Having both Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill is unfair.

sara.ziegler: It was fun to see Carr play the Raiders into position to win.

Salfino: Carr was great. I think a big play in the game was the Raiders’ third-and-1 incompletion toward the end of the second quarter that may have had interference in the end zone. Instead of getting the pass interference call, the Raiders got a bench penalty for complaining about the non-call. And then they kicked a field goal: A field goal against the Chiefs definitely gets you 3 points closer to losing.

sara.ziegler: What’s the ceiling for the Raiders? They’ve been so inconsistent all season. Can they make noise in the playoffs?

Salfino: I think Jon Gruden is really coaching them up, but their talent level is just not there, especially on defense. They can’t cover or rush.

neil: We give them a 1 percent Super Bowl shot, haha. But Carr is having a really good season — they’re one of those all-offense/no-defense teams that maybe could get hot. A few teams out there fit that description.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I do these similarity scores each week, and since Week 5, Carr has had the easiest strength of schedule by that metric, meaning the passing defenses he faces allow completions where he tends to throw them. I think that explains some of his success this season, which has been the best in his career according to ESPN’s Total Quarterback Rating.

neil: That’s really interesting, Josh. He’s literally taking what the defense is giving him.

Salfino: It’s the opposite of the Raiders way, which used to be to “take what we want.”

neil: Just win (heat-mapped areas of the field as defined by advanced metrics), baby.

sara.ziegler: Hahahaha

Let’s turn to the Tennessee Titans, who went to Baltimore and left with an overtime win. The Titans have been another up-and-down team. Did this game play out the way you guys expected it to?

neil: Not at all! I couldn’t believe the Ravens let that slip away, and I wasn’t sure the Titans were a team built for that kind of comeback — at least not against that defense.

Salfino: Just make Derrick Henry the Mayor of Baltimore already. He owns the place.

I was not surprised by this game. The Ravens are not very good now. They have no passing game.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Henry gave the Ravens yet another L, as Seth Walder pointed out:

sara.ziegler: I love that so much. Next up should be players spelling out whole words with their plays.

neil: The player tracking version of this.

joshua.hermsmeyer: LOL

sara.ziegler: Exactly. Make it so!

Salfino: What was going on during the pregame? Is there an unwritten rule about not congregating on the other team’s logo? This has famously caused ruckuses before.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I have no idea what John Harbaugh was up to. He barely acknowledged Titans coach Mike Vrabel after the game.

Salfino: I think the Ravens are just frustrated. They’ve been so close for years and now are not close anymore.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think this one hurt a lot for the Ravens. They spent their entire offseason loading up on the defense instead of getting Lamar Jackson another weapon in the passing game, and then proceeded to give up three long drives, including the game winner in overtime.

neil: What the heck is going on with Lamar this season? (Or maybe the question is: What went on LAST season that they can’t recapture?)

Salfino: Neil, I think that Lamar can’t throw outside the numbers and teams know it and now are clogging the middle, which also hurts his running. I don’t think the Ravens and Lamar have a Plan B.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Lamar’s touchdown to Mark Andrews was a beautiful pass outside the left numbers. It’s not an inability to throw there, it’s his weapons and the passing scheme.

Salfino: Basically, though, our eyes have not been lying. Lamar is a very limited passer.

joshua.hermsmeyer: For some value of limited, I agree. But a good scheme and surrounding talent can emphasize what he does well, which is throw deep and over the middle off of play-action while using the pressure he puts on a defense with his legs to help his receivers get separation.

neil: For what it’s worth, his top three targets from last year are exactly the same as this year — Andrews, Marquise Brown, Willie Snead, in that order. But last year, Lamar had a 9.0 percent TD rate and 5.4 percent sack rate. Those have basically flipped around this year: 5.4 percent TDs, 8.0 percent sacks.

sara.ziegler: I guess it’s hard for me to write off this team just yet. I still think the Ravens can do some damage in the playoffs, if they can put the pieces together like we’ve seen them do in the past.

Salfino: Right now they are out of the playoffs, right? And they face Pittsburgh on Thursday on the road? Yikes.

sara.ziegler: They’re tied for that seventh slot right now. But they still have games against the Cowboys, Browns, Jaguars, Giants and Bengals, so…

Salfino: Good point. They’re behind in tiebreakers now, but they’ll win at least four of those games, I have to believe.

neil: The Steelers being as good as they are is also a problem for Baltimore. The Ravens have almost no chance of winning the division now and must get in via wild card.

sara.ziegler: Would we even be that surprised to see them beat the Steelers this week? The Ravens really should have won their first matchup.

Salfino: I’d be surprised. Not shocked though.

joshua.hermsmeyer: If only they could rely on their defense, smh.

sara.ziegler: Let’s talk about the other great overtime game on Sunday, in which the Indianapolis Colts beat the Green Bay Packers. It wasn’t always pretty: Indy’s last series in regulation was just about a textbook example of how to throw away a game. The Colts were flagged six times in 30 seconds!

But I was impressed by the Colts defense against an obviously very good Aaron Rodgers and company.

neil: Nice comeback win for Old Man Rivers, too.

Salfino: It was a weird game in that the Packers had no business being up by 14 points, but they were — and usually that’s “Murder, She Wrote” for their opponents.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Green Bay’s TD putting them up 28-14 to end the half off a pass interference call had to have them feeling like they had this game in the bag. The Packers scored just 3 points in the second half, but it was also a pretty spectacular collapse by the Green Bay defense.

sara.ziegler: And then Indy had to feel like they had it sewn up with two minutes left, after getting a first down on fourth-and-long. So maybe it’s right that the game went to overtime after all.

