TTI/Vanguard: Do you work from home or live at work?

The United States is celebrating the Fourth of July this weekend with an extra day off (today!). We hope that, wherever you are, you too take a brief respite from work. 

Is there any part of the supply chain Amazon won’t try to reinvent? The company is expanding its autonomy portfolio beyond Kiva warehouse robots by purchasing autonomous-vehicle tech developer Zoox. (Steve Jurvetson, San Francisco, Dec 2018).
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/26/amazon-zoom

Black and other underrepresented employees in the tech world welcome the upsurge in interest in antiracism that their firms are demonstrating (Dan Gould and Michele Ruiz, ZoJun 2020; Maggie Jones, Washington, D.C., Sep 2018). Employee resource groups appreciate their voices being heard at this juncture, but worry that stepping up “can give business leaders a pass on diversity by allowing them to demonstrate support for minority groups without diversifying the people in charge.”
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/26/black-ergs-tech

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Evelyn Beatrice Hall had a view on free speech versus hate speech - but she didn’t have to contend with advertising dollars. (Sean Parker, San Francisco, Feb 2010; Roger McNamee and Jonathan Taplin, Los Angeles, Mar 2018; Jonathan Taplin, Boston, Apr 2017; Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, Boston, Apr 2017)
www.theverge.com/2020/6/26/21305065/coca-cola-pause-ads-facebook-social-platforms-july-boycott|

The Tesla short-sellers have run out of, ahem, gas.
https://eml.iiconferences.com/e/81142/e-new-up-for-tesla-11593701249/5mqm66/602732131?h=P58wlM6DItxbm6aqapwVkOgKdSW5h8KIJsVMCI-Cnq4

We talked about the recent error in a facial recognition database, which resulted in the arrest of an innocent man, last week. Not surprisingly, we weren’t the only ones talking about it. The ACM is calling for "immediate suspension" of  federal and private use of facial recognition technologies.
www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/tech-worker-group-calls-facial-recognition-ban-citing-technical-ethical-n1232591

As colleges and universities decide how—and whether—to reopen campus come fall, most recognize the need to retain an online option for students, with the educational experience reaching beyond the Zoom-only drudgery of the recent spring semester. As purveyors of MOOCs learned early on, a good digital course entails much more than just lecturing in front of a camera and putting it online. (Anant Agarwal, Jersey City, Oct 2013)
www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/education/learning/coronavirus-online-education-college.html 

The best light moment of the entire pandemic might just be “The Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Quarantines.”
www.twitter.com/evabeylin/status/1243051072756776960

In Norway’s ambitious effort to become auto-emissions-free by 2024, Oslo is incorporating resonant magnetic induction pads into its roadways to recharge electric Land Rovers on the fly. (Nam Pyo Suh, Tokyo, Jul 2012) www.techxplore.com/news/2020-06-norway-wireless-network-jaguar-taxis.html

Meanwhile, Elvis Cao’s (Berkeley, Mar 2019) work on turning CO2 into energy was recently featured in a World Economic Forum whitepaper devoted to this decade’s most promising energy innovations, and he was invited to give a talk about it at this fall’s “Shaping the Post-COVID Era” summit by the former French President Giscard d'Estaing.

Everyone is going to need a knee replacement eventually—or maybe not. Duke University researchers have developed a strong, supple hydrogel that shows promise as a replacement for damaged cartilage.
https://eml.iiconferences.com/e/81142/imicking-gel-strong-knees-html/5mqm6g/602732131?h=P58wlM6DItxbm6aqapwVkOgKdSW5h8KIJsVMCI-Cnq4

How real animals move can inform novel technologies and robotics; consider geckos climbing (Duncan Irschick, San Diego, Feb 2015; ), fish swimming (John Long, Boston, Apr 2014), and elephants grasping (David Hu, Pittsburgh, Jun 2019). We can now add flying paradise tree snakes to the list of simulated motion. Researchers at member firm Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab have determined that these creatures must undulate in three dimensions to achieve the feat of airborne propulsion across distances of 10 meters or more. This doesn’t bode well for snakes on a plane.
www.sciencenews.org/article/how-flying-snakes-stay-aloft

Newsflash! Malware is alive and well, as demonstrated by a newly discovered form of credit card skimming based on steganography embedded into favicons. (Vincent Weafer, Washington, D.C., Sep 2017) www.techxplore.com/news/2020-06-credit-card-skimmers-web-page.html

It turns out that when you build a three-dimensional (3-D) microfluidic system, it might look a lot like a Rubik's Cube. Researchers at Tianjin University have drawn inspiration from the famous game in their design. (Dan Nicolau, Sr., and Dan Nicolau, Jr.,  San Francisco, Dec 2016)
https://eml.iiconferences.com/e/81142/6-rubik-microfluidic-cube-html/5mqm6l/602732131?h=P58wlM6DItxbm6aqapwVkOgKdSW5h8KIJsVMCI-Cnq4
 

Our whole life is solving puzzles. — Erno Rubik