Day: July 8, 2020

https://www.engadget.com/nasa-boeing-starliner-investigation-end-092953331.html

The independent team NASA and Boeing formed to look into Starliner’s failed flight to the ISS is done with its investigation. And based on NASA’s announcement, they have a pretty lengthy list of changes to make before the spacecraft can start ferrying astronauts to space. The joint review team ended their investigation with 80 recommendations for NASA and Boeing to address, with the most notable suggestion being the performance of end-to-end tests using the maximum amount of flight hardware before each flight.

One of the main reasons why the Starliner’s first flight failed was because Boeing divided its tests in small chunks instead of conducting a longer one that simulates the whole process from launch to docking. As a result, the aerospace company didn’t discover that the spacecraft’s onboard computer time was miscalibrated by 11 hours, preventing Starliner’s thrusters from firing and sending it to the correct orbit. In addition, Boeing didn’t test the Starliner’s software against its service module. The company used an emulator, which ended up being flawed, and didn’t discover a critical software defect that could’ve led to "loss of vehicle."

According to NASA Spaceflight, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich also determined that the agency wasn’t able to provide Boeing with sufficient oversight. That allowed multiple issues, particularly software problems, to remain unnoticed. While NASA didn’t list all 80 recommendations, it enumerated some of the more important ones, such as addressing any identified simulation or emulation gaps, increasing the involvement of subject matter experts in safety critical areas and making organizational changes to the safety reporting structure.

NASA and Boeing are hoping to redo Starliner’s uncrewed test flight to the ISS later this year. While the repeat flight doesn’t have an exact date yet, The Washington Post previously reported that they’re aiming for an October or a November launch.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

July 8, 2020 at 04:42AM

https://www.droid-life.com/2020/07/07/google-maps-is-starting-to-show-traffic-lights-on-android/

Read the original post: Google Maps is Starting to Show Traffic Lights on Android

With the launch of iOS 13 a year ago, Apple introduced a feature into Apple Maps that even Google Maps had yet to implement. Apple added traffic lights and stop signs, both of which would give drivers an extra bit of info as they navigate to their next location. Up until now, Google Maps has yet to add this feature, but one of our readers may have uncovered the first signs of it on the way.

As you will see throughout the images in this post, Google appears to be adding traffic lights to Maps and will show them both while navigating and while browsing around. The little traffic lights icon isn’t that easy to see just yet and Google doesn’t seem to be actively letting users know about lights, but the icons could be a start to more meaningful info.

From what our reader has shared, the icons do grow in size a bit while navigating, but Google Maps isn’t yet including them in the list of instructions, highlighting their place along your route, etc. Apple Maps is doing that, and will shout them out through Siri should you come to a turn that’s at a light or stop sign.

You can probably imagine how handy it might be to know if your route is filled with either stop signs or traffic lights. If you are pressed for time, avoiding a string of lights could be beneficial.

Again, this looks like something that Google is slowly adding or testing, as I can’t find anyone else with traffic lights showing. They are showing to our reader through Google Maps build 10.44.3. I am not seeing them on Google Maps beta 10.45.0.

Anyone else seeing traffic lights in Google Maps?

Cheers Justin!

via Droid Life: A Droid Community Blog https://ift.tt/2dLq79c

July 7, 2020 at 05:22PM

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15893/qualcomm-announces-snapdragon-865-breaking-the-3ghz-threshold

Today Qualcomm is announcing an update to its extremely successful Snapdragon 865 SoC: the new Snapdragon 865+. The Snapdragon 865 had already seen tremendous success with over 140 different design wins, powering some of the best Android smartphone devices this year. We’re past the hectic spring release cycle of devices, and much like last year with the S855+, for the summer and autumn release cycle, Qualcomm is providing vendors with the option for a higher-performance binned variant of the chip, the new S865+. As a bit of a arbitrary, but also important characteristic of the new chip is that this is the first ever mobile silicon to finally pass the 3GHz frequency mark.

via AnandTech https://ift.tt/phao0v

July 8, 2020 at 08:37AM