As most of the world focuses on the US presidential election tonight, GoPro just announced a recall of its first-ever drone, the $799 Karma. Approximately 2,500 Karma units sold since October 23rd (meaning all of them) are impacted. GoPro says “in a very small number of cases, Karma units lost power during operation.” Thus far, there have been no reports of injuries or property damage because of the defect.
Recalled Karma drones can be returned to GoPro directly or wherever they were purchased originally for a full refund. For now, the company won’t be offering any exchanges for a fixed model; you’ll have to wait until shipments resume “as soon as the issue is resolved.”
GoPro executives addressed production issues surrounding the Karma during last week’s earnings call, but didn’t mention any plans for a recall or the power issue at the time. “We are working in close coordination with both the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and Federal Aviation Administration,” said CEO Nick Woodman in a statement from tonight’s press release. “We are very sorry to have inconvenienced our customers and we are taking every step to make the return and refund process as easy as possible.”
The recall is a significant setback for GoPro as it attempts to challenge leader DJI in the drone business, and it follows a bruising financial quarter for the action cam maker.
Today, Google announced that its Map Maker tool, which let users edit information and suggest changes in Google Maps, will be shut down in March of 2017. In its place, the same editing and suggestion features will be migrated to the main Google Maps app as part of the company’s Local Guides program, which rewards people for policing and improving local mapping data for their community by granting access to beta features and gifting Google Drive storage.
Map Maker initially started in 2008 as a way to crowdsource information from rural areas that Google’s own toolset was ill-equipped at obtaining on its own. Over time, the community of Map Maker editors and moderators, who were tasked with overseeing and approving changes made to public data on Google Maps, grew into a group of millions of users. Some of the user behaviors that originated on Map Maker eventually informed new features found in the public version of Google Maps, including the ability to add new places and describe existing locations with more detail.
However, the Map Maker community was not without its fair share of bad press. The most high-profile incident occurred last year, when a Map Maker user snuck in an elaborate drawing of the Android robot urinating on an Apple logo. This led to the Map Maker tool being temporarily shut down while Google revamped its moderation practices. Now, by relying on Local Guides’ rewards program instead of allowing anyone and everyone to submit edits, the Maps team may see an uptick in helpful reviews, location edits, and user-generated info.
Sea levels are rising at unprecedented rates, scientists say. New research shows that by 2040, more than 90 percent of the world’s coastal areas could be experiencing sea level rises of more than 8 inches. But certain areas, like the Eastern US, will be hit even harder with water levels climbing more than a foot. By 2100, New York City, for example, could see coastal waters between 3.5 and 7.3 feet higher than they are now. The consequences, in terms of displacing millions of people, could be catastrophic.
Some climate models currently predict that by 2040, global temperatures could be 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrialization temperatures. By the end of the 21st century, we could see global temperatures climb more than 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit). The Paris climate accord wants to keep the planet’s temperature increases “well below” 2 degrees Celsius. But last week the United Nations warned that even under the international agreement, we’re probably going to see temperatures rise by about 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) by 2030.
Rising global temperatures mean rising sea levels as glaciers and land ice sheets melt. The scary thing is that even if we do manage to stop global temperatures from continuing to warm, sea levels could keep rising for centuries afterwards. So predicting where, when, and how much the seas will rise is particularly challenging — and particularly key. In this new study, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists led by Svetlana Jevrejeva from the National Oceanography Centre in the UK predicted the likelihood and locations of sea level rise with temperature increases of 2, 4, or 5 degrees Celsius.
They calculated that by the end of the 21st century, 136 of the largest coastal cities — including New York and New Orleans — could see waters rising at least three feet, and possibly closer to 6.5 feet. That could displace more than 1 million people in New York and another 1 million in New Orleans. About 2.5 million would be displaced in Miami; 2.1 million in Guangzhou, China; and 1.8 million in Mumbai, India. Low-lying nations like Bangladesh and Vietnam could be especially hard hit.
