The parachute that assisted NASA’s Perseverance rover land on Mars last week unfurled a random pattern of colors. But there is more to the story:NASA officials later said it contained a hidden message written in binary computer code.
Sleuths all over the web cracked the message after a few hours.The red and white pattern spelled out “Dare Mighty Things” in concentric rings. The saying is the Perseverance team’s motto, and it is also emblazoned on the walls of Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the mission team’s Southern California headquarters.
“Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find for that purpose, so we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work” said Allen Chen, landing lead for Perseverance. Perseverance’s chief engineer,Adam Steltzner, confirmed the message late Monday night in a tweet.
There is a hidden message in the parachute of NASA’s Mars Rover
LG will license webOS software to other TV brands
LG has announced that the company’s webOS smart TV platform will soon be found on TVs from other brands. Ayonz, Konka and RCA are some of the companies that have signed on already.
“This has the potential to reshape the TV business for both technology and content providers while significantly growing LG’s presence and prominence in the global home entertainment market,” LG stated in a press release.
In licensing its platform to other TV brands, LG is following in the footsteps of Amazon and Roku; each company has joined with third parties to release Roku TVs and Fire TV Edition TVs, respectively.
Qualcomm and Lofelt partnership aims to improve haptic feedback on Android devices
Haptic feedback on Android phones running with the Snapdragon 888 chipset may get noticeably better starting in the second half of this year.
Qualcomm has recently announced that it’s working independently with a company called Lofelt to enhance haptics through software, not hardware.
Aside from some high-end LG phones most Android phones deliver muddy or rattling vibrations that don’t feel that great. Even the best ones can’t compete with Apple’s Taptic Engine it builds in-house and builds into iPhones and Apple Watch wearables.
Lofelt was able to develop a framework and an open API for phone manufacturers that can convert universal haptic data into signals that are finely tuned and improved for that device’s specific hardware. Lofelt CEO and co-founder Daniel Büttner spoke at length on Medium in a post called “The Keys to Delivering Better Haptics on Android,” and it covers everything you’d want to know about why the gap between haptics on Android and Apple devices has been so wide in the past few years.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon perform “beautifully” on ISS
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut taxi performs “beautifully” so far in its first operational, long-duration stay on the International Space Station according to Kathy Lueders, NASA’s human spaceflight chief in a Verge interview. The capsule, called Resilience, sent three NASA astronauts and a Japanese astronaut to the station last November.
NASA and SpaceX are closely monitoring Crew Dragon’s health in space as it tallies 98 days docked to the ISS — the longest duration for a human-rated US spacecraft.
Crew-2 is SpaceX’s next mission and is slated for April 20th, reusing the capsule that flew Behnken and Hurley for the DM-2 mission. NASA decided to allow SpaceX to reuse its capsules for astronaut flights last year, setting the stage for a rigorous refurbishment and certification process for SpaceX.
Square goes bigger on Bitcoin with a new $170 million investment
Square just made a colossal investment in Bitcoin with a $170 million purchase of tokens.
The company, run by Twitter CEO and vocal bitcoin advocate Jack Dorsey, disclosed the investment in its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday.
“Aligned with the company’s purpose, Square believes that cryptocurrency is an instrument of economic empowerment, providing a way for individuals to participate in a global monetary system and secure their own financial future,” reads the company’s press release regarding the purchase.
Square purchased about 3,318 bitcoins at an average price of $51,236. This signals extraordinary confidence in bitcoin as it invites renewed skepticism regarding its stability.The company announced its first major bitcoin investment in October 2020 when it purchased $50 million worth of token when a single bitcoin cost a little over $10,000.
LinkedIn is back up after outage
LinkedIn is back up after its worldwide outage affecting users on both desktop and mobile.
The network first started experiencing issues at around 2PM ET and LinkedIn confirmed things got back to normal at 4:21PM ET.
LinkedIn did not give a specific reason for the outage but did jokingly suggest that the issues may be due to a WandaVision character.
It is rare for LinkedIn to experience outages. LinkedIn last went through widespread issues in January last year, when users were not able to post or make new connections in the service. The recent outage affected the entire website and was not loading for most users.
Google Maps reveals dark mode on Android
The Google Maps app will be getting a new dark mode on Android. The company announced today that it finally is widely releasing the dark theme option that it has been testing since September 2020.
The dark mode takes things much further than the previous night mode color option. The Google map dark mode will be accessible in the app’s settings menu, tagged under “theme”.
Google announced the dark mode rollout as a part of its batch of new features coming to Android; which includes some updates to Android Auto including games as well. Song Quiz, Trivia Crack and Google’s Are You Feeling Lucky? will be available. You can access the games through the assistant by saying “Hey Google, play a game.”
Australian government amends upcoming law and Facebook brings back news
Facebook will restore the news content to its platform in Australia after the government has agreed to to amend its proposed News Media Bargaining Code.
Facebook’s William Easton, Managing director of Australia and New Zealand, said in an updated post that the company is “satisfied that the Australian government has agreed to a number of changes and guarantees that address our core concerns.”
The amendments, outlined in a release from the Australian government, include giving publishers and tech companies two month to reach agreements with one another. Another amendment notes that the government must take into account whether a tech company has already reached commercial agreements with the Australian news industry.
Australian treasurer Josh Frydenberg responded to the deal by saying “Facebook has committed to entering into good-faith negotiations with Australian news media businesses and seeking to reach agreements to pay for content,” the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Google expands its Password Checkup tool to older devices
Google announced Tuesday that will be expanding its Password Checkup feature to older devices.
Now, tablets and phones running Android 9 or newer will have access to the feature, which is part of Google’s autofilling password manager and checks if any logins have been compromised in a data breach or checking password strength.
This update is part of a new batch of updates Google and Android are rolling out; the list also includes the ability to schedule text messages to be sent later on.
A new version of TalkBack (Google’s screen reader for Android), and improved support for Google Assistant to accomplish tasks even when your phone is locked.
NASA: Perseverance Rover’s Descent and Touchdown on Mars
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission captured thrilling footage of its rover landing in Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft’s descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface.
