Dominique Luchart's Blog, page 677
March 17, 2021
Russia’s only woman cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, inspires one-of-a-kind Barbie doll, ,
The only woman who is currently active in Russia’s cosmonaut corps now has her own one-of-a-kind Barbie doll.
Anna Kikina, who became a cosmonaut in 2012, is among the latest role models chosen for Mattel’s “You Can Be Whoever You Want” campaign, which is aimed at inspiring young girls to pursue the profession of their choosing.
“The most popular doll in the world continues to inspire girls to chase their wildest dreams and clearly shows that each of them can become whoever they want! Barbie presents a doll that embodies the image of Anna Kikina, the only woman in Roscosmos’ cosmonaut corps,” Russia’s state space corporation announced on Tuesday (March 16).
Pioneering women in space: a gallery of astronaut firsts
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Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina poses with a Mattel Barbie doll modeled in her image. The one-of-a-kind doll is aimed at inspiring young girls to pursue the professions of their dreams. (Image credit: Roscosmos)The Anna Kikina Barbie has two models: one wearing a blue flight suit patterned after the cosmonaut’s coveralls worn during training, and the other garbed in a doll-sized version of Russia’s Orlan-MKS extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit. Both outfits are adorned by miniature versions of the same cosmonaut corps and Roscosmos patches as worn by Kikina.
Kikina reacted to the doll’s debut by sharing memories of her own childhood.
“As a child, I did not dream of becoming an astronaut, but if I had a Barbie cosmonaut doll, then the idea of being [one] would probably have come to mind,” Kikina said in a statement released by Roscosmos. “The Barbie cosmonaut, in her own way, does not only represent the profession to children, but also makes it clear that everyone who sees it and sets their intentions accordingly has a chance to become a cosmonaut.”
“It is not that every girl playing with such a Barbie will want to be a cosmonaut. The most important thing is that they know they have the choice — they have the right to choose any profession that they like,” she said.
A 36-year-old engineer who graduated with honors from the Novosibirsk State Academy of Water Transportation Engineering (today the Siberian State University of Water Transport), Kikina is only the fourth Russian woman to be selected to fly into space. She is slated to launch on her first mission, a flight to the International Space Station, in 2022.
“Today Anna is a role model for many,” Roscosmos said. “She is both strong and feminine, bold and gentle, wise and with an excellent sense of humor — a bright personality in which professionalism and warmth are harmoniously combined.”
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Mattel created two versions of the cosmonaut Anna Kikina Barbie doll: one wearing a flight suit and one in a Russian Orlan spacesuit. (Image credit: Roscosmos)Like other Barbie dolls in Mattel’s “You Can Be Whoever You Want” campaign and similar outreach programs around the world, the Kikina doll is not being made for sale to the public. Instead, the cosmonaut doll will be given away in celebration of the 60 years since the launch of Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, in April 1961.
“It will not go on sale,” Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev wrote on the Telegram messaging platform. “It can be won in a competition in honor of the 60th anniversary of the first crewed flight into space.”
No further details about the contest were given.
The Anna Kikina doll brings Barbie’s role as a space explorer full circle. The first Barbie astronaut outfit, the 1965 “Barbie Miss Astronaut,” was said to be inspired by cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becoming the world’s first woman to fly into space two years earlier.
In the decades since, Barbie dolls have been released with a hot pink spacesuit (“Astronaut Barbie” in 1985), in celebration of the first moon landing (“Astronaut Barbie Career Collection Special Edition” in 1994), as a Space Camp trainee (“Space Camp Barbie” in 1998 and 2008) and as the first woman on Mars (“Mars Explorer Barbie” in 2013). Most recently, Barbie was dressed in a Russian Sokol spacesuit-inspired outfit for a line celebrating the past six decades of career dolls (“60th Anniversary Astronaut” in 2019) and the current collection of Barbie “Space Discovery” dolls.
Similar to the Anna Kikina doll, Mattel also collaborated with the European Space Agency (ESA) to make two one-of-a-kind Barbie dolls modeled after Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in 2017. Two years later, Mattel produced for sale a doll in its Barbie Inspiring Women Series honoring Sally Ride, the first American woman to launch into space.
