You can tell ...

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

One can tell when a market is mature, it's when the notion of innovation no longer applies because the products in a specific market differentiate from one another on superficialities, something readily seen in smartphones as the tech has gotten so good and so similar, the notions of products in a mature market such as smart phones having unique selling points becomes meaningless.

To whit ...

Let's face it, mobile phones, even the best ones, just aren't that exciting anymore. They're all way more powerful than we really need, they all have nifty multi-lens cameras and they all look essentially the same. I really hoped that folding phones would give a much needed shot of adrenaline to the industry, but well over a year on from their arrival, they've fizzled out like a damp firework and left me feeling disappointed.

I've worked for CNET for a decade and most of that time I've specifically covered mobile phones. I've seen a lot come and go. I've seen the rise and fall of BlackBerry, I've seen weird phone ideas like the Russian Yotaphone with its e-ink second screen and I saw the brief trend of curved phones like the LG G4 and Samsung's Galaxy Round. But in recent years it's seemed that genuine innovation has been put aside, with every company clamoring to make what could easily be revisions of the same product. 

The Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X are both essentially tablets that fold into phones.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Exactly

For years ...

For years, yours truly has ranted about the inherent dangers of displays in cars in terms of distraction, bad interface and just downright stupid in compromising the potentially deadly art of driving, something beautifully depicted by the guy giving the finger to same in The Drive 's excellent take on why this is so. Driving is serious business. Ask Tiger Woods about this as he did nothing wrong in trying to negotiate a dangerous curve in CA. This design fubar is a long running disaster resulting in an increase in traffic fatalities, a tragic fact aided and abetted by fools texting on cell phones while driving. 

Pretty much every study of in-car touchscreens' effects on drivers reaches the same conclusion: They're a serious distraction. This holds true for tech-literate younger drivers as it does for older ones who might face a steeper learning curve, and for well-rested drivers as well as those fatigued by a long day at work. That goes double for the millions of Americans like me, who live with attentional, cognitive, or similar impairments that make dealing with these overwrought gadgets while driving not just a nuisance, but an unnecessary hazard.

Adding a touchscreen to the equation, however, introduces a second, wholly separate environment to monitor while driving. Figuratively speaking, a touchscreen is a separate space, one that competes directly with the outside world for my one-channel attention. This might not be a problem if it weren't for the poor working memory common to ADHD's inattentive and combined subtypes, which can make people like me feel like goldfish, with their (fictitious) seconds-long memories. For me, this has on multiple occasions manifested as putting food in the microwave, only to completely forget what I just did, then get hungry again, and begin boiling a pot of water for pasta—only for beeping to pleasantly surprise me with the meal I forgot I was preparing. So you can imagine that driving increasingly complex cars is similarly challenging sometimes, just with movement involved.

Tesla Model 3 infotainment system

I have imagined and ... I've have had close calls with bozos distracted by this tech. Is it really that hard for the software vendors to turn their code off when the car's in motion, whether it be in cabin display or cell phone as we got along just fine without this tech for over 80+ years while plying the open road. Worth thinking about don't you think?

Channeling Cars :)

Jakionik is a biggie with yours truly. Being knowledgeable and enthusiastic about cars is their mantra and it shows, especially with their take on the new postal van that reminds one of Cars. All she needs now are eyes in the windshield to complete the Cars vibe but the design's not bad when taking in the exacting requirements of delivering the mail, hopefully on time, to us rubes. :)

This is a machine designed to perform a very specific job, and the design absolutely reflects that. Off-the-shelf delivery vans don’t really cut it. I spoke at length with my own mail carrier about the interim RHD Mercedes Metris vans they were using, and even with those being more comfortable than the old LLVs, he was not happy with them.

They were too hard to load and unload, the wrong height to get access to mailboxes, and just not laid out in a way that a mail carrier finds useful. This is a reasonable place for a bespoke design, and I’m glad to see the post office is continuing with that path.

