Tesla Autopilot 2.0 is Capable of Handling Road Construction Zones. Still, Keep Alert During These Times. You Never Know if the System Could Mess Up.

Watch Tesla Autopilot surprisingly handle a construction zone with the new update

We are just starting to understand the potential of Tesla Autopilot 2.0 following the latest software update that the automaker started pushing to its the fleet last week. Now we see Tesla's Autopilot handle a construction zone with the new update - something that we wouldn't recommend trying.

From article, (We are just starting to understand the potential of Tesla Autopilot 2.0 following the latest software update that the automaker started pushing to its the fleet last week.

Now we see Tesla’s Autopilot handle a construction zone with the new update – something that we wouldn’t recommend trying.

As we previously reported, the latest update (2018.10.4) features a new neural net rewritten by Tesla’s new Director of AI and Autopilot Vision, Andrej Karpathy, and his team.

In November, code found in the Autopilot software showed that Tesla’s neural net is able to recognize construction zones and that the automaker is now using its fleet to recognize and categorize obstacles and corner cases for Autopilot to navigate.

Now with the latest update, we get the first evidence, albeit anecdotal, that Tesla’s Autopilot is able to handle a construction zone after the latest update.)

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FCC Increases the Amount of Time Satellite Internet Providers Can have to Build Out their Systems so, OneWeb has Asked to Increase the Number of Satellites it Wants to Deploy.

OneWeb asks FCC to authorize 1,200 more satellites - SpaceNews.com

WASHINGTON - Citing recent reforms that provide more time to orbit a new satellite constellation, satellite broadband-startup OneWeb asked U.S. telecom regulators to nearly triple the size of its authorized low-Earth-orbit constellation. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in June approved OneWeb's request to serve customers in the United States using a constellation of 720 satellites.

 From article, (Citing recent reforms that provide more time to orbit a new satellite constellation, satellite broadband-startup OneWeb asked U.S. telecom regulators to nearly triple the size of its authorized low-Earth-orbit constellation.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in June approved OneWeb’s request to serve customers in the United States using a constellation of 720 satellites. Writing to the commission March 19, OneWeb asked that the company be permitted another 1,260 satellites, bringing the total number to 1,980 spacecraft.

OneWeb said the FCC’s September decision to give companies more time to fully deploy their constellations enables OneWeb to plan a larger fleet. The FCC previously required companies to launch 100 percent of their satellites within six years of authorization. Under the new rules, companies have six years to deploy half their fleet.

“OneWeb responsibly designed its LEO Constellation on the basis of a milestone regime that required launch and operation of the entire constellation within a six-year time frame … If the current milestone regime had been in effect when OneWeb began planning its constellation and network architecture, OneWeb would have proposed a much more expansive LEO Constellation,” the company wrote the FCC.

The FCC imposes deployment deadlines to prevent companies from “warehousing” spectrum, laying claim to frequencies and barring them from use by other companies. The new regulations require full constellation deployment in nine years. If an operator fails to reach full deployment in that time, its authorized number of satellites shrinks to the number already in orbit. OneWeb spoke against the FCC modifying constellation deployment deadlines during last year’s rulemaking procedure.

OneWeb said the new satellites will use the same Ku- and Ka-band spectrum as the first 720 satellites. To accommodate the additional 1,260, OneWeb said it would double the number of orbital planes from 18 to 36, and increase the maximum number of satellites per plane from 40 to 55.

The larger fleet will require more ground stations, OneWeb said, with as many as 50 antennas each to connect with the constellation. OneWeb’s gateway supplier Hughes Network Systems of Germantown, Maryland, said March 13 that it has shipped the first completed gateways.)

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Police Chief: Self-Driving Uber Car Not at Fault in Car Accident. Goes to Show You that Pedestrians will Do Stupid Things Causing Car Accidents. Even, With the Most Advanced Anti-Accident Technology.

Exclusive: Tempe police chief says early probe shows no fault by Uber

Pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags, a woman abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic and was struck by a self-driving Uber operating in autonomous mode. "The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them," said Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Ariz., the location for the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car.

From article, (Pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags, a woman abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic and was struck by a self-driving Uber operating in autonomous mode.