Salfino: I feel like I’m underrating the Colts’ chances. They outpass their opponents (according to net yards per attempt) pretty significantly.

neil: They seem to be gaining steam, with that convincing win over Tennessee and now this comeback against Green Bay. Rivers didn’t look great to start the season, but he has been playing better of late as well.

Salfino: They need someone that defenses need to worry about. I think rookie Michael Pittman Jr. could be that guy, but they threw him only three passes on Sunday. (He caught all three, for 66 yards.)

sara.ziegler: I’m still not sure that Rivers can or should be trusted.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think Rivers’s play probably explains it. Even the venerable Nick Saban has admitted that offense beats defense. Heady times.

Salfino: I see no difference now between Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger besides Roethlisberger’s ridiculous receiving talent.

By the way …

“TAY-SOM, TAY-SOM TAY-SOM!”

sara.ziegler: Ugh

Salfino: How about some Tay?

neil: Smh

Salfino: I love it when all of fantasy Twitter has to eat crow.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think we need to take a *slightly* longer view here, Mike. Happy for Sean Payton and the Saints on their win though.

Salfino: I’m workshopping “The Saints are better with Hill,” Josh.

neil: On the one hand, it’s one game, and the Falcons are nobody’s idea of a dominating defense. But maybe that Payton guy also knows a little about football, idk.

Salfino: Seriously, I’m seeing the 1990 Giants with Drew Brees as Phil Simms and Hill as Jeff Hostetler.

joshua.hermsmeyer: If Taysom had a porn ‘stache, there would be no stopping him.

Salfino: Brees has not been that good anymore, I think we all agree. Hill was hyper-efficient on Sunday and threw the ball great. He provides another dimension with his running. And like Simms in 1990, we have no idea when Brees will be back. (Eleven broken ribs seems bad.)

neil: I love that you are legitimately trying to make this a thing.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Hill skipped a short pass in the flat yesterday. There’s still some work to do.

neil: Yeah. Hill’s QBR in that one revelatory game was 14 points lower than Brees’s mark for the season. But it WAS much higher than Jameis’s!

Salfino: I hated gimmicky Taysom, but this is real now. Michael Thomas also dropped a perfect pass, so we’re even. Hill clearly threw the ball better than anyone had a right to believe. And he passed Walter Payton on the all-time passing list!

neil: Sara and I were stunned to learn that, before Sunday, Walter Payton had nearly twice as many career pass attempts as Taysom Hill.

Salfino: We laughed when Payton compared rookie Alvin Kamara to Marshall Faulk, and we’re laughing at Payton when he compares Hill to Steve Young. But Payton is laughing last.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Payton is a real one.

sara.ziegler: LOLOL

Salfino: I said last week that Payton is a bored genius, like when peak Elvis Costello recorded a country-western album of cover songs. It was good! Let Payton have fun.

neil: idk, I think the Saints will be “Almost Blue” with Taysom at some point, and they will “Get Happy” when Brees returns.

We have reached my Elvis Costello reference quota for the day.

Salfino: Neil, you are a god, officially.

neil: I am only the humble Delivery Man.

Salfino: The King of America!

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

20 Oct 16:14

Portrait Light effects in Google Photos come to older Pixel phones

by Jon Fingas
You don’t have to buy a Pixel 4a 5G or Pixel 5 to take advantage of Google’s latest portrait wizardry. Android Police has discovered that Google Photos’ new Portrait Light feature is rolling out to older Pixel phones dating as far back as the Pixel 2...
14 Oct 15:46

Spotify opens its music library to DIY podcasters

by Billy Steele
If you’ve ever wished podcast episodes were easier to navigate through, Spotify is working on a new format that does just that. Starting today, the company is testing shows that are organized like playlists. Instead of one track that plays for each e...
21 Sep 15:29

Conheça o Córtex, sistema de vigilância do governo que integra de placa de carro a dados de emprego

by Aiuri Rebello

Sem alarde, o Ministério da Justiça está expandindo uma das maiores ferramentas de vigilância e controle de que se tem notícia no Brasil. Trata-se do Córtex, uma tecnologia de inteligência artificial que usa a leitura de placas de veículos por milhares de câmeras viárias espalhadas por rodovias, pontes, túneis, ruas e avenidas país afora para rastrear alvos móveis em tempo real. 

O Córtex também possui acesso em poucos segundos a diversos bancos de dados com informações sigilosas e sensíveis de cidadãos e empresas, como a Rais, a Relação Anual de Informações Sociais, do Ministério da Economia. A poucos cliques, oficiais podem ter acesso a dados cadastrais e trabalhistas que todas as empresas têm sobre seus funcionários, incluindo RG, CPF, endereço, dependentes, salário e cargo. 

Em tese, é uma ferramenta poderosa de combate ao crime. Na prática, o sistema pode ser usado para monitoramento e vigilância de cidadãos, organizações da sociedade civil, movimentos sociais, lideranças políticas e manifestantes, em uma escala sem precedentes. 

O Ministério da Justiça, oficialmente, nega que o sistema seja integrado à base de dados do Ministério da Economia. Mas não é o que mostra um vídeo enviado ao Intercept por uma fonte anônima.