And the speed with which this could happen could make it hard to adapt, the authors of the study write, putting small island nations, coastal ecosystems, and coastal sites of cultural and historical importance at risk. “The coastal communities of rapidly expanding cities in the developing world, and vulnerable tropical coastal ecosystems, will have a very limited time after midcentury to adapt to sea level rises unprecedented since the dawn of the Bronze Age,” they wrote.
Colorado voters have approved a proposition that makes it legal to help terminally ill patients end their own life.
Colorado becomes the sixth state to have a so-called “right-to-die law,” joining Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, and Montana. Its citizens have voted to approve Prop 106. The measure allows Colorado residents over 18 to request assistance to die if they are ill and have less than six months to live. They must also be judged competent enough to make their own choice and must voluntarily ask for the medicine that would kill them. Before, helping someone end their life was a crime.
Assisted suicide — sometimes called physician-assisted suicide or “death with dignity” — has become an increasing public health issue as it is legalized in more states. Supporters say it respects patients’ autonomy by allowing them to control their lives until the very end and die on their own terms. In many cases, supporters say, it could relieve physical suffering that would only continue to worsen.
Opponents argue, often on religious grounds, that helping take a life in any situation is ethically wrong. Disability activists have also criticized some of the language surrounding the debate. For example, they claim that comments supporting the right-to-die because “life isn’t worth living if you’re disabled” are discriminatory. There are also concerns that legalizing assisted suicide would lead to a “slippery slope” situation where people become too quick to use the option, or the guidelines for who can request assisted suicide become more and more lax.
Former NPR host Diane Rehm — whose husband starved himself to death because assisted suicide is a crime in Maryland — has been a high-profile advocate. The assisted death of 29-year-old Brittany Maynard in Oregon two years ago also brought a lot of attention to the cause. (The Colorado proposition is modeled in part after Oregon’s.) The procedure has been approved in several European countries, including Belgium, where the first minor was euthanized in September, and the Netherlands, where requests have doubled in the past five years.
Here in the US, there are no federal laws on the matter, so individual states are passing their own legislation. But with Colorado decriminalizing euthanasia and other states possibly following suit, it may only be a matter of time before there is growing pressure to address this issue at the federal level.
Recreational marijuana is now legal in California — and that’s a game changer for public health. Though 25 other states have already legalized weed for medicinal purposes and four for recreational purposes, the size and population of California puts its decision in a different league and it could lead the way to figuring out policy around the drug.
Current projections have Maine, Nevada, and Massachusetts voting to legalize recreational marijuana, while Arizona voted against legalizing recreational pot.
Medical marijuana was also on the ballot for several states. Current projections have North Dakota, Montana, Arkansas and Florida all expected to approve medical marijuana.
The trend is clear: 60 percent of Americans support legalizing weed, up from 31 percent in 2000. California is the state with the largest economy and — now that it has legalized pot — the national weed industry has tripled in size. In fact, California’s marijuana industry could be bigger than its famed wine businesses. The market for both recreational and medicinal marijuana is now projected to grow to $22 billion by 2020, up from $7 billion this year.
California now needs to deal with issues such as how marijuana fits into the state economyand public policy surrounding stoned driving.
This may also put a lot more pressure on the federal government to lift its ban of the drug. The Drug Enforcement Administration has long classified cannabis as a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive classification. This means it’s in the same category as heroin and monitored very closely. Just this August, the DEA rejected an appeal to stop classifying cannabis as Schedule I drug.
The gap between states’ legalization and the federal ban has led to some complications. For example, the federal government accepts taxes from marijuana companies. But because of the ban, those companies find it hard to accept credit cards or open bank accounts. These and other problems will become more common as side businesses grow around marijuana. There already are companies that track marijuana strains, medical marijuana startups, the “Yelp of marijuana,” and much more.