“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” said Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Ariz., the location for the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”
Traveling at 38 mph in a 35 mph zone on Sunday night, the Uber self-driving car made no attempt to brake, according to the Police Department’s preliminary investigation.

Elaine Herzberg, 49, was unconscious at the scene and later died of her injuries at a local hospital. At a news conference, Tempe police said it appears that she may have been homeless.

The self-driving Volvo SUV was outfitted with at least two video cameras, one facing forward toward the street, the other focused inside the car on the  driver, Moir said in an interview.

From viewing the videos, “it’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway,” Moir said. The police have not released the videos.

The incident happened within perhaps 100 yards of a crosswalk, Moir said. “It is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated, managed crosswalks are available,” she said.)

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Toys 'R' Us Loss May Be Amazon's Gain.

Amazon Has Considered Buying Some Toys 'R' Us Stores

Potential deal could create Amazon-branded retail locations Toy-store chain has announced plans to shut down U.S. stores Amazon.com Inc. has looked at the possibility of expanding its retail footprint by acquiring some locations from bankrupt Toys "R" Us Inc., according to people with knowledge of the situation.

From article, (Amazon.com Inc. has looked at the possibility of expanding its retail footprint by acquiring some locations from bankrupt Toys “R” Us Inc., according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The online giant isn’t interested in maintaining the Toys “R” Us brand, but has considered using the soon-to-be-vacant spaces for its own purposes, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

Such a move would let Amazon quickly expand its brick-and-mortar presence, coming on the heels of buying Whole Foods Market Inc. and its more than 450 locations last year. The Seattle-based company also has opened its own line of bookstores and a convenience-store concept.

Representatives for Amazon and Toys “R” Us declined to comment.

Additional stores would give Amazon space to showcase its popular Echo line of devices, which run on the Alexa voice-activated platform. Amazon sees voice as the next interface for people to access technology -- supplanting computer mouses and touch screens -- and the benefits may be easier to demonstrate in a real-world setting.

A bigger network of stores would put inventory closer to where shoppers live, potentially enabling quick delivery to e-commerce customers. The space could also serve as a staging ground for grocery delivery from Whole Foods stores. Amazon is already planning to roll out free two-hour service to Whole Foods customers in four cities, including Dallas and Cincinnati.

Still, the company is under little pressure to hammer out a deal and deliberations may lead nowhere. In 2015, Amazon held discussions about acquiring some RadioShack locations around the time of the electronics retailer’s bankruptcy filing, people familiar with the matter said. Nothing came of those talks.)

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Port of LA Land Approved for SpaceX Manufacturing Facility.

SpaceX's first BFR manufacturing facility approved by the Port of LA

SpaceX has been given initial approval by the Port of Los Angeles to acquire and develop a massive vacant lot into a facility capable of manufacturing the first BFR prototypes and refurbishing the company's reusable Falcon 9 boosters. This approval is without a doubt the biggest step forward yet for the company's ultimate goal of ... 

From article, (SpaceX has been given initial approval by the Port of Los Angeles to acquire and develop a massive vacant lot into a facility capable of manufacturing the first BFR prototypes and refurbishing the company’s reusable Falcon 9 boosters. This approval is without a doubt the biggest step forward yet for the company’s ultimate goal of sending massive spaceships to Mars.

A request summary completed on March 6 details SpaceX’s proposal, laying out a bright future of rocket manufacturing for the abandoned 18-acre lot at Berth 240, one that might soon support “composite curing, cleaning, painting, and assembly [of commercial transportation vessels]” that “would need to be transported by water due to their size.” This description meshes almost perfectly with past discussion of BFR manufacturing plans from SpaceX executives like Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell, both of which have in the recent past affirmed the need for any BFR manufacturing facility to be located adjacent to a large body of water due to the difficulty of transporting rocket hardware as large as BFR.

