Category: Technica Aquarius

Enlarge / Amazon’s Echo Show 15 is about the largest smart display you can find. (credit: Scharon Harding)

When getting a display of any type, the first thing to consider is size. And unless the display will be moving around, chances are that the bigger it is, the better your experience will be. TV manufacturers have gone big, smartphones (to my chagrin) insist on doing so, and now it’s time for a newer category, smart displays, to step onto the big screen.

The Amazon Echo Show 15 isn’t just the biggest Echo package yet, it has the biggest screen you can easily find in a smart display of any brand. The 15.6-inch display is meant to be anchored and serve as a central organization hub for your household. Boasting Alexa-powered widgets like shared calendars, shopping lists, to-do lists, and the abilities to call household members and manage your other smart devices, there’s a lot of utility to take advantage of.

Navigating the Echo Show 15’s content sometimes feels clunky, and some features are hard to discover, despite Amazon’s efforts to stuff the UI with tips. Different family member profiles can be activated via facial recognition, but the transition isn’t always smooth. You’ll have to train your family to use the Echo Show 15 to make it really worthwhile. But if you’re going down the path of smart displays, the Echo Show 15 comes with a bigger screen and bigger possibilities than the competition.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Aurich Lawson)

I can barely believe it’s once again that time of year when I sit down and look through everything we drove during the last 12 months to see what stood out. And what a 12 months they’ve been, with a number of highly anticipated new models, including quite a few new battery electric vehicles. In fact, more than half of my top 10 are BEVs, which says good things about ever-expanding consumer options. Read on to find out what impressed in 2021.

1. Hyundai Ioniq 5

OK, I boxed myself into this corner earlier this month when I wrote a headline proclaiming that the Hyundai Ioniq 5 was the best EV we drove all year. I haven’t changed that opinion in the last week, either. Hyundai’s days of unreliable, poorly made cars are long behind it, and its electric powertrains were already the best of the non-Tesla rest.

Now it has a brand-new 800 V platform for larger, more premium BEVs, and the Ioniq 5 is the first result. It has pin-sharp styling and TARDIS-like levels of interior space, and it rapid-charges in just 18 minutes. And the fully loaded AWD version is still under $55,000 before any tax credits or incentives. Watch this space for a more powerful, sportier Ioniq 5 N.

Enlarge (credit: Craig Hastings | Getty Images)

President Joe Biden on Tuesday issued a proclamation revoking controversial travel restrictions targeting southern Africa where the ultra-transmissible omicron coronavirus variant was first detected in late November.

The travel restrictions on eight countries in southern Africa—Botswana, Eswatini/Swaziland, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe—will be lifted at 12:01am ET on December 31.

The revocation was long sought by public health experts, who say such travel bans are ineffective and harmful.

Enlarge / SEM Micrograph of a tardigrade, more commonly known as a water bear or “moss piglet.” (credit: Cultura RM Exclusive/Gregory S. Paulson/Getty Images)

There’s rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we’re once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2020, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: the amazing physics of the humble tardigrade.

Is there nothing the tiny tardigrade can’t do? More commonly known as water bears (or “moss piglets”), these amazing micro-animals can survive in the harshest conditions: extreme pressure, extreme temperature, radiation, dehydration, starvation—even exposure in outer space.  That hardiness makes them a favorite case study for scientists.

Earlier this year, researchers at Rockefeller University examined the water bear’s distinctive gait and concluded the creature’s movement resembles that of insects 500,000 times their size, according to a paper published in August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Enlarge (credit: WichienTep | Getty Images)

A 10-year-old girl and her mother got a lesson about the utility of voice assistants after Amazon’s Alexa suggested the girl try the TikTok plug challenge. According to the girl’s mother, Kristin Livdahl, the dangerous suggestion came after her daughter asked Alexa for a challenge to do.

“We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shot on your foot, from a Phy Ed teacher on YouTube earlier,” Livdahl explained in her Twitter thread. “She just wanted another one.”

For the (blessedly) uninitiated, the plug challenge consists of partially plugging a phone charger into an electrical outlet and then dropping a penny onto the exposed prongs. Results can run the gamut from a small spark to a full-on electrical fire.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in May 2021 carrying the 29th batch of approximately 60 satellites as part of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband Internet network. (credit: SOPA Images / Getty Images)

Earlier in December, the Chinese government filed a document with the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space at the United Nations. The body helps manage the terms of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, more commonly known as the Outer Space Treaty. In the document, China alleges that it had to move its space station twice this year due to potential collisions with Starlink satellites operated by SpaceX.

The document pointedly notes that signatories of the treaty, which include the US, are responsible for the actions of any nongovernmental activities based within their borders.

The document was filed back on December 6, but it only came to light recently when Chinese Internet users became aware of it and started flaming Elon Musk, head of SpaceX.