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Perseverance rover’s belly hits the floor on Mars, exposing its rock-sampling heart (videos), ,
The Perseverance rover’s sampling system is one step closer to snagging precious Mars rocks for later analysis.
Perseverance, which landed inside Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, successfully dropped the “belly pan” covering its sampling system last week.
“Checking things out before I release the ‘ejectable belly pan,'” mission team members said on Friday (March 12) via Perseverance’s official Twitter account. After the team got confirmation that Percy dropped the belly pan as planned, they posted images and a new tweet Saturday (March 13) showing the cover sitting safely on the Martian surface.
“Up next is to check my sampling system now that its cover panel is off,” the tweet from Saturday added.
Related: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover mission in pictures
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The Perseverance rover’s newly dropped “belly pan” sits on the surface of Mars. The Perseverance team posted this photo on Twitter on March 13, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech via Twitter)The belly pan is a protective cover that sat over the sampling system. A short Twitter video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows the deployment sequence, which is pretty simple; the pan drops directly off the rover and exposes the sampling system beneath Perseverance.
The car-sized rover will be storing samples in its belly as it explores the Red Planet, looking for any signs of ancient life in its landing area of Jezero Crater and beyond.
“The belly of the rover houses all the equipment and supplies needed to collect samples. It contains a rotating drill carousel, which is a wheel that contains different kinds of drill bits. Next to that are the 43 sample tubes waiting to be filled,” NASA officials wrote in an explainer about the sampling system.
“While the rover’s big arm reaches out and drills rock, the rover belly is home to a small robotic arm that works as a ‘lab assistant’ to the big arm,” NASA officials added. “The small arm picks up and moves new sample tubes to the drill and transfers filled sample containers into a space where they are sealed and stored.”
The samples will eventually be cached at one or more “depots” on the Martian surface, which will be well-marked using local landmarks (such as rocks) and coordinates from orbit.
A future sample-return campaign will land close to the depot(s), scoop up the samples and launch them up to Mars orbit for return to Earth. That return campaign isn’t fully approved or funded yet, but planning is underway by both NASA and the European Space Agency for a possible liftoff later this decade. The samples could make it to Earth as early as 2031, NASA officials have said.
Bringing pristine pieces of the Red Planet to Earth will allow scientists to seek Mars life using advanced, non-portable laboratory instruments, assuming that the mission meets all the requirements for sample protection and for keeping Earth free of contaminants, too.
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Samsung says it might skip the Galaxy Note this year,
Samsung has warned that it might not be able to ship a Galaxy Note phone in 2021 after all, citing difficulties in launching two flagship phones in one year, in comments at its annual shareholders meeting reported on by Bloomberg.
“[The] Note series is positioned as a high-end model in our business portfolio,” said mobile chief DJ Koh. “It could be a burden to unveil two flagship models in a year so it might be difficult to release [a] Note model in 2H. The timing of [the] Note model launch can be changed but we seek to release a Note model next year.”
The comments came as Samsung sounded the alarm about a global semiconductor shortage, saying that its business will likely be affected next quarter. The potential delay or cancellation of a 2021 Galaxy Note is apparently separate, however; Koh says it’s more about streamlining the lineup, according to Bloomberg.
The release of a Galaxy Note this year was already far from a sure thing. Samsung had indicated plans to bring its key stylus feature to more phones in the Galaxy lineup, sparking speculation that the line may come to an end. A Yonhap report, however, said that Samsung was still preparing to release a new Note phone in 2021.
Samsung declined to comment to The Verge on the existence of this device at the time, reiterating its plans to “bring some of the most beloved features of the Galaxy Note to more device categories in 2021.”
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March 16, 2021
The PS5 is getting DVR support in Japan this year,
Sony has announced that the PlayStation 5 will get DVR functionality in Japan by way of a new app that’ll work with its Nasne tuners. The app will be called Torne (pronounced to-ru-ne) and should be available later this year.
Torne was originally a TV tuner add-on for the PS3 that was released in 2010 and allowed you to save broadcast shows to your console’s hard drive and transfer them to a PSP or PS Vita. It was followed by Nasne, which added its own storage and worked more like a NAS drive, with the recordings available through a mobile app.