Na gravação, feita em abril deste ano, o capitão da Polícia Militar de São Paulo Eduardo Fernandes Gonçalves explica como usar a ferramenta. Desde 2018 cedido pelo governo de São Paulo à Seopi, a Secretaria de Operações Integradas da Secretaria Nacional de Segurança Pública do Ministério da Justiça, Fernandes demonstra a facilidade em se cruzar informações a partir de um registro de placa de carro. A Rais está entre as bases de dados da demonstração.

“O que é interessante aqui? Que, com base no CNPJ, eu recupero a relação de todos os funcionários que trabalham hoje na empresa”, diz Fernandes na apresentação. “Cruzando essas informações aqui com as bases de CPFs, que os senhores também terão à disposição, dá para ter uma relação bem rápida de onde essa pessoa mora”. 

Os agentes conseguem a partir da placa do carro saber toda a sua movimentação pela cidade, com quem você se encontrou, quem te acompanhou nos deslocamentos e quem te visitou. Também podem cruzar esse histórico com informações pessoais e dados de emprego e salários, incluindo boletins de ocorrência e passagens pela polícia. 

No vídeo, o que se vê é uma ferramenta poderosa que está à disposição de milhares de pessoas das forças de segurança e setores de inteligência dos governos federal, estaduais e até municipais, tudo sem critérios claros de controle sobre seu uso. A fonte que enviou o vídeo ao Intercept, que não se identificou por medo de retaliações, estima que cerca de 10 mil servidores tenham acesso ao sistema. 

A Seopi, que desenvolveu o Córtex, era um setor do Ministério da Justiça praticamente desconhecido até julho, quando a existência de um dossiê de inteligência contra policiais e professores ligados a movimentos antifascistas produzido ali veio a público. O diretor de Inteligência da Seopi, Gilson Libório, um dos responsáveis diretos tanto pelo Córtex quanto pelo dossiê secreto, foi exonerado depois que o caso virou um escândalo e passou a ser investigado pelo Ministério Público Federal. Em decisão plenária, os ministros do STF decidiram mandar o ministério suspender a produção de dossiês por motivações políticas. Mas o Córtex continua em expansão.

O sistema foi usado pela Seopi nas cinco cidades-sede da Copa América no ano passado, nas eleições e no Enem de 2018. Hoje conta com pelo 6 mil câmeras, de acordo com declarações do ex-ministro da Justiça, Sergio Moro, em cuja gestão foi implantada a tecnologia.

Quem, quando e onde em dois segundos

No sistema, quando um “alvo móvel” é cadastrado e passa por uma câmera com capacidade de leitura de placas, leva dois segundos para os agentes de inteligência ou policiais interessados serem avisados até por push no app do celular. A partir daí, é possível realizar uma série de tarefas: continuar monitorando o alvo, mandar o policial mais próximo tentar abordá-lo ou cruzar as informações do veículo e seu dono com diversas outras à disposição do governo federal. 

No vídeo enviado ao Intercept, Fernandes, o PM escalado para o treinamento, deixa clara a facilidade em operar o sistema e cruzar os dados. Tudo pode ser feito direto pelos agentes, antes de qualquer autorização judicial.

O vídeo mostra que são acessíveis com o Córtex bancos de dados do Denatran, o Departamento Nacional de Trânsito; o Sinesp, Sistema Nacional de Informações de Segurança Pública; o Depen, Departamento Penitenciário Nacional; o cadastro nacional de CPFs; o cadastro nacional de foragidos; o de boletins de ocorrência; e o banco nacional de perfis genéticos; além do Alerta Brasil da Polícia Rodoviária Federal e do Sinivem, o Sistema Integrado Nacional de Identificação de Veículos em Movimento. 

Questionado, o ministério da Justiça negou que o Cortex tenha acesso à Rais, a base de dados do ministério da Economia. Não é o que se vê no vídeo de uma hora, um minuto e 48 segundos. Ali, Fernandes dá até um exemplo: com a ajuda do Córtex, ele acessa todas as informações dos funcionários da concessionária do aeroporto de Viracopos, em Campinas, diz quantos funcionários a empresa tem e começa a esmiuçar alguns nomes. 

Na gravação, ele abre uma planilha com todos os funcionários da empresa – com dados com CPFs e datas de nascimento –, e afirma ser possível saber quais deles transitaram pela cidade de Guarulhos no dia 10 de janeiro. 

Funcionário público do governo de São Paulo cedido para o Ministério da Justiça, Fernandes trabalha desde pelo menos 2018 na área de inteligência do governo. Lá, trabalha na diretoria de tecnologia, onde recebe mais de R$3 mil acrescidos ao seu salário de policial para participar de um “grupo de trabalho responsável por elaborar propostas de soluções tecnológicas”. Nas contas do governo federal, é um servidor “mobilizado”. Nas redes sociais, é um fã incondicional do presidente Bolsonaro.

Na época das eleições, o PM ostentou até uma foto ao lado do então candidato de extrema direita. Pouco depois, ele trabalharia na área de inteligência do governo.

Na época das eleições, o PM ostentou até uma foto ao lado do então candidato de extrema direita. Pouco depois, ele trabalharia na área de inteligência do governo.

