Tech | EBUT Laboratory

NASA rebrands UAM Grand Challenge to embrace ‘advanced air mobility’

NASA’s Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Grand Challenge will now be known as the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Campaign, the agency revealed on March 23.

According to NASA officials, both “advanced air mobility” and “national campaign” better reflect the goals of the undertaking, which is planned as a series of field demonstrations to evaluate the readiness of new types of aircraft and airspace management systems. The demonstrations will progress in stages to encompass a full range of scenarios under varying weather and traffic conditions — including, but not limited to, scaled urban air taxi operations.

“We’ve talked mostly over the past couple of years about ‘urban air mobility,’” said NASA AAM mission manager Davis Hackenberg in the web conference that served as a virtual kick-off for the agency’s AAM Ecosystem Working Groups (a substitute for an in-person event that was canceled due to coronavirus concerns). “We’d always intended to include other types of [mobility], whether that was rural or urban, but the name I think was getting in the way a little bit.” …

5G携帯電話による植込み型心臓ペースメーカー・除細動器への影響はないとの調査結果

総務省の電波の医療機器等への影響に関するワーキンググループにて、5G携帯電話端末が植込み型心臓ペースメーカー・除細動器に与える影響はないというNTTアドバンステクノロジによる調査結果が報告されている。

植込み型心臓ペースメーカー・除細動器に関しては3G/4G/5G携帯電話端末や無線LAN機器、小型無線電力伝送装置の電波が与える影響の調査が行われており、これらすべての電波発射源について影響はみられなかったという。一方、在宅・介護施設等で使用される医療機器に3G/4G携帯電話端末が与える影響の調査では、成人用人工呼吸器や二相式気道陽圧ユニット、汎用輸液ポンプなどの一部で機器と端末の距離が20cm以下の場合に端末実機影響がみられたとのことだ。

Google Pixel 4 review: the ultimate Android phone has a big flaw

The Google Pixel 4 is a step up from the Pixel 3, but nowhere near as much of one as we’d have liked.

Big phone launches come thick and fast towards the end of each year. And 2019 has been no different. Pretty much the last manufacturer to reveal its flagship devices every year is Google – the Pixel 4 has now arrived.

It’s Google’s fourth in-house phone and, as evolutions go, there are a few potential upgrades. There’s an extra camera, a new radar-based gesture system and Google has killed the notch. But do they add to the phone? …

Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android

Facebook doesn’t want its hardware like Oculus or its augmented reality glasses to be at the mercy of Google because they rely on its Android operating system. That’s why Facebook has tasked Mark Lucovsky, a co-author of Microsoft’s Windows NT, with building the social network an operating system from scratch, according to The Information’s Alex Heath. To be clear, Facebook’s smartphone apps will remain available on Android.

“We really want to make sure the next generation has space for us,” says Facebook’s VP of Hardware, Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth. “We don’t think we can trust the marketplace or competitors to ensure that’s the case. And so we’re gonna do it ourselves.” …

Ready, text, go: typing speeds on mobiles rival keyboard users

Global test finds those using two-thumb technique can hit a blistering 38 words per minute

Think of it as an upside to spending hours on a smartphone. Thanks to all that dextrous thumb work, people can now type nearly as fast on a screen as they can on a keyboard.

Researchers made the discovery during a study of typing skills in which more than 37,000 volunteers from 160 countries took a speed and accuracy test on their mobile phones.

People who tapped out messages with a single finger managed on average only 29 words per minute (wpm), but those who mastered the two-thumb technique hit a blistering 38wpm, only 25% slower than an average typer on a full-sized Qwerty keyboard.

UbuntuとCentOSが減少 – 10月Webサイト向けLinuxシェア

UQ-Successから2019年10月のWebサイト向けLinuxディストリビューションのシェアが発表された。2019年10月はUbuntuとCentOSがシェアを減らした。

Q-Successの調査によれば、Webサイト向けのLinuxディストリビューションのシェアにおいては、Ubuntu、Debian、CentOSの3つが抜きん出ており、これらでシェアの75%以上を占めている。しかし、この1年でトップ3は下落傾向を続けている。

理由は定かではないが、クラウドやコンテナで提供されているカスタムされたLinuxディストリビューションにシェアが移っている可能性があると見られる。

Q-Successは、上位1000万のWebサイト(2013年6月までの上位100万)を調査対象としており、Alexaによって提供されたWebサイトの人気ランキングの3カ月の平均順位を用いている。

Mysterious Mac Pro Shutdowns Likely Caused by Chrome Update

A serious data corruption issue that resulted in Mac Pro workstations being rendered unusable at a number of Hollywood studios Monday was likely caused by a browser update gone haywire: Google told Mac Pro users Tuesday evening that an update to its Chrome browser is likely to fault for the issue, which particularly impacted video editors across Hollywood and beyond.

“We recently discovered that a Chrome update may have shipped with a bug that damages the file system on MacOS machines,” the company wrote in a forum post. “We’ve paused the release while we finalize a new update that addresses the problem.”

Reports of Mac Pro workstations refusing to reboot started to circulate among video editors late Monday. At the time, the common denominator among impacted machines seemed to be the presence of Avid’s Media Composer software…

Every Single Piece of Hardware Amazon Announced Today

More Alexa, anyone?

Amazon’s September hardware event returned this year to bring us spanking-new devices, with Alexa-enabled features front and center, shocking. The event, which Amazon live-blogged but did not stream, kicked off as it did last year with a presentation from David Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices. He teased out some of what’s new from the company and just like last year, Amazon dropped so many product reveals that it’ll make your head spin. Here’s what to know.

Echo Dot
First up, Amazon’s Echo Dot gets a clock. According to CNET, the new Echo Dot with Clock has an LED screen behind the speaker that will display not only the time but alarm times and the temperature when asked. This little guy clocks in (sorry) at $60 and is available for pre-order beginning today. Amazon says if the Dot is used as an alarm clock, users can now tap to snooze as well…

CentOS 8 vs CentOS 7

CentOS 8 では、各種ミドルウェアの標準バージョンが最新化される予定です。
PHP 7.2、MySQL 8.0 などをそのまま利用することができます。

Python については「3.6系」と「2.7系」を選択してインストール可能ですが、可能な限り「3.6系」の利用をオススメします。（Python 2系は2020年1月1日でサポート終了）

CentOS のパッケージ管理に欠かせない yum の中身が入れ替わります。
Fedora などで採用されている dnf をベースとしたコマンドへと変更になりました。

以前の yum は Python 2 ベースでしたが、dnf は Python 3 ベースで作られています。
コマンドラインのオプション等は変わらないものの、プラグインは別途対応が必要です …

Computer scientist Richard Stallman, who defended Jeffrey Epstein, resigns from MIT CSAIL and the Free Software Foundation

Computer scientist and open software advocate Richard Stallman said he has resigned from his position as a visiting scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) after describing a victim of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as “entirely willing” in emails sent to a department list. Stallman has also stepped down from his roles as president and board director at the Free Software Foundation, the nonprofit he founded in 1985.

Last week, the Daily Beast reported that Stallman had also called for the legalization of child pornography and abolishment of age of consent laws on his personal blog in multiple posts published over the course of 15 years.

In his MIT CSAIL resignation, also posted to his personal blog, Stallman wrote: “To the MIT Community, I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings.”

MIT has been under scrutiny for its ties to Epstein, whom a New Yorker investigation found had secured $7.5 million in donations for the MIT Media Lab, far more than what was previously disclosed. As a result, its director, Joi Ito, resigned last week and MIT ordered an investigation into the Media Lab’s ties to Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell last month while awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges…