Vax Pass; Tesla Safety; Space Vision; Facebook Workrooms
Composed while Henri Sputtered Along New England
Oh, hey, Blue Moon (Credit: Lance Ulanoff)
Smartphone Vaccination Pass
Which do you care about more, your health or your privacy? I’m not sure we can still choose both.
A new plan by the major phone manufacturers (mostly phone platform guys) to build in Vaccine Confirmation technology inside their platforms sounds like an excellent idea. Instead of a local-state-based app like the NYS Excelsior App that puts a digital card and QR code verifying my vaccination status in my Apple Wallet, Apple will build a tool inside iOS 15 that, I’m guessing here, makes it part of the Health app and makes it easier for anyone with an iPhone to add the validation. Samsung is doing something similar, as is Google.
I love this idea and will use it in a heartbeat, but I get the privacy concerns. Each time you show this at a venue, they have to scan the QR code. Does that mean Apple, Samsung, or Google will know about every place you’ve visited in the last six months? Maybe. Then again, Google, for instance, already knows where you’ve been taking your phone (you have to turn this location tracking feature off if you don’t want to share that data). This doesn’t feel a lot different and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth it.
Heck, thanks to COVID, I barely go anywhere anymore. I will give up as much of my privacy as is necessary in order for us all to start living safe, extroverted lives again.
Tesla Safety Concerns
Self-driving technology is supposed to be safer than human drivers but in this moment between partial autonomy and fully autonomous vehicles, we have a confused public that often misuses self-driving technology (not sitting in the driver seat, not paying attention). However, the current Tesla concerns have little to do with human failures.
A new investigation is looking into why Teslas are slamming into the back of parked emergency vehicles. There’s been almost a dozen such accidents with over a dozen injuries and one death.
Now the Feds are investigating. My guess is it’s a software problem, some odd confluence of events that cause Tesla cars to misidentify the flashing red lights. It’s not going to be a larger, fundamental flaw in self-driving technology that scuttles the whole idea.
The normally voluble Tesla CEO Elon Musk hasn’t commented on the investigation (nor has the company) but I’m sure he will. I just hope it’s that they’re cooperating and will find the cause of these crashes in short order. What I don’t want to see is people pull away from the idea of self-driving cars. We’re years from realizing their full potential, but I remain convinced that this is the future of transportation.
Eye on the ISS
After Boeing’s Starline failed to lift off and send fresh supplies to the International Space Station, SpaceX is prepping what looks like a quick replacement supply mission. However, that’s not what interests me.
The August 28th mission has robot arms and tons of supplies for the space station, but it also includes an eye exam.
Almost as soon as astronauts arrive in space, they begin experiencing Space-Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS). Classic symptoms include optic-disc swelling and flattening of the eye’s classic orb shape. The result for astronauts is changed or poorer vision. While corrective lenses usually adjust for the condition, this condition (which affects 70% of astronauts) is likely to become more severe as we head further into space. In fact, NASA’s own research recommends mitigation measures for humans eventually traveling to Mars. The test equipment will help scientists better understand SANS and perhaps develop new such mitigations and long-term treatments.
BTW, even in space, there can be sore losers.
Blind as Mosquitoes
Scientists figured out how to use invisibility to protect tasty humans from mosquitoes. To be clear, no one is really becoming invisible. Instead, they used CRISPR gene-splicing technology to alter the vision genes of some mosquitos so that one way they usually detect us (as dark blobs against a bright outdoor background) is turned off. This makes us essentially invisible to the mosquitoes.
As someone who is catnip to these critters, I want to see more of this. Unfortunately, this is all still in the research phase, and it doesn’t address all the other ways mosquitoes can find you, like the CO2 you exhale and your scent.
Let’s meet, virtually
Facebook’s expanding its Horizon VR meetup space to include the business community with something called Horizon Workrooms. It’s like Slack, Google Meet or even Zoom, but instead of staring at your Webcam, everyone is wearing an Oculus Quest 2 headset.
There are obvious benefits to a VR meeting space. Unlike video, say WebEx, where you have to constantly switch control (show who’s talking now) or stream a presentation or desktop that takes most of the view space, VR offers virtually unlimited, 360-degree space where you can see all the avatars of your colleagues, and giant whiteboards. It could feel like you’re really sitting in a room together.
The big caveats are that everyone will look like a cartoon, and you may, on long meetings sweat under the weight of that Oculus Quest 2 headset. Also, I take notes during meetings, which means I have to see my keyboard. The Quest2 does have some mixed reality capabilities that let you see what’s going on outside your headset. I assume you could still see your keyboard that way.
I am pleased to learn that Workrooms supports video callers as well. I’m not sure what they’ll see of the meeting, but at least other participants will see, I assume, their floating video windows.
I don’t mind video meetings and don’t know if I’d love this. I would certainly try it and the reality is that we’re all still not going back to the office for weeks, if not months. Trying a new way of group meetings probably makes sense. I can’t wait to hear the feedback on this new Facebook idea.
T-Mobile Mess
T-Mobile customers, I have some bad news for you. Hackers took the crucial data (birth dates, Social Security numbers, driver’s license info, and more) for more than 40 million T-Mobile customers. It’s not clear how the hackers got the data, but we do know they’re trying to sell it for 6 Bitcoin, which is a lot of money.
To clarify, the data was for “former and prospective” customers. If I read that right, that means people who left T-Mobile, those who were thinking of joining the service (not anymore!), but not current customers. Current customers appear to have been slightly better protected. Hackers acquired the data for just 7.8M “post-paid” customers.
I don’t know what to say about this, except, T-Mobile’s reputation has taken a massive hit and they will be spending a lot of money on LifeLock accounts for all affected customers.
ICYMI: Elon Musk is making a humanoid robot.
Stay safe
Stay well
See you soon