Foto: Reprodução/Facebook

“Jogando aqui, fazendo a consulta, tem uma placa aqui, ele pertence a um funcionário da empresa que administra o aeroporto, e transitou em Guarulhos nesse dia”, diz o PM no vídeo, mostrando detalhes do deslocamento do funcionário, que inclui avenidas, sentido e horário. “Às 20 horas ele tava no sentido bairro-centro, então ele tava voltando”, diz Fernandes. “Aí vai a criatividade. Joga a placa do carro, levanta itinerário, quem tava junto, levanta. Ou melhor, pega a placa do carro, vai pro CPF do proprietário, vai pra Rais, vê onde trabalhava, vê quem trabalhou junto”, disse.

Os dados dos alvos ficam armazenados por dez anos e o índice de acerto nas leituras é de 92%, segundo a demonstração em vídeo da tecnologia.  

De acordo com a fonte anônima que enviou o material ao Intercept, cerca de 10 mil pessoas da Abin, a Agência Brasileira de Informação, ministério da Justiça, PRF, PF, PMs estaduais, Polícia Civil e até guardas municipais possuem acesso ao sistema. Questionado, o Ministério da Justiça não confirmou nem desmentiu.

No tutorial, Fernandes afirma que todos os movimentos dentro do Córtex ficam registrados e são auditáveis. “Se houver algum tipo de desvio nesse uso, o profissional que fez isso vai sofrer as consequências do cadastro indevido”, alerta o agente no vídeo. Apesar disso, ele não explica que consequências seriam essas e quem fiscaliza o uso do sistema pelos milhares de usuários com acesso simultâneo. Na prática, a operação do Córtex e o próprio trabalho da Seopi não possuem regras claras e estão cercados de sigilo. 

cortex-b

Ilustração: Felipe Mayerle para o Intercept Brasil

Integração nacional

O embrião do que viria a se tornar o Córtex surgiu ainda no governo Dilma Rousseff, com a criação do Sinesp, Sistema Nacional de Informações de Segurança Pública, Prisionais e Sobre Drogas. A iniciativa pretendia unir em um único sistema informações de bancos de dados estaduais como boletins de ocorrência, veículos com alerta de furto e roubo, presos e foragidos. 

Pouco antes a Copa do Mundo de 2014, o governo federal lançou o Centro Integrado de Comando e Controle Nacional, que reunia representantes e informações das secretarias de segurança pública das cidades-sede do evento e imagens em tempo real de câmeras viárias e de segurança espalhadas por estas cidades. A principal preocupação do governo era a eventual ação de grupos terroristas, crime organizado e manifestações que colocassem em risco o evento como as que aconteceram no ano anterior.

Quem não cumpre fica sem o repasse de recursos federais para a área de segurança pública.

Já em 2015, um decreto da presidente sistematizou, ampliou e oficializou o uso do Alerta Brasil — criado pela PRF em 2013, também em meio aos investimentos em segurança pública para o mundial de futebol da Fifa. 

Em 2018, já no governo do presidente Michel Temer, foi aprovada a lei que criou o Susp. A partir dali, ficou estabelecido o compartilhamento com a Secretaria de Segurança Pública do Ministério da Justiça de uma série de bancos de dados até então separados das secretarias de segurança pública dos estados. Quem não cumpre fica sem o repasse de recursos federais para a área de segurança pública.

Até o final do ano passado, de acordo com informações da PRF, pelo menos 12 estados compartilhavam suas câmeras com o Córtex: Santa Catarina, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Goiás, Distrito Federal, Rondônia, Acre, Amazonas, Roraima e Amapá. Destes, as secretarias de segurança pública de RJ, SC, AP, AC, GO, MT e RR e DF estavam conectadas com o Córtex.

Além dos governos estaduais existem parcerias — e acesso às câmeras — direto com os municípios. 

No final de 2017, por exemplo, a Prefeitura de Atibaia, em São Paulo, anunciou que suas câmeras viárias leitoras de placas passariam a fazer parte do Alerta Brasil, sistema de monitoramento de placas criado pela Polícia Rodoviária Federal em 2013. 

Andre Mendonca, Brazil's new minister of justice, center, applauds during an inauguration ceremony with Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's president, at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, on Wednesday, April 29, 2020. Medonca is taking over after Sergio Moro quit the post following Bolsonaro's firing of the federal police chief. Photographer: Andres Borges/Bloomberg via Getty Images

O ministro da Justiça, André Mendonça, durante sua posse após a saída de Moro. A Seopi foi criada em 2019, mas com Mendonça ganhou contornou políticos.

Foto: Andres Borges/Bloomberg via Getty Images

O braço de vigilância do ministério da Justiça

O Alerta Brasil foi uma das tecnologias precursoras do Córtex. Em setembro do ano passado, o então ministro da Justiça, Sergio Moro, disse no Twitter que os dois sistemas estavam completamente integrados. 

“A unificação dos sistemas de monitoramento viário Alerta Brasil 3.0 da PRF e Cortex da SEOPI, ambos do MJSP, levará à redução de custos e a criação de um sistema integrado com seis mil pontos de monitoramento no país”, afirmou Moro. “Às vezes, integrar exige só olhar para quem está do seu lado”. Hoje, inúmeras cidades fazem parte do sistema, que recebe também as imagens de concessionárias de rodovias estaduais, vias urbanas e rodovias federais.

Questionado, o Ministério da Justiça não informou o número exato de parcerias com governos estaduais e municipais para o uso da ferramenta. Sobre isso, disse apenas que “é importante ressaltar que o sistema está sendo desenvolvido com o trabalho de técnicos do Ministério da Justiça e Segurança Pública, além das contribuições dos usuários dos estados que aos poucos são inseridos no contexto do sistema”. E que o custo mensal da infraestrutura necessária para suportar o Córtex é R$ 30 mil. 