This election has been a tipping point for weed. The national conversation will increasingly focus on the health effects of weed, how best to regulate the suppliers and businesses, and the consequences for public health. Get ready.
WATCH: MARIJUANA IS NOT MORE DANGEROUS THAT ALCOHOL
Uber is partnering with General Motors’ car-sharing service, called Maven, for a 90-day car rental pilot program, the companies announced on Tuesday.
Through Maven, Uber drivers in San Francisco will be able to rent a GM vehicle that qualifies to be on the platform for $179 a week plus additional taxes and fees.
It’s a new addition to the existing suite of partnerships that include companies like rental car business Enterprise and a leasing program under Uber that caters to drivers who have been rejected by other lenders. As part of Uber’s partnership with Enterprise, drivers pay $215 a week to rent a vehicle.
“We want options that fit around [drivers’] lives,” Rachel Holt, Uber’s GM of the U.S. and Canada, told reporters during a press call.
The pilot itself isn’t significant — it’s only 90 days and will only be available in San Francisco. But GM’s decision to partner with a company competing with Lyft, in which the automaker invested $500 million, is a bit odd.
As part of its investment in the younger ride-hail company, GM agreed to supply vehicles for Lyft’s Express Drive program — a service similar to Uber and GM’s pilot except there is no end date and Lyft charges a fee for personal use of the vehicle unless drivers give 65 or more rides a week, in which case the rental fee is waived.
Lyft’s program is also available in Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose.
But GM isn’t the only vehicle supplier in Lyft’s Express Drive program. Lyft is also working with Hertz — which is why the company says Maven’s collaboration with Uber isn’t a threat.
“Maven’s supply channels do not impact our programs with GM,” a Lyft spokesperson told Recode in a statement. “We continue to work together to shape the future of mobility.”
For Maven, it’s simply a means to broaden their car rental platform.
“Only 10 months after launching Maven, we have implemented viable business-to-business platforms that GM can leverage to manage residual values for ex-lease and fleet vehicles,” Julia Steyn, GM vice president of Urban Mobility, said in a statement.
NASA wants ideas from private companies and the science community about instruments that can be used to explore and study the surface of the Moon. This morning, the space agency put out a formal Request for Information, asking for concepts of small science payloads that can be sent to the lunar surface relatively soon — between 2017 and 2020. The instruments would potentially be transported to the Moon on lunar landers that are currently being developed by private companies in the US.
SMALL SCIENCE PAYLOADS THAT CAN BE SENT TO THE LUNAR SURFACE BETWEEN 2017 AND 2020
"Multiple US companies are developing robotic lunar landing capabilities and have expressed plans to provide commercial cargo delivery services to the Moon in the near future," NASA writes in its RFI. "Information on lunar payloads that could be launched as early as 2017 would be valuable to NASA as it works to understand the potential role of the Moon in future exploration activities."
This information request is one of the few times in years that NASA has expressed a desire to send hardware to the surface of the Moon. Since 2010, the space agency has made it crystal clear that it’s focused on putting humans on Mars, and talk of landing on the lunar surface has been sparse if non-existent. But recently, NASA has been pivoting its gaze back to the Moon, viewing Earth’s satellite as a potential stepping stone for Mars. For instance, NASA is working with private companies to develop deep space habitats that can operate in a region of space around the Moon called cislunar space. The idea is that these cislunar habitats could potentially be used as spacecraft that transport humans to the Red Planet.
NASA WANTS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE MOON’S ENVIRONMENT
Now, NASA says it wants to better understand the Moon’s environment and whether or not it is a good stepping stone for human exploration as well. The agency wants to know if the Moon has resources that could be exploited for space travel, such as water that can be used to make fuel for spacecraft. NASA also wants to know how certain aspects of the lunar environment — like radiation exposure and dust — might affect the human body. And ultimately, NASA is curious about what it would take to work and live on the Moon’s surface.