 On March 15, around a week after the environmental impact assessment gave a green light for SpaceX’s facility, Port of Los Angeles’ Board of Harbor Commissioners approved the proposal, effectively giving SpaceX permission to begin serious demolition and construction activities at Berth 240, an abandoned lot located on the San Pedro side of the greater Port of Los Angeles, which refers to both Ports of San Pedro and Long Beach. To provide context, SpaceX’s primary manufacturing facilities in Hawthorne, CA occupy 10-15 acres of urban real estate – in other words, even partial development of Berth 240’s 18 acres would mark a huge expansion of the company’s available manufacturing and refurbishment space, an absolute necessity for the construction of a launch vehicle as large as BFR.

The construction of such a facility would make it significantly easier for SpaceX to build its first BFR/BFS prototypes, avoiding the massive disruption and cost that transporting the 9m-diameter vehicle through downtown LA. Rather than dealing with that nightmare, SpaceX would instead be able to simply crane an assembled booster or spaceship onto a barge (perhaps a drone ship?) that would then ship the rocket hardware through the Panama Canal to the company’s facilities in Cape Canaveral, FL or Boca Chica, TX.

While it is likely to take a fair amount of time to prepare the lot for the construction of a facility capable of manufacturing advanced composite rocket components, the wording in the Port documentation also suggests that SpaceX means to transfer its Falcon 9 recovery work to the new berth as soon as it’s available. Indeed, the comparatively massive space would give SpaceX far more room for recovery operations with the drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI), and could potentially become a one-stop-shop for booster recovery and refurbishment. As of now, boosters recovered on the West Coast are transported to the Hawthorne factory for all refurbishment work, operations that themselves already require brief road stoppages to accommodate the sheer size of Falcon 9. As of 2018, SpaceX is planning for BFR to be 50% taller and close to three times as wide as Falcon 9 (350 feet long and 30 feet in diameter).

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Tesla Closing In On 2,000 Model 3's Produced a Week.

Tesla Model 3 production is significantly accelerating based on new VINs

It remains difficult to determine Tesla's current Model 3 production rate. This data is highly important at many different levels to reservation holders and the industry in general as the biggest electric vehicle production program in the world.

From article, (It remains difficult to determine Tesla’s current Model 3 production rate. This data is highly important at many different levels to reservation holders and the industry in general as the biggest electric vehicle production program in the world.

Analysts are not optimistic about the company reaching its goal, but the automaker has been increasingly registering new VINs for Model 3 lately – indicating that the production could be nearing 2,000 units per week.

As we previously discussed on several occasions, looking at the total of vehicle identification numbers (VINs) is not a great way to track a production ramp-up at Tesla because previous production programs showed that the automaker skips numbers.

Therefore, the fact that Tesla has registered Model 3 VINs over #15,000 doesn’t mean that the company has produced nearly as many vehicles.

But if the rate at which Tesla is registering new Model 3 VINs is accelerating, that’s a pretty good indication that production is also increasing.

After the company started taking orders from non-Tesla owners last month, new VINs were rare, but it picked up in March with Tesla registering about 1,000 new VINs per week and today it registered over 2,000 more VINs.

4,500 new Model 3 VINs registered by Tesla in the first 3 weeks of March.

The company has been targeting a production rate of 2,500 Model 3 vehicles per week by the end of March and while it doesn’t seem to be there yet, it’s getting a lot closer to 2,000 units per week.)

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NJ Gov. Murphy Delivers new Money for NJ Transit. Now, NJ Transit Has to Deliver Better Service.

Fare Increase Not A Part Of Murphy's Plan For NJ Transit Budget

Rate hikes are not part of Governor Murphy's plan to inject $242 million of new funding into NJ Transit next year. Murphy Tuesday outlined how the 172 percent funding increase will be allocated for the agency's Fiscal Year 2019 budget, which is nearly triple of last year's funding amount.

From article, (Rate hikes are not part of Governor Murphy's plan to inject $242 million of new funding into NJ Transit next year.

Murphy Tuesday outlined how the 172 percent funding increase will be allocated for the agency's Fiscal Year 2019 budget, which is nearly triple of last year's funding amount.

Of the $242 million, $120 million will replace non-recurring funding and one-time allocations that the Christie administration used as alternatives to state-appropriations to NJ Transit's operating budget.