A Seopi, braço de inteligência do Ministério da Justiça hoje responsável pelo sistema, foi criada no início da gestão de Sergio Moro no Ministério da Justiça. O decreto número 9.662, editado pelo presidente Jair Bolsonaro em seu primeiro dia de mandato, atribui à secretaria a produção de serviços de inteligência. Assim, a Seopi age de maneira análoga a outros órgãos de inteligência como a Abin, a Agência Brasileira de Inteligência; o GSI, Gabinete de Segurança Institucional; e o Centro de Inteligência do Exército, o CIE. E, assim como eles, não são obrigados a passar por um controle externo do Ministério Público, congresso ou qualquer instância da justiça. 

‘Não dá para dizer que o uso atual do Córtex é ilegal hoje em termos jurídicos, mas dá para afirmar que é profundamente problemático e potencialmente ilegal’.

A missão do órgão é produzir inteligência para combate ao crime organizado. Um exemplo deste tipo de ação foi a transferência das principais lideranças da facção criminosa Primeiro Comando da Capital de presídios paulistas para penitenciárias federais, no início do ano passado. 

Além disso, como revela a existência do dossiê sobre os antifascistas, a Seopi vem sendo utilizada também com fins políticos. Por meio da secretaria, o ministério produziu em sigilo neste ano uma espécie de lista com nomes, endereços nas redes sociais e fotografias de 579 servidores públicos da área de segurança pública e três professores universitários, todos críticos ao governo Bolsonaro, ligados a movimentos antifascistas. O material circulou na PF, CIE e Palácio do Planalto.

Após a existência do dossiê vir a público, Moro afirmou que o monitoramento de opositores do governo não acontecia quando ele era ministro. “A Seopi produz inteligência e operações, na minha época focadas em combate ao crime organizado, crime cibernético e crime violento”, afirmou o ex-ministro. “Esses relatórios ora controvertidos não são do meu período”. 

Na infame reunião ministerial do dia 22 de abril, Bolsonaro reclama bastante das informações de inteligência que recebia oficialmente. “O nosso serviço de informações, todos eles, são uma vergonha, uma vergonha!”, bradou o presidente no encontro. “Eu não sou informado! E não dá para trabalhar assim, fica difícil. Por isso, vou interferir! E ponto final”. 

No total, a Seopi é composta por quatro diretorias e dez coordenadorias. Quando assumiu a pasta da Justiça após a saída de Moro, o ministro André Mendonça trocou nove das 13 pessoas que chefiavam estes órgãos. Os nomeados por Mendonça foram os responsáveis pelo dossiê contra antifascistas – e também cuidam do Córtex.

Tecnoautoritarismo

Não há uma lei, decreto, portaria ou qualquer norma oficial pública que regulamente o uso do Córtex dentro da Seopi. Perguntei ao Ministério da Justiça quais as normativas legais, os dispositivos de controle e quem fiscaliza seu uso. O governo se limitou a dizer que o Córtex opera de acordo com o Sistema Único de Segurança Pública, que determina o intercâmbio de informações entre órgãos, mas não estabelece limites e proteção à privacidade. 

“Não dá para dizer que o uso atual do Córtex é ilegal hoje em termos jurídicos, mas dá para afirmar que é profundamente problemático e potencialmente ilegal”, me disse Rafael Zanatta, advogado e pesquisador do Lavits, a Rede Latino Americana de Estudos sobre Vigilância, Tecnologia e Sociedade. “Eu também não sei, como pesquisador, o que eles fazem. Existe um problema fundamental aí de opacidade. Isso já é um ponto de partida muito problemático”.

A Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados, que entrou em vigor em agosto de 2018, prevê o uso de dados pessoais dos cidadãos para atividades de segurança pública, segurança nacional e investigação criminal – mas não de maneira indiscriminada. “A LGPD deu um passo importante que foi separar isso em alíneas. Segurança pública é uma coisa, segurança nacional é outra, atividades de investigação é outra. Ter essa clareza e separação de poderes é muito importante”. A lei de proteção de dados prevê que o uso de dados para fins de segurança deverá ter regulamentação própria, que ainda não existe.

Para o pesquisador, o livre compartilhamento de bases de dados sigilosos de entes governamentais diferentes foge ao princípio da finalidade e insere-se em uma discussão global sobre “tecnoautoritarismo”. “É um termo novo para um problema antigo. Essa preocupação das capacidades de vigilância e uso de tecnologias para segurança e vigilância é um tema clássico”, afirma. “Existe um processo muito amplo de contestação disso no mundo todo”. Na Europa e nos EUA, exemplifica, a adoção de novas tecnologias de vigilância é discutida publicamente, e há separação jurisdicional entre informações sob guarda de entes governamentais diferentes. 

O Ministério diz que a Seopi usou o Córtex nas operações de segurança das eleições em 2018, Operações Luz na Infância 5 e 6 (que resultou na prisão de mais de 90 pessoas acusadas de crimes sexuais contra crianças e adolescentes), assim como no “monitoramento nacional dos impactos da Covid-19 para a segurança pública.” E que “a integração de informações de monitoramento urbano permite a detecção de veículos com indicativo criminal registrado, como furto e roubo para emprego exclusivo nas atividades de segurança pública para repressão ao crime organizado e criminalidade violenta”.

The post Conheça o Córtex, sistema de vigilância do governo que integra de placa de carro a dados de emprego appeared first on The Intercept.

16 Sep 16:27

A Walking Robot with A Single Servo

by Kristina Panos

We’ve all been there — you see somebody do something cool on YouTube and you just have to give it a go. For [lonesoulsurfer], the drop-everything-and-build happened to be a little four-legged walker robot that runs on a single servo. Though it may be simple, there really is nothing like seeing a robot you created take its first steps.

[lonesoulsurfer]’s walker is made mostly from scrap aluminium and other scavenged parts like coat hangers, paper clips and the metal bits and bobs from banana jacks. The Dremeled and bent body would likely be the hardest to imitate for a first-time builder, but any sturdy chassis that allows for things screwed and bolted to it should work. Also, don’t expect it to work right away. It will take a bit of tuning to get the gait right, but it’s all part of the fun. So is modifying a 180° servo for continuous rotation.

We really like the way this robot walks — it saunters around like a long bulldog and looks like it can handle almost any terrain. Watch it walk after the break, and stick around for the build video.

There’s just something about simple robots without microcontrollers. If you’ve never heard of BEAM robots, cut your teeth on this ‘bot with circular legs.

21 Aug 16:39

Doonesbury for Friday, August 21, 2020

by Gary Trudeau
11 Aug 16:01

Can The Hurricanes Win The Stanley Cup With Mediocre Goaltending?

by Terrence Doyle

The Carolina Hurricanes are one of the least successful franchises in NHL history, boasting the third-worst win percentage of the expansion era. Only the Arizona Coyotes and the California Golden Seals/Cleveland Barons have been worse, the latter of which doesn’t exist anymore.27 Aside from a lone Stanley Cup win in 2005-06 — an admittedly extraordinary achievement for any franchise, let alone one of the league’s all-time worst — and an unsuccessful Stanley Cup Final appearance four years before that, there hasn’t been much cause for celebration since the Hurricanes blew into Raleigh.28 But recent evidence suggests that the Hurricanes might be changing course.

Take the tail end of last season for example. Carolina won its final three games of the regular season to ensure a wild-card bid in the playoffs and then proceeded to shock the hockey world with an opening-round, upset win over the defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals. The Canes then swept the New York Islanders en route to an unlikely Eastern Conference finals berth, and if they hadn’t run into a hot Boston Bruins team, they might have reached their third Stanley Cup Final.

That wasn’t to be, of course. The Bruins swiftly and easily swept the Canes aside. But the relative postseason success was a glimmer of hope for a franchise that had been out of the playoff picture for a decade — and one that carried over into the 2019-20 season.

This time around, the Canes easily qualified for the expanded Stanley Cup playoffs. They had the league’s ninth-best points percentage when it suspended play in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the underlying picture wasn’t bad either. In terms of Hockey-Refefrence.com’s Simple Rating System (SRS), which estimates the strength of every team in the NHL,29 the Canes were the league’s sixth-strongest team in 2019-20, tied with the Capitals.

A season ago, SRS pegged the Canes as the league’s 13th-best team, just good enough to sneak into the playoffs and cause some chaos. This season, the Canes truly belong, as they proved with a comprehensive sweep of the New York Rangers in the opening round of the expanded playoffs.

So was its opening-round dominance an illusion, or can Carolina take last season’s success a step further and make a run to the Stanley Cup Final? If it harbors any hopes of Cup glory, Carolina will now have to do something it was thoroughly unable to do last season: beat the Bruins in a seven-game series. But that might not be an impossible task.

The Bruins were the NHL’s best team in both points percentage and SRS before the league suspended play in March, but they’ve stumbled out of the blocks since the restart. Boston lost each of its three round robin games, scoring a whopping four goals in the process, none of which was scored by its vaunted “Perfection Line” of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak. (The line — which was one of the league’s best, at one point on a historic scoring pace — generated a single point in its three games since the restart.) And while three games is a small sample size, the Bruins looked uncharacteristically leaky at the back, conceding 0.61 more goals per game in the round robin than they did during the regular season. If the Canes can figure out how to further stifle Boston’s top line and attack its suddenly pedestrian rearguard, they might repeat their roles as agents of chaos in the East.

But even if they are able to upset the Bruins, Carolina won’t go far without sorting out its goaltending issues. I wrote in 2019 that there is a certain mystique attached to the concept of the hot goalie in the NHL playoffs. Save percentage accounts for a higher proportion of a team’s success than any other factor, so good playoff goaltending is crucial for a team’s success (or lack thereof) in the playoffs. But goalies hardly ever “get hot” in the playoffs, and good playoff goaltending is mostly a function of good regular-season goaltending that carries over into the playoffs. Unfortunately for Carolina, its regular-season goaltending was ordinary at best.

Starter Petr Mrázek posted a league-average .905 save percentage, and his Goals Saved Above Average (GSAA)30 mark was in the red. Backup James Reimer, who started 14 fewer games than Mrázek, had significantly better numbers but didn’t exactly light the league ablaze either — his save percentage of .914 tied for 27th and his GSAA mark of 3.38 ranked 26th. Indeed, Carolina’s goaltenders — a cohort that included David Ayres, an amateur hockey player who was called into action as an emergency backup in a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, and who famously made eight saves en route to securing victory for the Canes — combined for a save percentage of .906, just a smidge better than league average.