Sony stopped selling Nasne in 2019, but last year Japanese peripheral manufacturer Buffalo announced that it’d take over the product and release Buffalo-branded versions, with the first models set to ship this spring. The new Nasne still looks like a PS3, just with a Buffalo logo on it; Buffalo is doubling the internal storage to 2TB, however, and tripling external storage capability to 6TB. It’ll go on sale later this month for 29,800 yen (~$270).
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Apple just gave Russia a spot on the iPhone to advertise its favorite apps to its citizens,
Starting April 1st, users setting up a new iPhone in Russia will see a screen that allows them to automatically install apps that are officially sanctioned by the Russian government, in compliance with Russian law (via Engadget).
The law in question was passed back in 2019, and requires smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and smart TVs sold in Russia to come pre-installed with specific apps made by Russian companies by April 1st, according to Russian news site Vedomosti. (The law was originally set to go into effect in July 2020, but was pushed back to April 2021). Vedomosti also says that apps won’t be installed if users don’t want them. Apple confirmed to The Verge that it will comply with the law by giving the users the option to install the apps when activating the phone.
Which apps are specifically going to be offered to users remains unclear, though Vedomosti cites a government services app, and apps from Russian companies including Yandex, Mail.ru, and Kaspersky Lab. The government seems to be aware that it might be problematic to favor specific apps, and is planning to expand its list over time: “The Ministry is not at all interested in seeing popular apps included in the mandatory pre-installation list take dominant positions. If alternatives emerge on the market, prove interesting to users and gain popularity quickly, they will be included in this selection and also offered for pre-installation,” a Russian official told Vedomosti.
Apple has historically kept tight control over the iPhone’s setup process, and that appears to now be changing, if only in one market. While Apple has previously made changes to stay on the side of local laws — it’s changed maps, blocked pride watch faces in Russia, and now stores iCloud data on state-run servers in China — this may be one of the more dramatic changes, as it affects a screen that every user will see when they set up their iPhone.
Apple has slowly been allowing users to change how iOS works out of the box, with the ability to change some default apps in iOS 14, but now it’s given a small amount of control over the setup process to the Russian government, too. As the company faces legal challenges from the EU and US over antitrust, and over giving its competitors a level playing field, we may see Apple having to give over some more control to governments if it wants to sell its phones to their citizens — though it probably won’t be compelled to ask users if they want to install Spotify at setup. Probably.
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Cricut promises unlimited lifetime uploads for existing crafting machines after user backlash,
Cricut is changing its recently announced plan to require a subscription to get the full use of its crafting machines for precisely cutting paper and other materials. Following backlash from crafters and fans who rely on its machines, Cricut CEO Ashish Arora apologized for the decision, and announced that the company will postpone the requirement for a subscription and give unlimited uploads to all users with a registered Cricut device purchased before December 31st, 2021 — for the lifetime of their machine.
Without an upload limit, crafters will be able to use Cricut and its required Design Space app as usual. They can create designs in the app or third-party software like Procreate, and then format it to be cut out of materials like paper, fabric, vinyl, and even wood using a Cricut machine.
Prior to this change, Cricut was planning on requiring a $9.99 per month / $95.88 per year Cricut Access Standard plan or a Premium plan for $118.88 per year to keep unlimited uploads. Owners who didn’t pay would be limited to 20 uploads per month, which many creators, who often favor starting Cricut projects in other apps and uploading them into Design Space, were worried would make the device unusable.
Arora says that people who buy a resold Cricut machine can also get unlimited lifetime uploads, provided the new owner creates a Cricut account and connects their machine before the end of 2021. Arora says the company is also considering options for educational or maker space settings that might burn through 20 uploads quickly, but had no specifics to share other than a general promise that nothing will change before the end of the year.
While in an ideal world a machine that can cost up to $399 wouldn’t ever need a subscription, Cricut has at least listened to the concerns of its current customers and offered them what seems like a pretty good compromise.
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Elon Musk won’t sell his NFT song after all,
Actually, doesn’t feel quite right selling this. Will pass.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
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New York-based Unite Us, which develops a backend to connect healthcare providers, community organizations, and governments, raises $150M at a $1.6B valuation (Sarah McBride/Bloomberg)
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Instagram says it introducing new policies to limit interactions between teenagers and adults, including banning adults from DMing teens who don’t follow them (James Vincent/The Verge)
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Instagram will no longer let adults message teens who don’t follow them, James Vincent
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