Month: March 2021

While Mother Nature may thank you for environmentally friendly motoring, Fiat will pay you. That is, they will if you drive a new 500, the brand’s EV minicar, which is gone from the U.S. market but has been updated and re-introduced as a pure-electric model in Europe.

Fiat is teaming up with Kiri Technologies, described as a green-tech startup, for the program, which is called e-Mobility by Stellantis. The Fiat app tracks driver behavior, such as speed and distance, and uploads the information to the Kiri cloud. Kiri (the name comes from a tree that has an unusually voracious appetite for CO2) then converts that data into a score, and rewards drivers based on that score.

The rewards come in the form of cryptocurrency. Not Bitcoin, unfortunately (though BTC’s mining may or may not be environmentally problematic depending upon whom you ask), but KiriCoin. One KiriCoin is worth 2 Euro cents but. Drivers track the KiriCoin earnings and total via the Fiat app. Fiat says drivers can expect to earn about 1 KiriCoin per kilometer. The earnings can be spent in “a proprietary marketplace” (which makes Kiri sound more like a points program than an open-market cryptocurrency with wildly fluctuating values). Drivers who achieve the highest scores also may receive bonus offers from major retailers such as Amazon, Apple and Netflix.

Factor out the flakiness of a startup cryptocurrency, and the idea of rewarding drivers for eco-conscious behavior has some merit. Of course, it raises privacy concerns — much like auto-insurance data trackers that monitor driver behavior with the promise of a potential discount on rates — but it could be a useful incentive on a strictly opt-in basis. With the base price of a Fiat New 500 approximately $42,000, drivers aren’t going to put much of a dent in their monthly car payment with this program, but it never feels bad to earn a few perks along the way.

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For more than 50 years, NASA astronauts have relied on duct tape as a fix-it-all for everything from a lunar rover on the moon to an air leak on board the International Space Station. Up until now, though, they have not had an easy way to dispense the adhesive.

Enter high school students from five different states, who have come up with the solution.

SpaceX Crew-1 commander Mike Hopkins, a flight engineer on the space station’s Expedition 64 crew, recently demonstrated the HUNCH tape dispenser aboard the orbiting laboratory.

“This tape dispenser I think is going to find a lot of use here on the International Space Station,” said Hopkins in a recorded video showing the device in action.

Related: Artist dreams up mock mission to Mars with duct tape in NYC

HUNCH, or High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware, is a nationwide program that challenges students to design and build equipment that is then launched and used aboard the space station. Now in its 18th year, HUNCH students have built lockers, handrails, various tools and a galley table for the crew to eat at and share meals. The program has even come up with some of the food items that have been added to the astronauts’ menus.

This latest project solved a sticky problem for the station’s crew.

“One of the key things I like about it is you can basically operate it with one hand. Up here, you oftentimes are using your other hand to stabilize yourself,” Hopkins said.

Before the HUNCH dispenser, rolls of duct tape — which is also referred to as “grey tape” or “Mach 25 tape” — and Kapton high temperature tape were generally stuck to the edges of work areas, on handrails or wherever in reach. To cut the tape from the roll, the astronauts needed to use scissors or, in a pinch, they tore it with their teeth.

Although crewmembers are able to use off-the-shelf dispensers for Scotch tape, the available commercial solutions for the larger duct and Kapton tape rolls lacked a seat track or other type of connector to be compatible with the station’s systems.

“Very easily it goes on the guide rail and you can see it is already locked in place,” Hopkins said of the HUNCH dispenser, as he mounted it on one of the walls of the U.S. Destiney lab.

“I can have multiple [types of] tapes on at the same time, so that is also nice,” he said.

The HUNCH tape dispenser was developed and built by students at Windsor High School in Windsor, Connecticut; Lakewood High School in Lakewood, Colorado; Cypress Woods High School in Cypress, Texas; Decatur High School in Decatur, Alabama; Clear Creek High School in League City, Texas; and Dade County High School in Trenton, Georgia.

The need for the tape dispenser underscores the many uses that tapes have on the station. More than 20 different adhesives are used aboard the orbital complex, though duct tape and Kapton tape are the most popular. The tapes are used for everyday activities, much like on Earth, but also to keep items from floating away in the microgravity environment of space.

Duct and Kapton tapes have also been key in emergencies while in space. In April 1970, grey tape was one of the tools needed to construct a makeshift carbon dioxide air scrubber for the stranded Apollo 13 crew. Two years later, Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt relied on duct tape to hold together a map as a stand-in fender for their lunar rover on the moon.

More recently, astronauts have used Kapton tape to build and line custom tools for use on spacewalks to repair broken hardware on the outside of the space station. Duct tape was also used to temporarily patch a crack in a Russian module leaking air before a permanent fix could be devised and implemented this week.

In total the HUNCH program has flown more than 800 items to the station that were built by 2,575 students from 277 participating high schools across the nation.

“Congratulations to all of the students with the HUNCH project,” said Hopkins. “You knocked it out of the park.”

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Google Maps is great—except when it’s not. Missing roads, incorrect street names, closed-down bridges, and more can really put a hamper on your travels. And by “put a hamper on your travels,” I mean it’ll throw you into a blind rage as you stomp on the gas while you try to figure out where the hell you need to go when Maps leads you astray. But those frustrating inaccuracies are likely about to become fewer and far between thanks to a new crowd-fueled feature.

Google Maps is rolling out the ability for users to “draw” in missing roads and correct other details directly from Maps on a desktop.

“Add missing roads by drawing lines, quickly rename roads, change road directionality, and realign or delete incorrect roads. You can even let us know if a road is closed with details like dates, reasons and directions,” Google wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

To make an edit, go to Maps in your browser and click the menu button in the top-left corner and scroll down to “Edit the map.” From there, you’ll be able to draw in a missing road or make other edits. Of course, left unchecked this feature would be a nightmare that rapidly renders Maps an unusable disaster. So before any changes are made, Google will review user-suggested edits or additions before implementing them into Maps.

The drawing feature wasn’t yet available when we tried to use it (you can already suggest edits, but the drawing thing isn’t there yet), but Google says it will be available in 80 countries within the next few months.

In addition to adding the drawing feature, Google also added the ability for people to add “photo updates” to businesses or other places that are separate from reviews. So if, for example, you wanted to let other people know that the parking lot at a local trailhead is only large enough for two cars, you could snap a picture and post it to Maps as a simple heads-up. To access this feature, just click on a place and click the Updates tab, where you can find the option to upload a photo.

Navigation apps like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze (which Google also owns) remain one of the most useful kinds of apps, providing tangible value—while also gobbling up our data to further solidify the corporate surveillance embedded in contemporary life. But even if navigating the privacy implications feels like swinging your fist in a pitch-black room, with these new updates, at least navigating on your next road trip should be a little less hit-or-miss.