Other investments include:

• $19 million to hire 114 bus, rail, light rail and police employees, along with "administrative support services."
• $21 million will fund increase contractual obligations to private transportation carriers that operate the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, River LINE and certain bus routes, facilities, maintenance, software improvements and other programs designed to improve the "overall health" of the transit system.
• $28 million will correct a shortfall in passenger revenue caused by using unrealistic annual revenue projections.
• $11 million will fund administrative "priorities."
• $4 million will fund bus and rail service expansion to and from New York and the Meadowlands. The expansion is needed due to address overcrowding and the opening of American Dream Meadowlands in March 2019.
• Another $4 million will enhance scheduling, improve communication with the media and the public, and increase service reliability.

"I'm extremely grateful for the Governor's generous support and commitment in his proposed budget that provides NJ Transit with the funding it needs, and without subjecting our customers to a fare increase through Fiscal Year 2019," said NJ Transit Executive Director Kevin Corbett. "It is now up to us to deliver real results for our customers.")

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NASA Relaxing Some Rules as to Where an RTG Can be Used on Future Space Probe Missions

Ideas for new NASA mission can now include spacecraft powered by plutonium

Researchers proposing spacecraft ideas for NASA's Discovery program - an initiative to develop deep-space missions that usually cost less than half a billion dollars - will be allowed to incorporate a special kind of radioactive battery in the designs for their vehicles.

From article, (NASA is giving scientists more choices for how to power their future spacecraft to explore the Solar System. Researchers proposing spacecraft ideas for NASA’s Discovery program — an initiative to develop deep-space missions that usually cost less than half a billion dollars — will be allowed to incorporate a special kind of radioactive battery in the designs for their vehicles. And that could potentially allow these missions to get more science done and go deeper into space.

Discovery proposals can now incorporate a type of power system known as a radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs. These generators are powered by radioactive material — a type of metal called plutonium-238. The metal naturally decays over time, producing heat that is then converted into electrical energy.

 NASA has been using RTGs to power some of its spacecraft since the 1960s. However, NASA banned the use of these systems in the upcoming proposals for the Discovery program, since the United States has had a very limited supply of plutonium-238. Now it seems the US may have enough of the material to spare for the program. After consulting with the Department of Energy, NASA decided to lift the ban on RTGs for the Discovery program, according to a memo sent out over the weekend by James Green, the director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division.

The Department of Energy said that its recent success in producing more plutonium-238 in the US helped NASA make this decision. DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has produced 350 grams of the material, some of which will be incorporated in NASA’s next Mars rover. “These recent successes have reduced risks associated with future plutonium supplies and factored into NASA’s announcement last week to include radioisotope power systems in its Discovery 2018 Announcement of Opportunity,” a spokesperson for DOE said in a statement to The Verge. “The Department is committed to supporting NASA’s efforts to make radioisotope power systems available to support its space exploration goals.”

The change may be possible since there is a while before the new Discovery mission has to be ready, allowing time for more Pu-238 to be produced. NASA plans to post a final draft of the Discovery program’s call for submissions in 2019, and then the finalist will be chosen in 2021. The target launch date for the mission is some time before the end of 2026.)

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There All Being Cured, One by One. Cancer, MS, Diabetes, Now Blindness, are Being Treated with Stem Cells, or Gene Therapy, that Rejuvenate the Body or Fight and Cure Diseases Once Thought as Incurable.

New Stem Cell Treatment Gives Blind Patients Ability To Read

CBS Local - A revolutionary new stem cell treatment is giving doctors hope of developing a cure for blindness within the next five years. The experimental therapy has reportedly given two patients, who were both losing their sight, the ability to read again.

From article, (A revolutionary new stem cell treatment is giving doctors hope of developing a cure for blindness within the next five years. The experimental therapy has reportedly given two patients, who were both losing their sight, the ability to read again.

Doctors in London say they have successfully treated two people who were suffering from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a condition that can destroy a person’s vision center in multiple ways. “In the months before the operation my sight was really poor and I couldn’t see anything out of my right eye,” 86-year-old Douglas Waters told the BBC. “I can now read the newspaper.”

Waters and a woman in her early 60s were both part of the experimental treatment created by the London Project to Cure Blindness. According to their report, published in Nature Biotechnology, the procedure involved implanting a “patch” of stem cells over the damaged areas of each patient’s eyes. The stem cells worked to repair the leakage of blood vessels around the retina, which is known as the “wet” version of AMD.

