Month: April 2022

Look at all those details! Maps will show traffic lights, stop signs, and building outlines in navigation mode. (credit: Google)

It might be hard to believe, but there are still some incredibly useful features that can be added to Google Maps. The latest addition brings traffic-light and stop-sign icons to navigation mode.

Traffic lights have appeared in Google Maps in some areas since 2020. Not everyone had access to them, though, and they never seemed to show up while navigating. Now, lights and stop signs will appear on everyone’s routes while navigating. That should give users a better feel for how their trip will go and when they should turn. Google says many more normal map details will soon be visible in the navigation view, including building outlines and areas of interest.

While a ton of details pop up on the regular map, navigation mode previously stripped out most of them, and the spaces between roads have usually been blank. For cities with a high level of Google Maps details, you’ll also start to see the specific shape and width of a road, including medians and islands.

Enlarge / The Pi OS is getting a new setup wizard to help it shed its old username. (credit: Raspberry Pi Foundation)

Since its launch, the Raspberry Pi OS (and most operating systems based on it) has shipped with a default “pi” user account, making it simpler to boot up a Pi and start working without needing to hook up the device to a monitor or go through a multi-step setup process. But as of today, that’s changing—new installs of the Raspberry Pi OS are shedding that default user account for both security and regulatory reasons.

Raspberry Pi Foundation software engineer Simon Long explains the thinking in this blog post.

“[The “pi” user account] could potentially make a brute-force attack slightly easier, and in response to this, some countries are now introducing legislation to forbid any Internet-connected device from having default login credentials,” he writes.

Enlarge / Roberta Williams and Ken Williams at the 2022 Game Developers Conference. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

SAN FRANCISCO—Legendary game programmer Ken Williams needed only a moment to chew on my question. He and equally famed game designer Roberta Williams had set themselves up for the query by recounting a principle from their time at Sierra On-Line, the video game company they founded that revolutionized PC gaming in the 1980s and ’90s.

Sierra games, they said, stood out because they were built “with blinders” from the rest of the games industry. Nobody worked at competitors’ companies; nobody played competitors’ games. And after each Sierra game’s release, its individual sales record would determine the budget and scope of the lead designer’s next game.

I asked how that math works for their new, out-of-nowhere game announcement in March 2022, Colossal Cave 3D. This reimagining of the first text adventure, the one that Roberta eventually modded into her classic 1980 game Mystery House, is about as detached from her designs in Sierra’s heyday as it can be, mostly due to its shift into (optional) hand-controlled VR adventuring. Does Sierra’s founding principle about budgets and production scope still apply if a lead designer’s “last game” launched over 20 years ago?

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches on Friday carrying four private citizens to the International Space Station. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

11:45 am ET Friday update: Right on schedule, beneath bright blue skies in Florida, the Axiom-1 mission successfully launched into orbit on Friday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. At 12 minutes into the flight, the Dragon spacecraft Endeavour separated from the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage and began its in-space journey toward the International Space Station. It is expected to dock with the station on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage returned to Earth and made a safe landing on a drone ship after its fifth spaceflight.

Overall, this was SpaceX’s sixth human spaceflight with the Crew Dragon vehicle. The company has transported 22 people into low Earth orbit across those missions in just under two years. To illustrate the rapidity of Dragon’s rise, consider that China, widely regarded as having the second-most capable civil space program in the world, has launched 20 astronauts since 2003.