It’s rare to see a team win the Stanley Cup after enduring a regular season of poor goalie play. If the Canes are to make a run this summer, they’ll need better than league-average play from their goaltenders. Mrázek held the mantle of starter during the regular season, but Carolina might consider giving Reimer, whose regular-season numbers were superior, the bulk of the workload in the playoffs. Or perhaps they should just give Ayres a call and see what he’s up to.

07 Jul 23:33

Microsoft Brings Android OS Development for Surface Duo In-house With Movial Acquisition

by msmash
Microsoft is forming a team internally under the Microsoft Devices division that will handle the development of the Android OS for Surface Duo going forward. Windows Central: According to my sources, up until now, Microsoft had contracted the OS work out to third-party vendors such as Movial, who had the expertise required to bring Android to life on Surface Duo. Movial is a software, services, and design engineering company that was working closely with Microsoft on Surface Duo during its prototype and development stages. Microsoft has now acquired the local operations of Movial in Romania, Taiwan, and the USA, and is bringing on-board all the Movial employees that were working on the Surface Duo as full-time employees at Microsoft. Microsoft is not acquiring Movial as a whole. Movial will continue to operate as a standalone company, with employees at its headquarters in Finland remaining at Movial. SeeNews reports that Movial's Iasi office will become Microsoft Romania's fourth research and development center, as it on-boards 60 employees from Movial in that location.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

21 May 16:07

What Is Charlize Theron May Never Die in The Old Guard's Kick-Ass First Trailer

by Charles Pulliam-Moore on io9, shared by Kaitlyn Jakola to Gizmodo

No matter what kills the heroes of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s upcoming adaptation of Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández’s comic book The Old Guard, their inexplicable ability to heal ensures that they always rise back up from the dead ready and willing to take out anyone dumb enough to fight them. The movie’s first trailer…

Read more...

17 May 19:20

After Math: Free games and expensive mistakes

by Andrew Tarantola
As if the COVID-19 crisis wasn’t bad enough on its own, the economic downturn that it’s brought along for the ride has hit many of us where it hurts the most: our pocketbooks. But even as folks across the country look to pare down their household bud...
06 Mar 17:15

Mini RC Helicopter Becomes Even Smaller Submarine

by Tom Nardi

We often think of submarines as fairly complex pieces of machinery, and for good reason. Keeping the electronics watertight can naturally be quite difficult, and maintaining neutral buoyancy while traveling underwater is a considerable engineering challenge. But it turns out that if you’re willing to skip out on those fairly key elements of submarine design, the whole thing suddenly becomes a lot easier. Big surprise, right?

That’s precisely how [Peter Sripol] approached his latest project, which he’s claiming is the world’s smallest remote control submarine. We’re not qualified to say if that’s true or not, but we were certainly interested in seeing how he built the diminutive submersible. Thanks to the fact that it started life as one of those cheap infrared helicopters, it’s actually a fairly approachable project if you’re looking to make one yourself.

The larger prototype version is also very cool.

After testing that the IR communication would actually work as expected underwater, [Peter] liberated the motors and electronics from the helicopter. The motor’s wires were shortened, and the receiver PCB got a slathering of epoxy to try and keep the worst of the water out, but otherwise they were unmodified.

If you’re wondering how the ballast system works, there isn’t one. The 3D printed body angles the motors slightly downwards, so when the submarine is moving forward it’s also being pulled deeper into the water. There aren’t any control surfaces either, differential thrust between the two motors is used to turn left and right. This doesn’t make for a particularly nimble craft, but in the video after the break it certainly looks like they’re having fun with it.

Looking for a slightly more complex 3D printed submersible vehicle? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

[Thanks to Blaubär for the tip.]

06 Mar 16:25

After Super Tuesday, Joe Biden Is A Clear Favorite To Win The Nomination

by Nate Silver

After a huge night on Super Tuesday — and with all his major opponents14 except Sen. Bernie Sanders having dropped out — former Vice President Joe Biden is a strong favorite to win the Democratic nomination, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast.

We’d encourage you to approach the forecast with a bit of caution for the next few days until we have new polling and a better sense of what the post-Super Tuesday landscape looks like. There are several uncertainties to keep in mind:

  • Many states, especially California, are not yet done counting their votes. In California, the results could shift significantly based on late-returned mail ballots. Under the state’s rules, ballots only need to have been mailed out by election day, so millions of votes are literally still in the mail.
  • Two candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have just dropped out, and while the model makes some educated guesses about where their support will go, it may be wrong about that.
  • Super Tuesday itself could have a substantial effect on the polls — most likely in the form of a bounce for Biden. The model, again, makes educated guesses about the size of these bounces. But those guesses may not be right: Biden got a much bigger South Carolina bounce than is typical for that state, for example; while Sanders got little, if any, bounce after winning Nevada when the model expected him to get one.
  • Making matters trickier, it’s also not entirely clear what the race was like prior to Super Tuesday because Biden’s ascent in the polls was quite rapid and there were few national polls during this period.