"Though we have gathered a great deal of information over the decades about the Moon from the earliest robotic probes, from the Apollo missions, and more recently from spacecraft ... there is still much more that we need to learn," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said in a statement.
NASA is making it clear that it’s only looking for information on payload ideas; it doesn’t plan to award any contracts at the moment and is making no promises to send anything to the Moon just yet. But presumably once the submissions are received, NASA will decide whether or not to do a formal competition for payloads to go to the Moon. It’s similar to what the space agency has done in the past with its public-private partnerships, where NASA has asked for ideas from the private sector and then created competitions based on submissions.
An artist's rendering of the Moon Express MX-1 lander. (Moon Express)
If a formal competition does occur, NASA will likely select its favorite lunar payloads and find the right commercial rockets and landers that can take these payloads to the Moon’s surface. A few companies in recent years have said that they are working on lunar landers. One of the most vocal is Moon Express, which has ambitions of mining the lunar surface. Moon Express is involved with NASA's Lunar CATALYST program and has been developing a lunar lander called the MX-1 that it hopes to send to the Moon by 2017. The company has already received approval from the federal government to send the MX-1 to the lunar surface — something no other private spaceflight company has received before. And Moon Express says that future payloads selected by NASA could ride on its lander as early as next year.
MOON EXPRESS SAYS IT WILL HELP OUT WITH FUNDING THESE PAYLOADS
As an extra show of faith, Moon Express says it will help out with funding these payloads too. In its RFI, NASA says participants should expect to provide a lot of their own funding to develop their payload concepts, but today Moon Express has announced a new funding initiative called the Lunar Scout Program. If NASA does decide to do a formal competition, Moon Express says it will give $500,000 for each payload that is selected by NASA to fly on the first three missions of the MX-1 lander.
"Moon Express is very excited and happy to announce our Lunar Scout Program which is intended to help lunar explorers get their science to the Moon." Bob Richards, CEO of Moon Express, tells The Verge. "Our money will help in the total cost. We can’t anticipate where it will help the most, but it will help."
But before all that can happen, NASA needs to hear people’s ideas first. And there isn’t much time if you want to participate. Payload providers have until 4PM ET on December 9th to submit their concepts.
The telescope portion of NASA’s James Webb Telescope is finally complete — marking a major benchmark for the spacecraft that has been in development for the past 20 years. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other members of the James Webb mission team discussed the milestone with a group of reporters today at Goddard Space Flight Center, where the telescope has been undergoing its assembly. Now that the telescope’s optics are complete, it will undergo a series of rigorous preflight testing before its scheduled launch in 2018.
"Today we’re celebrating the fact that our telescope is finished, and we’re about to prove that it works," said John Mather, a senior project scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope.
"WE’RE CELEBRATING THE FACT THAT OUR TELESCOPE IS FINISHED."
When it launches, James Webb will be the largest and most powerful space telescope in operation, capable of seeing deep into space and observing galaxies that formed right after the Big Bang. To do this, the telescope will observe the Universe in the infrared — a wavelength of light that is associated with the emission of heat. This light will be gathered by an array of 18 hexagonal mirrors, made out of lightweight berylium and coated with a layer of gold that’s 1,000 times thinner than the width of a human hair. The mirrors are intended to launch folded up but will unfurl over the course of two and a half weeks after the telescope gets into space.
But before that journey can begin, NASA wants to make sure the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to do its job when it’s in space. Once the mirrors were complete and fully assembled, NASA engineers conducted a "pre-test" to see how well the mirror’s optics were working. Then in the coming months the completed mirrors and optics will undergo a host of vibrational and acoustic testing, designed to mimic what the vehicle will experience during launch. After that, another test of the mirror’s optics will be done, to see if these launch conditions threw anything out of whack.
A rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope completely unfurled in space. NASA
If the telescope passes all those tests, it will then be shipped to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to undergo cryogenic testing, to see if the vehicle can handle the super cold temperatures it will experience while in space. After that, it will be shipped to Northrop Grumman’s facilities in California, where it will be integrated with the rest of the spacecraft and its tennis-court-sized sunshield — layers of polyimide film that will keep the spacecraft cold enough to measure infrared light. And if even more testing goes well in California, the telescope will be shipped by boat to French Guiana for its launch on top of the European Ariane 5 rocket.
It’s still a long road ahead for the James Webb Space Telescope. But it’s also taken many years to get to this point. James Webb was conceived back in 1996, but over time it has encountered major delays and run grossly over budget. At one point, the telescope was meant to fly in 2014 for a cost of $5.1 billion, but the project has gone through multiple re-plans and in 2011 a review found the telescope would likely cost $8.7 billion for a launch in 2018. So for a telescope that’s taken decades to construct, the James Webb Telescope is now in the home stretch.
NASA is preparing for Juno to stick around Jupiter a lot longer than it had originally planned. The probe — which has been orbiting the gas giant since July — is going to stay in its 53-day orbit around the planet for a while, with no definitive plans at the moment to put the vehicle in a shorter orbit. Originally, NASA had hoped to have Juno in a two-week orbit by now, but ongoing engine troubles are delaying that move.
IT’S NOT EXACTLY BAD NEWS
If Juno never goes into its shorter orbit, it’s not exactly bad news. NASA says it won’t diminish the amount of science Juno can do at Jupiter. The biggest difference is that the spacecraft will be swinging by the planet at a much slower rate, so the mission could conceivably last beyond 2019, instead of its previously scheduled end of February 2018.
The trouble for Juno started last month, right before the spacecraft was about to do its second swing by Jupiter. The vehicle doesn’t orbit the planet in a circle but takes a highly elliptical path in order to avoid as much of the radiation-filled environment around Jupiter as possible. Because of this, Juno gets super close to the surface of Jupiter for just a few hours each orbit. These close passes are known as Perijove passes, and they’re the times when Juno can gather the most data.
The most recent Perijove pass occurred on October 19th, but the mission team didn’t intend to do any science on that one. Instead, the plan was to ignite Juno’s main engine, putting the vehicle in the shorter 14-day orbit. The engine burn can only be done during a Perijove pass and none of the science instruments can be on when it happens. Leading up to the pass, NASA engineers found that a few engine valves were taking longer to open than they were supposed to. "That is something that is significant because it can affect how the engine operates," Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tells The Verge.
NASA decided to scrap the engine burn for the October 19th pass and take science measurements of Jupiter instead. But then a software glitch put Juno into safe mode. This mode turns off all of the vehicle’s instruments and prompts the probe to turn toward the Sun while it awaits instructions from Earth. NASA was able to resolve the glitch and bring Juno out of safe mode on October 24th, but at that point the Perijove pass was completed and no science data was gathered.
Now, NASA is focusing on the engine troubles. The mission team won’t be performing a burn on Juno’s upcoming Perijove pass, scheduled for December 11th, and they’re preparing for the possibility of never igniting the spacecraft’s engine again. "That’s the thing we’re looking at," says Nybakken. "We’re not going to do it if we can’t do it safely. And so we’re looking at different ways we can do the burn. Right now, it’s too early to say which way it’s going to go."
THE MISSION COULD LAST BEYOND 2019
That means Juno may not de-orbit in February 2018 like NASA had expected. Instead, the mission could last beyond 2019, according to Nybakken. That’s because the spacecraft will be exposed to the worst parts of Jupiter’s radiation less frequently. Eventually, all those charged particles around the planet will slowly damage Juno enough that it can’t function anymore. But Juno only receives the bulk of the planet’s radiation when it does its flybys of Jupiter. So on a 53-day orbit, the vehicle gets pelted with the worst radioactive doses at a much slower rate. "Radiation accumulation is a function of the number of orbits and not a function of time," says Nybakken. "So it’s really hard to gauge impacts of radiation perspective other than to keep in mind, we accumulate on a full orbit basis not on a time basis."
