Category: Technica Aquarius

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden (C) signs the Postal Service Reform Act into law during an event with (L-R) Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and retired letter carrier Annette Taylor and others in the State Dining Room at the White House on April 6, 2022, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Chip Somodevilla )

At least 72 of the over 600 people who attended the mostly maskless Gridiron Dinner—an exclusive annual event frequented by high-profile Washington, DC, elites—have since tested positive for COVID-19. The dinner took place on April 2.

The growing tally may herald a nationwide rise in infections from the BA.2 omicron subvariant amid relaxed health measures. BA.2 is now the dominant variant circulating in the US and is more transmissible than the initial ultra-transmissible omicron subvariant, BA.1.

So far, over 20 states and Washington, DC, are reporting upticks in cases over the past two weeks, and nearly 10 states are seeing an increase in hospitalizations, according to data tracking by The New York Times. Over half of the country’s wastewater sites monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 levels have also detected rises in the past two weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The monitoring is intended to act as an early warning signal for case surges.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto)

Elon Musk will not be joining Twitter’s board of directors, dropping out of a deal that would have prohibited him from buying more than 14.9 percent of the company’s stock. Musk had agreed to join the board after purchasing 9.2 percent of Twitter’s stock, but Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal last night announced that Musk pulled out of the pending agreement.

Agrawal posted a note he sent to Twitter employees, which said:

We announced on Tuesday that Elon would be appointed to the Board contingent on a background check and formal acceptance. Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board. I believe this is for the best. We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.

Musk revealed a week ago that he had purchased nearly 73.5 million Twitter shares, which are now worth over $3 billion. If the SpaceX and Tesla CEO had followed through on the agreement to join Twitter’s board, he would have had to abide by a stock-purchasing limit detailed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Enlarge / Cruise’s driverless Bolt EVs are a common sight in San Francisco. (credit: Cruise)

A video showing a driverless car being stopped by the police and then attempting to drive away went viral over the weekend. San Francisco police stopped one of Cruise’s autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EVs, likely because the car’s headlights were not on despite it being night. In the video, first posted to Instagram on April 2, an officer can be heard saying, “There’s nobody in it.”

But a few seconds later, after the officer walks back to his police car, the autonomous vehicle—perhaps deciding that the traffic stop was over—tries to drive away before pulling over to a stop a few hundred feet away.

Cruise says that the car wasn’t trying to make a run for it. The vehicle first yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to a safe spot for the actual traffic stop, the company says. One of the police officers contacted Cruise to inform it of the situation, and the driverless car did not receive a ticket. Cruise says it has fixed whatever caused the car to drive without its headlights at night.

Enlarge / A Pythom Space video from March 19 shows employees reacting to an expanding cloud of dust and exhaust. (credit: Pythom Space)

There’s a small rocket company based in eastern California named Pythom Space. And like a lot of space startups, it has big dreams. In this case, co-founders Tina and Tom Sjögren have the goal of flying to Mars in 2024—and if not then, by 2026.

“We see this as a new world,” Tina Sjögren said recently. “When Columbus sailed to America, there were both better boats and sailors. But no one else did it. He did. All it took was three weeks. It was not difficult; it was fear that held everyone back. It was believed that one would fall over the edge of the earth. Or be eaten by sea monsters. He showed… that was wrong.”

This seems naïve, of course. Even SpaceX, which from the beginning was well-funded and able to hire excellent early employees, is still years away from sending humans to Mars after its founding in 2002. But the Sjögrens are undaunted. “You have to work hard, but you do not have to be very smart,” Tina Sjögren added.

Enlarge / Fragment of the Antikythera mechanism, circa 205 BC, housed in the collection of National Archaeological Museum, Athens. (credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Image)

The mysterious Antikythera mechanism—an ancient device believed to have been used for tracking the heavens—has fascinated scientists and the public alike since it was first recovered from a shipwreck over a century ago. Much progress has been made in recent years to reconstruct the surviving fragments and learn more about how the mechanism might have been used. And now, members of a team of Greek researchers believe they have pinpointed the start date for the Antikythera mechanism, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv repository. Knowing that “day zero” is critical to ensuring the accuracy of the device.

“Any measuring system, from a thermometer to the Antikythera mechanism, needs a calibration in order to [perform] its calculations correctly,” co-author Aristeidis Voulgaris of the Thessaloniki Directorate of Culture and Tourism in Greece told New Scientist. “Of course it wouldn’t have been perfect—it’s not a digital computer, it’s gears—but it would have been very good at predicting solar and lunar eclipses.” 

As we’ve previously reported, in 1900, a Greek sponge diver named Elias Stadiatis discovered the wreck of an ancient cargo ship off the coast of Antikythera island in Greece. He and other divers recovered all kinds of artifacts from the ship. A year later, an archaeologist named Valerios Stais was studying what he thought was a piece of rock recovered from the shipwreck when he noticed that there was a gear wheel embedded in it. It turned out to be an ancient mechanical device. The Antikythera mechanism is now housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.