With that said, even if there’s some uncertainty here — perhaps a bit more of it than the model lets on — things don’t look good for Sanders. He has several compounding problems:

  • First, he’s already behind by around 70 delegates, according to our estimates, based on returns in each state as currently reported. That deficit could get worse because there are some signs that late-returned mail ballots in California will help Biden — a reflection of the fact that Biden surged in the race in the final few days before Super Tuesday.
  • As mentioned, Biden will probably get a bounce in the polls as a result of his Super Tuesday wins. The model’s guess (accounting for its projected Super Tuesday bounce for Biden and the effects of Bloomberg and Warren dropping out) is that he’s currently ahead by the equivalent of 6 or 7 points in national polls. So although momentum could shift back toward Sanders later on, it may get worse for him in the short run.
  • Some of Sanders’s best states (California, Nevada) have already voted, and the upcoming states generally either aren’t good for him or have relatively few delegates. In fact, given how broadly Sanders lost on Super Tuesday — including in northern states such as Minnesota, Massachusetts and Maine — it’s hard to know where his strengths lie, other than among young progressives and Hispanics, who are not large enough groups to constitute a winning coalition in most states. Conversely, it’s easy to identify places where Sanders will likely lose badly to Biden. Our model has Biden winning a net of about 85 delegates over Sanders in Florida on March 17, where Sanders’s polling has been terrible, and a net of about 35 delegates in Georgia, which votes on March 24.
  • There aren’t that many delegates left after March. Some 38 percent of delegates have already been selected. And by the time Georgia votes in two-and-a-half weeks, 61 percent of delegates will already have been chosen. So even if Sanders did get a big, massive momentum swing late in the race, it might not be enough to allow him to come back, with only about a third of delegates still to be chosen.
  • Finally, even if Sanders does come back, it might merely be enough to win a plurality rather than a majority of delegates. We project that roughly 150 delegates — or about 4 percent of the total of 3,979 pledged delegates available — belong to candidates who have since dropped out or to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, even after accounting for the fact that statewide delegates are reallocated to other candidates once a candidate drops out.15 That creates an additional buffer that will make it harder for Sanders to win a majority.

So basically, Sanders has to come back quickly when the momentum is currently against him in a bunch of states that are not very good for him — or it will be too late. It’s not impossible. But the chances are low. The model gives Biden an 88 percent chance of winning a majority of pledged delegates, with most of the remaining outcomes being “no majority” rather than a Sanders majority. It also gives Biden a 94 percent chance of winning a plurality of pledged delegates, and Sanders a 6 percent chance.

Again, that’s not impossible. Any chance that’s 5 percent or higher is within what you might think of as the model’s “margin of error.” The model does not account for other real-world contingencies such as Biden dropping out because of a health problem. (It assumes that the delegate leader never drops out of the race.) But the comeback path is not going to be easy for the senator from Vermont.

The one potential opening for Sanders is that the recent volatility in the polls could imply further volatility in the days and weeks ahead. This is one thing we looked at while the model was “off” over the past couple of days: Is recent polling volatility predictive of future volatility?

I’m skipping a bunch of steps here, but the basic answer is “yes.” There are short-run spikes of volatility in the polls, just as there are short-run spikes of volatility in the stock market. We’ve now implemented code reflecting this in the model, which slightly improves Sanders’s chances relative to what they would have been otherwise.

Note that the volatility could run in either direction, however. It could mean that Biden completely runs away with the race and wins Michigan by 25 points or something next week.

But since Sanders is a substantial underdog in the race, the more volatility the better for him. He’ll take his share of 25-point losses if he can get his share of upset wins. And the model does reflect the substantial uncertainty in Michigan, a state where polls have historically not been very good, giving Sanders a 21 percent chance of winning there. Even a win in Michigan would just be the first step in a long journey back to front-runner status for Sanders — but every comeback has to start somewhere.

28 Feb 07:15

Senate approves $1 billion budget to help rural carriers replace Huawei gear

by Mariella Moon
The US Senate has unanimously approved a bill that would give rural carriers access to a $1 billion fund meant to help them remove and replace Huawei gear. According to The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch, the Senate has voted to send the bill to...
22 Feb 22:29

This Mallet Has Backwards Dovetails… That’s Impossible!

by Mike Szczys

Dovetails are a wedge-shaped joint found in woodworking. The wedge makes for strong joinery because a force that tries to pull it apart also increases the friction on the joint. This mallet has dovetails on either side that keep the head from flying off, but there’s also a through tenon in the center. This is an impossible joint as there’s no way to slide the mallet head onto the handle. The two pieces of wood must have grown that way!

As with everything, there’s a trick here, let it scratch your brain for a while before reading on… if you can guess how it’s done it’ll be very satisfying when you confirm your theory. Both the trick of the impossible mallet and the superb hand joinery are shown off in this video from the [Third Coast Craftsman].

The trick comes in the form of internal voids hidden from view once the two pieces of the mallet have been assembled. The through tenon is exactly as you’d expect: a strait tenon slides into a straight mortise in the mallet. The dovetails to either side of the handle and the pockets they mate with in the mallet head are not at all what you’d expect. The edges of the dovetail have been chamfered at 45 degrees so you can’t pull them to the outside of the mallet as you slide them into place. The opposite is the actual trick. Each of the dovetails bends inward until a ramp at the very end of the mallet pocket pushes it back into place.

The impossible mallet isn’t a new concept and stands as a formidable challenge for any accomplished woodworker. The images above are of [Jim Guilford’s] impossible mallet. Here the trick is fully exposed, showing the dovetail tenons of the handle clamped together as it is driven into place. Two things are striking here; the joints cannot be tested and must be perfect before assembly, and there is a real chance the tenons will break or the mallet head will split apart from the force of assembly. This project will test your courage as much as it will your patience.