Editor Blogs

July 2019

Prosthetic Arm Modeled After Luke Skywalker

Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

A biomedical engineering team at the University of Utah has created a prosthetic arm inspired by a certain farm boy from Tatooine. The "LUKE Arm" could change the very notion of artificial limbs. Prosthetic limbs aren’t exactly new – the ancient Egyptians tinkered with them as far back as 950–

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Date:

07/30/2019

Margaret Hamilton posing next to stacks of software she and her team at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory developed for the Apollo computer.

The Apollo Guidance Computer: History's Unsung Hero

Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

We’ve all heard that the computer on Apollo 11 had less memory than modern calculators. And that’s true, but the disparities are even more astounding, and on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, I wanted to take a gander at the piece of hardware that made Apollo 11 possible, the Apollo Guidance Computer. Designed at the MIT Instrum

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Date:

07/24/2019

Facebook Faces Uphill Battle with its new Cryptocurrency

Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

Quick question – do you trust Facebook? Do you trust it with your personal info? With your darkest secrets? How about your money? That reflexive distrust is bad news for the social network’s new cryptocurrency, Libra. And politicians are launching a full-bore attack. At a hearing on Tuesday, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, claimed that, “Fac

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07/16/2019

Court Rules that Trump Can't Block Critics on Twitter

Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

The 2nd Circuit just set a very interesting legal precedent by labeling President Trump’s Twitter account a “public forum.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit affirmed U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald’s decision that Trump’s use of Twitter for official state purposes created an �

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07/11/2019

The 2020 Mini Cooper SE EV

BMW to Install 100 EV Chargers at U.S. National Parks

Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

BMW just made national parks a tad more accessible to eco warriors – the German automaker will finish installing 100 EV chargers at U.S. national parks by the end of July. BMW’s partnership with the National Park Foundation, National Park Service, and the Department of Energy's Clean Cities Program began in A

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Date:

07/09/2019

EU Mandate for Sounds in Electric Vehicles goes into Effect

Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

Electric and hybrid vehicles won’t sound like golf carts for much longer – an EU mandate for low-speed EV noises went into effect Monday, with the U.S. to follow next year. Under certain speeds – the U.S. and EU set different benchmarks – the lack of an internal combustion engine makes EVs whisper-silent (and a threat to

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Date:

07/02/2019