Tonight, the Moon is still very thin, marking the start of the waxing crescent phase in the U.S. However, in some parts of the world (depending on the time zone) the New Moon is officially occurring tonight.
What is today’s moon phase?
As of Saturday, Dec. 20, the moon phase is Waxing Crescent (if you’re in the U.S). There is little to be seen tonight, with NASA’s Daily Moon Observation stating 0% of the moon will be lit up. So, of course, there’s little to no chance of spotting any features on the Moon’s surface tonight.
When is the next full moon?
The next full moon will be on Jan. 3. The last full moon was on Dec. 4.
What are moon phases?
According to NASA, the Moon takes around 29.5 days to complete one full cycle. This is known as the lunar cycle. Throughout this time, it passes through a series of phases as it orbits Earth. Although the same side of the Moon always faces us, the amount of sunlight reflecting off its surface changes, which is why it can appear fully illuminated, partly lit, or completely invisible at different points in the cycle. This process is divided into eight main lunar phases:
New Moon – The moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
Mashable Light Speed
Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)
Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) – Another half-moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
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#Moon #phase #today #explained #moon #December
The post says simply that “Robotaxi is now rolling out in Dallas & Houston 🤠” and includes a 14-second video showing Tesla vehicles driving without human monitors or drivers in the front seat.
Tesla may not be running many vehicles in either of these new markets yet, with crowdsourced data on the Robotaxi Tracker website only registering a single vehicle in each city (compared to 46 active vehicles logged in Austin).
The post says simply that “Robotaxi is now rolling out in Dallas & Houston 🤠” and includes a 14-second video showing Tesla vehicles driving without human monitors or drivers in the front seat.
Tesla may not be running many vehicles in either of these new markets yet, with crowdsourced data on the Robotaxi Tracker website only registering a single vehicle in each city (compared to 46 active vehicles logged in Austin).
#Tesla #brings #robotaxi #service #Dallas #Houston #TechCrunchHouston,robotaxi,Tesla">Tesla brings its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston | TechCrunch
Tesla is expanding its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston, according to a social media post from the company.
The post says simply that “Robotaxi is now rolling out in Dallas & Houston 🤠” and includes a 14-second video showing Tesla vehicles driving without human monitors or drivers in the front seat.
Tesla may not be running many vehicles in either of these new markets yet, with crowdsourced data on the Robotaxi Tracker website only registering a single vehicle in each city (compared to 46 active vehicles logged in Austin).
flagship range with new models soon. It looks like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra will launch alongside the Find X9s. Along with these phones, the company may also introduce other products, such as the Oppo Watch X3 and Enco Clip 2, at the same event.
Rumored Specifications of Oppo Find X9 Ultra
The Oppo Find X9s is expected to feature a flat display design, which many users prefer for everyday use. The bezels are quite slim at 1.15mm, adding to its premium look. On the front, a hole-punch cutout will house the selfie camera. Moreover, the phone stands out for its button placement: the power and volume buttons are on the left, while another button is on the right.
For photography, Oppo is adding a Hasselblad-tuned triple camera system to the Find X9s. It will feature a 50MP main camera designed to capture clear and sharp images. The camera setup sits inside a square module, and an LED flash is also included.
Another important feature of the phone is its battery, which comes with an impressive capacity of 7,025 mAh. The device will easily handle any task thanks to its powerful battery, whether it’s gaming or video streaming. However, details about the phone’s chipset and performance features remain unknown.
What to Expect from the Find X9s Pro
As of now, it appears the Oppo Find X9s Pro will be released only in China. Among other things, the smartphone will reportedly feature a quadruple-camera module with two 200MP lenses. In addition, it could integrate Oppo’s LUMO image-sensing tech to deliver high-quality shots. As for the display panel, it is expected to be 6.3 inches.
flagship range with new models soon. It looks like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra will launch alongside the Find X9s. Along with these phones, the company may also introduce other products, such as the Oppo Watch X3 and Enco Clip 2, at the same event.
Rumored Specifications of Oppo Find X9 Ultra
The Oppo Find X9s is expected to feature a flat display design, which many users prefer for everyday use. The bezels are quite slim at 1.15mm, adding to its premium look. On the front, a hole-punch cutout will house the selfie camera. Moreover, the phone stands out for its button placement: the power and volume buttons are on the left, while another button is on the right.
For photography, Oppo is adding a Hasselblad-tuned triple camera system to the Find X9s. It will feature a 50MP main camera designed to capture clear and sharp images. The camera setup sits inside a square module, and an LED flash is also included.
Another important feature of the phone is its battery, which comes with an impressive capacity of 7,025 mAh. The device will easily handle any task thanks to its powerful battery, whether it’s gaming or video streaming. However, details about the phone’s chipset and performance features remain unknown.
