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The New York Times
March 6, 2018 “Uber’s Self-Driving Trucks Hit the Highway, but Not Local Roads” Daisuke Wakabayashi The article is about “Uber Freight”, which is a sub company of the shuttle service “Uber”. Uber plans to use autonomous driving for their semi trucks, and officially tested it on the highways of Arizona. The current event that I chose is about “Uber Freight”, and how they managed to get their self driving semi truck on the highways of Arizona. “Uber Freight” is a sub company of “Uber”, the shuttling and food delivery company. They just recently developed and tested their own self driving, or autonomous, semi truck. They tested their truck on the highways or Arizona, but they say that it won’t be going on the streets any time soon. Self driving trucks aren't anything new from Uber however, about a year ago, Uber did something similar to this. They developed a self driving truck that delivered 2,000 cases of budweiser beer 120 miles across Colorado. Their trip was successful, but now Uber is trying it again, but on a larger and more mass produced scale. Uber hopes to have these trucks take over the trucking industry, by making it easier and safer to deliver with their self drivings trucks. Uber says that this will actually be creating more jobs, in part because of greater demands as delivery costs fall. Uber doesn’t plan for the truck to do everything either, it still requires somebody to be in the truck in case of an emergency at the moment, and it can’t make it to the loading docks and park itself or unload. As of right now, Uber doesn’t plan to do anything huge with their new technology, but it will definitely change the way things get delivered. This event happened on the highways of Arizona. Uber was testing its new self driving semi trucks in a fairly straight line, so they decided to use Arizona's highways. This event happened on Tuesday, March 6, 2017, when Uber successuly got their self driving truck from Point A to point B, roughly a 120 mile distance. Uber decided that it was time to change the way we delivered things. For so long, people have had to drive long hours, without sleep, to deliver something from point A to B. Not only is this not the best way to go about doing things, but it’s also not the safest. Those drivers could fall asleep at any moment, and it can’t be good to be sitting in the same spot for up to 18 hours. We’ve gone from horse drawn carriage, to train, to semi truck, and Uber decided to improve the semi once more. In my opinion, I think this is really big news for the trucking, and the automotive industry. Autonomous and self driving cars aren’t anything extremely new, but Uber is definitely moving things along with their self driving trucks. Even if it's only meant for highways, this is definitely still progress. Can’t wait for this technology to improve and be seen in all models of cars. Tesla is still the leading company in autonomous, self driving cars, but the idea of self driving cars is definitely becoming a reality. Link:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/technology/uber-self-driving-trucks.html NASA has finally decided to have his crew turn back and rescue Mark on Mars. They communicated with Mark that this was the new plan, and he has to use one of the HAB’s to launch into space, and the crew will catch him. It sounds like a crazy plan, but I think it just might work. The HAB that he is using to launch into space is really far away, so he has to plan for the trip. He’s been taking the rover out everyday and seeing how far he can make it on a certain amount of gas. Eventually, he figures out a way to make it to the HAB location with enough gas, food, and water. Once he launches into space, the crew manages to catch him, but not without some issues. The tether wasn’t quite long enough to catch Mark, so Mark has to puncture a hole in his glove to project himself closer to the person catching him. He was basically floating out in space, and all he had to get him closer to the ship was the air coming out of his space suit. This may sound like a bad plan, but it was the only option Mark had, so he had to make it work. And that's exactly what he did. Infact, the glove nearly propelled him to far, but luckily the person catching him caught him before he flew right past her. That was basically how the book ended, and a few years after Mark landed back on earth he started teaching young astronauts about space, mars, and how to avoid situations like this. I think if the book had a sequel, it would talk about some of Marks students actually going to space, and a similar situation happens to them, but something slightly different so it’s not to repetitive. Maybe the new younger crew has an issue with their ship, and their just floating off into space instead of being stuck on Mars like Mark. It would be an interesting sequel because at least the students would have been taught what to do in situations like this. Another thing that could happen is the ship loses all connections to NASA, and the ship stops working entirely. The crew will be able to fix the oxygenator though so they are able to take their suits off and not die. I would definitely recommend this to a friend or anyone else who wants to read a slightly sci-fi, slightly non fiction book that is also pretty funny. I really enjoyed it and I’m sure other people who haven’t read it will too.