The Oshkosh Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) selected is an overall good design, I think; sure, it looks kind of cartoonish in its proportions, but if you think about the design decisions that led to that, it’s understandable.

Makes sense to me and I'll bet to Mator as well. :)

The Conveyer Belt ...

Surface temperatures in the western North Atlantic. The North American landmass is black and dark blue (cold), while the Gulf Stream is red (warm). Source: NASA

Back in 2015, yours truly discussed the loss of Albedo, whereby the effect of turning the North Pole from a reflective source of sunlight to a heat sink, due to the loss of polar ice, would, in part, slow the Gulf Stream. Seems this dire prediction's coming true which, in turn, will eventually turn Sweden, England and connected environs, into an ice box.

An influential current system in the Atlantic Ocean, which plays a vital role in redistributing heat throughout our planet's climate system, is now moving more slowly than it has in at least 1,600 years. That's the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience from some of the world's leading experts in this field.

Scientists believe that part of this slowing is directly related to our warming climate, as melting ice alters the balance in northern waters. Its impact may be seen in storms, heat waves and sea-level rise. And it bolsters concerns that if humans are not able to limit warming, the system could eventually reach a tipping point, throwing global climate patterns into disarray.

NOAA

The majority of that heat is redistributed by the atmosphere. But the rest is more slowly moved by the oceans in what is called the Global Ocean Conveyor Belt — a worldwide system of currents connecting the world's oceans, moving in all different directions horizontally and vertically. 

Through years of scientific research it has become clear that the Atlantic portion of the conveyor belt — the AMOC — is the engine that drives its operation. It moves water at 100 times the flow of the Amazon river. 

CLIMATE CENTRAL

The prime driver for the slowing is the density of fresh water and how it acts as a cap over salt water.  To whit ...

One important mechanism through the ages, which acts as a lever of sorts controlling the speed of the AMOC, is the melting of glacial ice and resulting influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic. That's because fresh water is less salty, and therefore less dense, than sea water, and it does not sink as readily. Too much fresh water means the conveyor belt loses the sinking part of its engine and thus loses its momentum.

As proof ...

Almost all of the globe is warming except for a cold blob in the North Atlantic. NASA

Recently scientists have noticed a cold blob, also known as the North Atlantic warming hole, in a patch of the North Atlantic around southern Greenland — one of the only places that's actually cooling on the planet.

The fact that climate models predicted this lends more evidence that it is indicative of excess Greenland ice melting, more rainfall and a consequent slowdown of heat transport northward from the tropics.

The CBS blurb's long but worth reading to learn just how important the Gulf Stream truly is to the earth's climate as man moves further into the 21st century. 

Biodiversity gap T. Rex style

T. rex fossil. Image: UNM Biology Department

Seems T. Rex and significant other giant predators had a huge negative impact on biodiversity from hatchling to adult which was much more pervasive than the large predators of today as seem by a piece by Gizmodo describing just how tyrannical T. Rex and brethren were back in the day.

Large meat-eating dinosaurs took on the role of multiple species while growing up, resulting in a shocking lack of ecological diversity during the Mesozoic, according to new research.

Megatheropods—gigantic two-legged carnivores like Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, and Daspletosaurus—didn’t instantly dominate the ecological space belonging to monstrously huge dinosaurs. Like other dinosaurs, they hatched from eggs and had to survive while transitioning into adulthood. As a new research paper published in Science shows, these developmental stages weren’t just idle stepping stones for megatheropods; they were periods in which the dinosaurs, while juveniles, were still ecological forces to be reckoned with.

End result

“This study puts numbers on something we’ve suspected but haven’t really proven: that the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs filled different niches in the food chain as they grew from miniature hatchlings into adults bigger than buses,” Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who’s not involved with the new research, said in an email.

The authors of the new study, led by Katlin Schroeder, a PhD candidate at the University of New Mexico, have proposed a new term to describe this phenomenon: “morphospecies.” It basically means that megatheropods, while maturing, growing, and changing their hunting habits, took on the role of multiple species.