What to Expect from the Find X9s Pro
As of now, it appears the Oppo Find X9s Pro will be released only in China. Among other things, the smartphone will reportedly feature a quadruple-camera module with two 200MP lenses. In addition, it could integrate Oppo’s LUMO image-sensing tech to deliver high-quality shots. As for the display panel, it is expected to be 6.3 inches.
#Oppo #Find #Ultra #Find #X9s #Series #Global #Launch #Rumoured #AprilOppo">Oppo Find X9 Ultra and Find X9s Series Global Launch Rumoured for April 21
Oppo is gearing up to expand its flagship range with new models soon. It looks like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra will launch alongside the Find X9s. Along with these phones, the company may also introduce other products, such as the Oppo Watch X3 and Enco Clip 2, at the same event.
Rumored Specifications of Oppo Find X9 Ultra
The Oppo Find X9s is expected to feature a flat display design, which many users prefer for everyday use. The bezels are quite slim at 1.15mm, adding to its premium look. On the front, a hole-punch cutout will house the selfie camera. Moreover, the phone stands out for its button placement: the power and volume buttons are on the left, while another button is on the right.
For photography, Oppo is adding a Hasselblad-tuned triple camera system to the Find X9s. It will feature a 50MP main camera designed to capture clear and sharp images. The camera setup sits inside a square module, and an LED flash is also included.
Another important feature of the phone is its battery, which comes with an impressive capacity of 7,025 mAh. The device will easily handle any task thanks to its powerful battery, whether it’s gaming or video streaming. However, details about the phone’s chipset and performance features remain unknown.
What to Expect from the Find X9s Pro
As of now, it appears the Oppo Find X9s Pro will be released only in China. Among other things, the smartphone will reportedly feature a quadruple-camera module with two 200MP lenses. In addition, it could integrate Oppo’s LUMO image-sensing tech to deliver high-quality shots. As for the display panel, it is expected to be 6.3 inches.
It seemed like this might have been a rare week without a “robot doing dumb shit” story—but never fear, because Jeff Bezos’s squadron of airborne delivery drones is here to save the day. Prime Air, Amazon’s drone delivery service, has been rolling out in a number of US cities over the last few months and—surprise!—it looks like they kinda suck compared to their human equivalents. (And that’s really saying something considering those human equivalents’ propensity for running up to your front door, whacking a “Sorry we missed you!” sticker right below the note you left saying “BUZZER DOESN’T WORK—PLEASE CALL THIS NUMBER”, and then driving away.)*
Still, whatever else your local Amazon driver might do, one thing they won’t do is casually drop your precious package onto concrete from 10 feet in the air. Amazon’s drones, however…
Several stories videos have surfaced of late, apparently showing Amazon-branded drones hovering above customers’ driveways/stoops/etc and then just dropping their cargo onto the ground below. In one video, YouTuber Tamara Hancock orders a plastic bottle of blue raspberry syrup—which is apparently a substance one can order—and watches as the drone dumps it unceremoniously on her driveway. She opens the package and, sure enough, the video depicts a smashed and leaking screw top.
Given the unholy racket these things make, you can probably hear them approaching a mile off, so perhaps the best course of action is to just run outside and try to catch your package before it smashes into the ground. This isn’t the seamless service Amazon promised, but then again, it’s not all that different from waiting to hear the delivery driver approaching and then booking it outside to grab your package before he gets a chance to whack the dreaded “Sorry we missed you!” sticker on your door. Plus ça change, etc.
Anyway, it’s not easy to see how this issue might be mitigated. The obvious answer is “hover closer to the ground”, but given delivery robots’ record in failing to detect obstacles in their path, it feels like that strategy would eventually result in a headline like “Florida Grandmother Beheaded by Drone As She Tries to Collect Her Order of Trump Memorabilia.”
All jokes aside, the question of how drones actually avoid doing things like beheading grandmothers is, unsurprisingly, controversial. Last week Chad Butler, a former head of information security at Amazon’s commercial drone program, posted a video about the regulatory regime surrounding drones like the ones Amazon use, which are referred to as “beyond visual line of sight”, or BVLOS, drones. As the name suggests, these are drones that are able to fly autonomously beyond the line of sight of a human operator. Without a human directing them, drones need to be able to ensure they don’t fly into a wall.
Butler explains that there are two competing schools of thought about how to do this. The first requires the use of a system called ADS-B, which maintains a consistent broadcast of the drone’s altitude, heading and air speed, creating a sort of virtual environment that lets every drone know where every other drone is. The second, championed by Amazon, is more like the technology used on ground-based robots—it uses onboard “detect and avoid” systems like camera and radar, which allow drones to “see” what’s around them and navigate themselves around obstacles.