The “dry” version of the sight-destroying condition is a slower deterioration of the retina itself, which Prof. Pete Coffey says may be treated by the same procedure but has not been tested yet. Both patients receiving the stem cell patch had “wet” AMD. “We hope this will lead to an affordable ‘off-the-shelf’ therapy that could be made available to NHS patients within the next five years,” the professor from University College London added.

Prof. Coffey added that his patients are having better results than expected. Both patients are able to see about twice as much as the London researchers predicted. “The first patient has got six lines improvement, which is astounding, and the second has five lines and he seems to be getting better as the months go by,” Coffey said, via The Guardian.)

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How does an Ad Company, like Google, Generate Income from Its Voice Command Hardware, like Assistant? They Have Come Up With a New Ad Model that Does Not Act Like a Normal Ad

Google is creating its own Amazon right under our noses

The future of Google revolves around Assistant. That much is apparent - and the company's ongoing focus on its virtual assistant above everything else (and as a thread connecting everything else) serves as a constant reminder. The unanswered question, though, has long been how Google will make money off the spoken inquiries so many of us are slinging into Assistant's ears.

From article, (The future of Google revolves around Assistant. That much is apparent — and the company's ongoing focus on its virtual assistant above everything else (and as a thread connecting everything else) serves as a constant reminder.


The unanswered question, though, has long been how Google will make money off the spoken inquiries so many of us are slinging into Assistant's ears. After all, whether we're talking to our phones or shouting at smart speakers like Google Home — the latter of which are exploding in popularity, by the way, with IDC estimating a whopping 184% growth from 2016 to 2017 — no one wants to hear ads sprinkled in with their answers.

Google's in an unusual position with this conundrum, as I laid out a few weeks back. For Amazon, the current smart speaker market leader, the benefit of getting you in the habit of using its virtual assistant is simple: It makes it meaningfully easier for you to order stuff from Amazon — and encourages you to do so without any comparison shopping, no less. It's all about "minimizing friction," to use the cringe-inducing industry lingo.

Let's set the scene first, shall we? Google's core business has always been about ads, and everything it does has ultimately served to support that business. It's a pretty straight-forward arrangement: The more time you spend online and using various Google services, the more data the company can collect about you — and the more effective ads it can serve you across the internet.

Getting you to use Google hardware lets Google provide you with a better ongoing user experience, with Google services at the center. That, in turn, gets you to use the internet and Google services more frequently, which means Google can collect more data about you and...well, you know the rest. Even when it's about hardware, for Google, it isn't ever truly justabout hardware.

The problem is that all parts of this model depend upon Google's ability to show you ads. Without that element in place, none of it adds up. And if you're doing more and more of your searches through nontraditional venues — like speaking into a phone or smart speaker — there's no great way to get to that point of payoff.

[So,]Google will let retailers have their products listed in both regular search and within Google Assistant — not for the typical advertising fee but in exchange for giving Google a cut of each resulting sale. Google will use its Google Express platform to make the actual act of purchasing pain-free, consistent, and seamless for customers. Retailers ranging from Target to Walmart, Home Depot, and Costco are already on board.

The effort is being framed as a way to let retailers better compete with Amazon: As it stands now, Google tells Reuters, "tens of millions" of shoppers are asking Google questions about products — and then ending up at Amazon when it's time to make a purchase. The hope is that this new program could provide the enticing last-step detour retailers have struggled to establish on their own:

There's another layer at work here, and it's where the grander narrative resides. While simultaneously helping retailers compete with Amazon for buying dollars, this move will help Google compete with Amazon by giving it a way for its ad business to stay viable in a voice-centric realm. In this model, the "advertisers" will still be paying to reach you — just in a different manner than they did in the past. And in doing so, they'll position Google as the guardian and gatekeeper of a new "everything store" — one that offers already-established direct lines into countless shoppers' lives.

The company is effectively creating its own Amazon right within its search results, in other words, and it's doing so in a way that's designed to work as effortlessly from a smart speaker as it does from a browser page.)

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