“Morphospecies is a really nice term,” Holly Woodward, a paleontologist from Oklahoma State University who’s not affiliated with the new research, said in an email. “A juvenile T. rex for example is still a T. rex, but it’s carrying out the role of smaller carnivore species, without being a different species.”

Infographic showing the size distribution among meat-eating mammals and dinosaurs, with a glaring gap among mid-sized dinosaurs. Image: UNM Biology Department

Interesting without question.

Dare Mighty Things

If one looks at the chute slowing Perseverance's rapid descent to manageable levels during the 7 minutes of terror of remotely landing the rover on the red planet, one sees a message more than just apt... Dare Mighty Things. Seems the NASA researchers also love easter eggs to decorate amazing tech, much to the delight of us rubes. :)

"You might notice the pattern that's on the parachute here," said Allen Chen, the entry, descent and landing lead for the rover, on Monday. "Distinct patterns are useful in helping us determine the clocking orientation of the parachute. Also, the contrasting sections can be useful in tracking different portions of the parachute as it inflates.

"In addition to enabling incredible science, we hope our efforts and our engineering can inspire others. Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find for that purpose. So we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work."

It gets better ...

The motto borrows from a Theodore Roosevelt quote: "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure ... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

The calibration target for the SHERLOC instrument, or Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, also carries some hidden gems.

The bottom row includes spacesuit materials to see how they react over time to the radiation in the Martian atmosphere. One is a piece of polycarbonate that could be used for a helmet visor. It doubles as a geocaching target and is etched with 221B Baker Street, the address of the beloved fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

On the rover's deck is a symbol-laden calibration target for Mastcam-Z, or the rover's pair of zoomable cameras. The calibration target includes color swatches to adjust the cameras' settings, but also symbols of a man and a woman, a fern, a dinosaur, a rocket traveling from Earth to Mars, a model of the inner solar system, DNA and cyanobacteria, which is one of the earliest forms of life on Earth.

The target also includes the motto, "Two worlds, one beginning," which alludes to the idea that Earth and Mars were created from the same dust swirling around the sun billions of years ago.

Dinos rule. :)

A Coney Island of the Mind ...

American poet and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti outside the bookstore he co-founded, City Lights Booksellers, in the North Beach neighborhood, San Francisco, California, September 1977.

Janet Fries/Getty Images

Cool guy, long lived, talented and giving, Lawrence Ferlinghetti died at the ripe young age of 101. Back in 1958, using graphical layouts connected to poetry, he created a new genre of writing as seen in his A Coney Island of the Mind 9 poem residing in, of course, A Coney Island of the Mind.

See

      it was like this when

                              we waltz into this place

a couple of Papish cats

                             is doing an Aztec two-step

And I says

                 Dad let's cut

but then this dame

                       comes up behind me see

                                       and says

                           You and me could really exist

Wow I says

                   Only the next day

                        she has bad teeth

                                  and really hates

                                                           poetry

The impact Ferlinghetti had on other creatives was enormous. To whit ...

The poet was known for stacking small fractured lines on top of each other in unique geometric shapes like Jenga towers, with each thought supporting the ones above it. His best-known collection of poems, 1958’s A Coney Island of the Mind, presented vivid images in the language of his day, describing Jesus Christ as “a kind of carpenter from some square-type place like Galilee … claiming he is hip” and Morris Graves’ mystic paintings of the Pacific Northwest as “a wild white nest in the true mad north of introspection.” Ever the experimenter, his late Sixties anthology, Starting From San Francisco, presented a mix of traditional and avant-garde forms.