Amazon recently left the Commercial Drone Alliance, which advocates for the first system, and Butler actually endorses his former employer’s stance. He argues that if drones are constantly broadcasting an unencrypted record of their position, and they have no independent on-board methods to verify that position, then it becomes pretty easy for hackers to hijack them by simply spoofing a GPS signal. This scenario certainly sounds credible—and, frankly, kinda frightening. (Reassuringly, Butler says, “This is not a drone problem—it’s a design pattern problem, and I see it everywhere in AI and autonomous system design.” So that’s great.)
Having said that, we’ve seen with ground-based robots that the use of on-board sensors alone is also, um, less than perfect—and if navigating a drone in two dimensions is hard, adding a whole other dimension seems to just increase the difficulty and the chance of things going wrong. And on that note, there does seem to be one straightforward way of avoiding the possibility of a hacked delivery drone delivering a bomb to the White House or something, which is just getting rid of the bloody things. However, capitalism will not abide such good sense, so I guess we’ll just see how this whole thing pans out.
*To be clear, we don’t necessarily blame drivers working to insane schedules for doing this; it is frustrating, though.
It seemed like this might have been a rare week without a “robot doing dumb shit” story—but never fear, because Jeff Bezos’s squadron of airborne delivery drones is here to save the day. Prime Air, Amazon’s drone delivery service, has been rolling out in a number of US cities over the last few months and—surprise!—it looks like they kinda suck compared to their human equivalents. (And that’s really saying something considering those human equivalents’ propensity for running up to your front door, whacking a “Sorry we missed you!” sticker right below the note you left saying “BUZZER DOESN’T WORK—PLEASE CALL THIS NUMBER”, and then driving away.)*
Still, whatever else your local Amazon driver might do, one thing they won’t do is casually drop your precious package onto concrete from 10 feet in the air. Amazon’s drones, however…
Several stories videos have surfaced of late, apparently showing Amazon-branded drones hovering above customers’ driveways/stoops/etc and then just dropping their cargo onto the ground below. In one video, YouTuber Tamara Hancock orders a plastic bottle of blue raspberry syrup—which is apparently a substance one can order—and watches as the drone dumps it unceremoniously on her driveway. She opens the package and, sure enough, the video depicts a smashed and leaking screw top.
Given the unholy racket these things make, you can probably hear them approaching a mile off, so perhaps the best course of action is to just run outside and try to catch your package before it smashes into the ground. This isn’t the seamless service Amazon promised, but then again, it’s not all that different from waiting to hear the delivery driver approaching and then booking it outside to grab your package before he gets a chance to whack the dreaded “Sorry we missed you!” sticker on your door. Plus ça change, etc.
Anyway, it’s not easy to see how this issue might be mitigated. The obvious answer is “hover closer to the ground”, but given delivery robots’ record in failing to detect obstacles in their path, it feels like that strategy would eventually result in a headline like “Florida Grandmother Beheaded by Drone As She Tries to Collect Her Order of Trump Memorabilia.”
All jokes aside, the question of how drones actually avoid doing things like beheading grandmothers is, unsurprisingly, controversial. Last week Chad Butler, a former head of information security at Amazon’s commercial drone program, posted a video about the regulatory regime surrounding drones like the ones Amazon use, which are referred to as “beyond visual line of sight”, or BVLOS, drones. As the name suggests, these are drones that are able to fly autonomously beyond the line of sight of a human operator. Without a human directing them, drones need to be able to ensure they don’t fly into a wall.
Butler explains that there are two competing schools of thought about how to do this. The first requires the use of a system called ADS-B, which maintains a consistent broadcast of the drone’s altitude, heading and air speed, creating a sort of virtual environment that lets every drone know where every other drone is. The second, championed by Amazon, is more like the technology used on ground-based robots—it uses onboard “detect and avoid” systems like camera and radar, which allow drones to “see” what’s around them and navigate themselves around obstacles.
Amazon recently left the Commercial Drone Alliance, which advocates for the first system, and Butler actually endorses his former employer’s stance. He argues that if drones are constantly broadcasting an unencrypted record of their position, and they have no independent on-board methods to verify that position, then it becomes pretty easy for hackers to hijack them by simply spoofing a GPS signal. This scenario certainly sounds credible—and, frankly, kinda frightening. (Reassuringly, Butler says, “This is not a drone problem—it’s a design pattern problem, and I see it everywhere in AI and autonomous system design.” So that’s great.)