At this point in the book, Mark has faced a lot of different challenges. Luckily, he gained communication with NASA, but just as things are looking up, the HAB (where he’s been living this whole time) essentially blows up. The entryway to the HAB, where it lets oxygen in and allows you to take off your helmet, blew up, and Mark was forced to fix it with mostly just duct tape and some plastic. Right now at NASA, their working on a way to get Mark home, but the director of NASA thinks that he should just stick it out and allow his crew members to make it home safely. I think this is a bad call, because I doubt Mark has the resources to survive on Mars for another year or two with what he has now. When the HAB blew up, luckily he was able to save most of his crops, but some were ruined. If I was up on Mars with Mark, I would do my best to help with whatever I can, but there's no way I would have the knowledge he does of how stuff works up there. I’m sure he would like having somebody else up there as well, because he’s been surviving on his own for roughly about a year now. I think I would get along with Mark really well, and he sounds like a really funny, and fun guy. The way he makes the best of the horrifying situation he's in is very impressive. I think I would struggle to get along with the director of NASA, because he doesn’t sound like the nicest guy, and he seems very selfish. He tends to only do things for himself or for money, rather than for Marks life.
So far in the book, Mark has made progress with his potato farm and is actually successfully growing potatoes. Not only is he able to grow his potatoes, but he’s also been able to find a mars rover with a camera that's signaling to earth, and used it to communicate with NASA. By using the rover to communicate, they were able to tell him how to reprogram the rover to actually type with NASA instead of using signs and images. This whole book pretty much consists of one character, or at least so far. I feel like Marks relationship with himself changes a lot throughout the book. At first, he is very pessimistic and feels like his life is over. As the book progresses, he learns new ways to make food and water, and his mind set changes. He realizes that he might be able to survive until the next ship can get there. Mark also has relationships with the people at NASA that he’s communicating with. They are all rooting for him, and I think that gives him the hope and the energy to keep going. He also had relationships with everybody in his crew that had left him. They were all very friendly, and joked around a lot. I think we could establish that Mark was the “class clown” of the crew, and always cracked jokes that made the rest of the crew laugh. The director of NASA had decided to not tell the rest of the crew that Mark is still alive though, so they are all probably all mourning over the loss of Mark, even though he’s still alive.
I'll be commenting on Micah and Noah's Blog Posts So far in the book, the main character, Mark Watney, has been abandoned by his astronaut crew and is stranded on mars. After his whole crew thought he had died, they were forced to evacuate their mission on mars. Mark is now trying to survive for another 4 years until the next routine group of astronauts are expected to come. He has enough food to last him around a year, but that won't get him very far. He is also desperately trying to communicate to people back on Earth to send help. From this, I can guess that he will do anything and everything that he can to stay alive, and keep attempting to communicate with NASA back on Earth. I can also guess that he will keep rationing his food, and figuring out how he can make a years worth of food last 4 years. Hopefully he’ll be able to grow the leftover potatoes sustainably to last him. I can predict from what's happened so far that mark will (unfortunately) run into a lot more problems along the way. Food is one issue, but there is also oxygen, water, and communication issues, just to name a few. I am so far really enjoying this book, and I am sure that things will start to get moving even faster and it will be a very entertaining book overall.
I will be commenting on Noah and Micah's Blog Posts. The New York Times
January 21, 2018 “Inside Amazon Go, a Store of the Future Nick Wingfield Link: This article was about Amazon's new store front that's opening up this Monday, 1/22/18. It plans to reinvent the traditional convenience store, while making our lives easier in the process. Their new store is called “Amazon Go” Amazon's new store, “Amazon Go”, is their take on the traditional convenience store. So here’s the idea: You walk right on in, grab what you need, and walk right on out. No lines, no registers, no waiting. So how did Amazon manage to do that? At the front of the store, you find these gates that look similar to what you would see in a subway station. You scan your phone at the front entrance, and waltz right in. Now everything that you do in the store is recorded in your amazon account, so if you take something off the shelf, it puts it in your virtual Amazon shopping cart, and if you put it back on the shelf, it takes it out of your cart. There are 100’s of cameras all throughout the store to detect when you do this, and to get accurate results one hundred percent of the time. Once you have what you need, you can simply walk out and you’ll receive your receipt a few minutes later on the Amazon app. So you may be wondering, doesn’t this alleviate the need for employees? Surprisingly, no. Employees can be found all throughout the store, restocking shelves, helping customers find products, and checking IDs if someone's trying to purchase anything alcoholic. “We’ve just put associates on different kinds of tasks where we think it adds to the customer experience” says Ms. Puerini, a tour guide at Amazon Go. This event took place in Seattle, where the first and only Amazon Go exists. The grand opening was on Monday, January 22, 2018. Amazon was looking for a way to change the way we shop. Convenience stores have been around since the early 1900’s, and they still work nearly the same. Back when a gallon of milk was 56 cents and ice was sold in blocks rather than bags. Amazon was simply trying to improve the shopping experience. Why call it a “convenience store” if it’s not “convenient”? Amazon is bringing new light to that name with Amazon Go. In my opinion, I think that this is a great idea, and Amazon may be starting a whole new way of shopping. Amazon Go could very well be the first of many, but only time will tell. I’m sure we will hear more stories in the coming weeks of its successes and failures, and I am excited to see how it goes. Kyle Johnson, New York Times |
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November 2018
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