In between releasing his own books through his City Lights imprint, which he cofounded with Peter D. Martin, he nourished a generation of poets. He issued Allen Ginsberg’s sprawling, controversial Howl and Other Poems in 1956, and in the years that followed put out books of poetry by William Carlos Williams, Gregory Corso, Jacques Prévert, Frank O’Hara, Pablo Picasso, Jack Kerouac, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and several others. Ferlinghetti’s still-operating City Lights bookstore, located in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, was a frequent meeting place for the poets he published.

The title of this book is taken from Henry Miller's "Into the Night Life" and expresses the way Lawrence Ferlinghetti felt about these poems when he wrote them during a short period in the 1950's—as if they were, taken together, a kind of Coney Island of the mind—a kind of circus of the soul.

RIP youngster. :)

We're losing these guys ...

 Species - Brooke Trout, Maine, USA © (c) Freshwaters Illustrated

We're losing these guys twice as fast as their seltwater cousins residing in the world's oceans, a frightening thought given just how many people depend on this nature's bounty to survive.

The world’s dazzlingly diverse freshwater fishes are critical for the health, food security and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, but they are under ever increasing threat with one in three already threatened with extinction, according to a report published today by 16 global conservation organizations.

• Freshwater fisheries provide food for 200 million people and livelihoods for 60 million
• Fisheries valued at over US$38 billion, while recreational fishing generates US$100 billion
• Freshwater fishes make up 51% of all fish species and ¼ of all vertebrate species on Earth

But freshwater fishes continue to be undervalued and overlooked – and thousands of species are now heading towards extinction. Freshwater biodiversity is declining at twice the rate of that in our oceans or forests. Indeed, 80 species of freshwater fish have already been declared ‘Extinct’ by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, including 16 in 2020 alone. Meanwhile, populations of migratory freshwater fish have fallen by 76 per cent since 1970 and mega-fish by a catastrophic 94 per cent.

Chinese fisherwoman © Brent Stirton _ Getty Images _ WWF-UK

Here is the World's Forgotten Fishes report. Tragic says it all.

TDE ...

 A view of the accretion disc around a supermassive black hole, with jet-like structures flowing away from the disc DESY, Science Communication Lab

Something tiny and usually not reacting to entities like us made the scene for the first time resulting from a very distant TDE aka tidal disruption event where a black hole shreded a star.

To whit ...

In a distant galaxy, a supermassive black hole ripped a star to bits, sending out an enormous blast of energy. For the first time, researchers have observed a neutrino that probably came from this type of cataclysm, which is called a tidal disruption event or TDE.

Neutrinos are tiny particles that rarely interact with other matter, making them extremely difficult to detect. On 1 October 2019, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica spotted a neutrino with relatively high energy that appeared to come from beyond our galaxy.

Meanwhile, Robert Stein at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) and his colleagues were using the Zwicky Transient Facility in California to watch a star that had got too close to a supermassive black hole. The extreme gravity of the black hole shredded the star, creating a TDE that lasted for months. The TDE and the IceCube neutrino came from the same location in the sky, indicating that the ripped-up star may have produced the neutrino.

And so it goes. - K. Vonnegut

Daft Punk/RIP

Hypnotic electronica, combined with Escher like choreography/environment, accurately describes 

Daft Punk's Around the World video without question.

Music’s most famous working Parisians, the improbable superstars who went from rave kids to dance heroes to standing next to Beyoncé at the TIDAL launch event, are apparently calling it quits after a long and fruitful career. The timing and manner of the announcement may seem odd, but it still bears mourning. From electronica wunderkinds to disco-house savants to hired-gun production wizards, Daft Punk lived many musical lives in their time together. Their influence extended to everything from Top 40 to underground hip-hop, and even in the most fallow times, they were a totem for hipster coolness, the kind that people like James Murphy invoked with a mix of deference and irony. But nearly three decades of success and several iterations of fame couldn’t change them—they were intent on keeping the helmets on till the very end, even as their progeny rose and fell around them. And if there’s one thing they understood better than any of their would-be successors, it’s that the best way to keep the mystique alive is to never reveal who’s behind it.

Exactly