Having said that, we’ve seen with ground-based robots that the use of on-board sensors alone is also, um, less than perfect—and if navigating a drone in two dimensions is hard, adding a whole other dimension seems to just increase the difficulty and the chance of things going wrong. And on that note, there does seem to be one straightforward way of avoiding the possibility of a hacked delivery drone delivering a bomb to the White House or something, which is just getting rid of the bloody things. However, capitalism will not abide such good sense, so I guess we’ll just see how this whole thing pans out.
*To be clear, we don’t necessarily blame drivers working to insane schedules for doing this; it is frustrating, though.
#Amazon #Delivery #Drones #Involve #Perilous #10Foot #Drop #Users #Posting #Apparent #ResultsAmazon,Prime Air">Amazon Delivery Drones Involve a Perilous 10-Foot Drop. Users Are Posting the Apparent Results
It seemed like this might have been a rare week without a “robot doing dumb shit” story—but never fear, because Jeff Bezos’s squadron of airborne delivery drones is here to save the day. Prime Air, Amazon’s drone delivery service, has been rolling out in a number of US cities over the last few months and—surprise!—it looks like they kinda suck compared to their human equivalents. (And that’s really saying something considering those human equivalents’ propensity for running up to your front door, whacking a “Sorry we missed you!” sticker right below the note you left saying “BUZZER DOESN’T WORK—PLEASE CALL THIS NUMBER”, and then driving away.)*
Still, whatever else your local Amazon driver might do, one thing they won’t do is casually drop your precious package onto concrete from 10 feet in the air. Amazon’s drones, however…
Several stories videos have surfaced of late, apparently showing Amazon-branded drones hovering above customers’ driveways/stoops/etc and then just dropping their cargo onto the ground below. In one video, YouTuber Tamara Hancock orders a plastic bottle of blue raspberry syrup—which is apparently a substance one can order—and watches as the drone dumps it unceremoniously on her driveway. She opens the package and, sure enough, the video depicts a smashed and leaking screw top.
Given the unholy racket these things make, you can probably hear them approaching a mile off, so perhaps the best course of action is to just run outside and try to catch your package before it smashes into the ground. This isn’t the seamless service Amazon promised, but then again, it’s not all that different from waiting to hear the delivery driver approaching and then booking it outside to grab your package before he gets a chance to whack the dreaded “Sorry we missed you!” sticker on your door. Plus ça change, etc.
Anyway, it’s not easy to see how this issue might be mitigated. The obvious answer is “hover closer to the ground”, but given delivery robots’ record in failing to detect obstacles in their path, it feels like that strategy would eventually result in a headline like “Florida Grandmother Beheaded by Drone As She Tries to Collect Her Order of Trump Memorabilia.”
All jokes aside, the question of how drones actually avoid doing things like beheading grandmothers is, unsurprisingly, controversial. Last week Chad Butler, a former head of information security at Amazon’s commercial drone program, posted a video about the regulatory regime surrounding drones like the ones Amazon use, which are referred to as “beyond visual line of sight”, or BVLOS, drones. As the name suggests, these are drones that are able to fly autonomously beyond the line of sight of a human operator. Without a human directing them, drones need to be able to ensure they don’t fly into a wall.
Butler explains that there are two competing schools of thought about how to do this. The first requires the use of a system called ADS-B, which maintains a consistent broadcast of the drone’s altitude, heading and air speed, creating a sort of virtual environment that lets every drone know where every other drone is. The second, championed by Amazon, is more like the technology used on ground-based robots—it uses onboard “detect and avoid” systems like camera and radar, which allow drones to “see” what’s around them and navigate themselves around obstacles.
Amazon recently left the Commercial Drone Alliance, which advocates for the first system, and Butler actually endorses his former employer’s stance. He argues that if drones are constantly broadcasting an unencrypted record of their position, and they have no independent on-board methods to verify that position, then it becomes pretty easy for hackers to hijack them by simply spoofing a GPS signal. This scenario certainly sounds credible—and, frankly, kinda frightening. (Reassuringly, Butler says, “This is not a drone problem—it’s a design pattern problem, and I see it everywhere in AI and autonomous system design.” So that’s great.)
Having said that, we’ve seen with ground-based robots that the use of on-board sensors alone is also, um, less than perfect—and if navigating a drone in two dimensions is hard, adding a whole other dimension seems to just increase the difficulty and the chance of things going wrong. And on that note, there does seem to be one straightforward way of avoiding the possibility of a hacked delivery drone delivering a bomb to the White House or something, which is just getting rid of the bloody things. However, capitalism will not abide such good sense, so I guess we’ll just see how this whole thing pans out.
*To be clear, we don’t necessarily blame drivers working to insane schedules for doing this; it is frustrating, though.
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