The only real problem? An eclipse in mid-2019 that would put Juno in Jupiter’s shadow for six to 10 hours. During that time, the spacecraft would not get any sunlight on its solar panels and its temperature would drop significantly. Juno has gone through periods of no sunlight before, but never for such an extended period of time. So NASA’s navigators are trying to figure out a way to change Juno’s orbit to avoid the eclipse, in case the probe is still operating by then. "That looks like a significant obstacle that we’d have to overcome," says Nybakken, "but we have very creative navigators.
McDonald's has long been a leader in the fast food industry, but it has fallen behind its competitors in one big way: it hasn’t provided customers with a way to order and pay for their meals via smartphone or other mobile device. Now, the company is getting ready to roll out mobile order-and-pay technology, according to Business Insider.
A company representative told Business Insider that the technology will initially roll out to the United States and several international markets next year, with upwards of 25,000 stores using system by 2018. The move would help the restaurant chain catch up with competitors such as Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Chick-fil-A — all of which have apps that allow customers to place their orders before they arrive at the store, and in some cases, pay directly through the app.
McDonald's has experimented with mobile order-and-pay apps in the past in countries such as Austria and Thailand, and the technology does appear to be in use in some other European locations. However, the company appears ready to take the technology to much larger markets: it launched its app in October 2015, which allows customers to browse menus, find nearby locations and get deals, but it does not include the ability to order or pay. At the time, McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook noted that the company has planned to update its app with mobile order-and-pay functions.
The company began testing the mobile order-and-pay system in 2014 in 22 locations near Columbus, Georgia. Customers ordered food through the app and scanned a QR code, when they picked up their food, which automatically charged a linked debit or credit card linked to the app. The company has also rolled out self-serve kiosks to locations in Europe, Asia, and the United States, which would help customers skip lines and customize their orders.
Updated to clarify that the technology has been tested and is in use in some European locations.
Remember the Xbox Onesie? How could you forget. Microsoft's Australian marketing team created a real Xbox Onesie with enlarged pockets for Xbox controllers, and rollable legs and arms for all seasons. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Microsoft never sold the Xbox Onesies to the general public, but you can now get one for your virtual self. Microsoft is handing out free Xbox Onesies in black and white for the men and women of Xbox Live. Go wild, Xbox fans:
Microsoft has been promising smaller updates to Windows 10, through various methods, for what feels like years, but the company is now starting to test a new Unified Update Platform (UUP) that will make a big difference. "One of the biggest community and customer benefits of UUP is the reduction you'll see in download size on PCs," explains Bill Karagounis, a Windows program manager, in a blog post on UUP today. "We have converged technologies in our build and publishing systems to enable differential downloads for all devices built on the Mobile and PC OS."
Differential downloads only include the changes that have been pushed out since you last updated a Windows 10 PC. This new change will debut with the Windows 10 Creators Update that's expected to arrive in March, but Windows Insiders can start testing the technology in today's latest build update for mobile devices. Microsoft will start rolling this out to PC builds later this year, alongside HoloLens devices. Xbox One devices running Windows 10 won't benefit from UUP as Microsoft distributes operating system updates to consoles using different methods.
DOWNLOAD SIZES WILL DECREASE BY 35 PERCENT
The real benefit for Windows 10 users will be when they move from one major update to another, as Microsoft expects download sizes to decrease by around 35 percent. That's a great saving for those on low-bandwidth connections, or people with internet caps. This new technology could also help Microsoft roll out changes to Windows 10 machines a lot faster.
Microsoft has already successfully updated more than 400 million Windows 10 devices, and the company now ships out beta builds to Windows Insiders on a weekly basis. That's a big change from a few years ago, and it will likely shape the path for Windows in the future.
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