As Tom Nardi mentioned in this week’s podcast, the Northeast US is pretty apocalyptically socked in with smoke from wildfires in Canada. It’s what we here in Idaho call “August,” so we have plenty of sympathy for what they’re going through out there. People are turning to technology to ease their breathing burden, with reports that Tesla drivers are activating the “Bioweapon Defense Mode” of their car’s HVAC system. We had no idea this mode existed, honestly, and it sounds pretty cool — the cabin air system apparently shuts off outside air intake and runs the fan at full speed to keep the cabin under positive pressure, forcing particulates — or, you know, anthrax — to stay outside. We understand there’s a HEPA filter in the mix too, which probably does a nice job of cleaning up the air in the cabin. It’s a clever idea, and hats off to Tesla for including this mode, although perhaps the name is a little silly. Here’s hoping it’s not one of those subscription services that can get turned off at a moment’s notice, though.
Fancy though “Bioweapon” mode on a Tesla may be, do these cars have an “Alien Abduction Prevention” mode, too? Let’s hope so, because if a whistleblower report on non-human craft is to be believed, we’re all going to need it. A highly placed former intelligence officer, David Grusch, has apparently briefed the US Congress on the retrieval of craft, in whole or in part, “of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures.” He claims this has been going on for decades, with technology being recovered not only by the US government but also by its allies and, curiously, defense contractors. All of which begs the question: If we’ve had vehicles of “exotic origin” available to us for decades, where the hell are our flying cars?
A strange case out of Connecticut, where a rural couple claims the state environmental agency sent a camera-wearing bear to illegally spy on them. The couple, Mark and Carol Brault, own a large piece of property where they charge visitors an admission fee to watch wildlife. They claim that the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) attached a camera to a bear that’s known to frequent the Brault property, with the intention of conducting a warrantless search on their private wildlife reserve. They apparently had previously been accused by the town government of feeding bears, which would be a problem if true, and certainly seems like something a collar-mounted camera would pick up. We’ve had dealings with Connecticut DEEP — we used to live in the state, and once had DEEP respond to our property to try to catch a nuisance bear that had killed some of our livestock. The trap was baited with day-old jelly donuts; alas, we never caught the perp, but our experience with DEEP was nothing but pleasant. The jelly donuts were pretty tasty, too.
Factory tour time! Raspberry Pi maven Jeff Geerling recently took a trip to the UK, which included not only a bit of hob-nobbing with Eben Upton, but also a tour of the Sony Tech Center in Wales where Raspberry Pis are made. Everyone loves factory tours, and seeing how Pis get made is especially nice — not to mention seeing Pis piled to the rafters. There are all the usual sights and sounds of a modern electronics factory — the high-speed pick and place, the hand rework of boards that don’t pass QC — but the best part in our book is the line of two-armed collaborative robots working on placing the through-hole components. The little wiggle they give to get Ethernet jacks and other through-hole parts placed is pretty clever, and the fact that they work directly across an assembly line from meat-bots is pretty impressive. Enjoy the tour!
And finally, if the 1983 movie WarGames was as influential for you as it was for us, you’ve got to check out this incredibly detailed diorama of David Lightman’s room. Played by a not-as-young-as-he-looked Matthew Broderick, for some of us David Lightman was about as cool as you could ever hope to be — not least because he had his own en suite bathroom. The IMSAI 8080 his desk sported was something most of us could only dream about owning, and the level of detail captured by this model is breathtaking. Not only is the computer exterior accurately modeled, everything inside the case is reproduced too! The big power supply caps, the transformer, the card cage and boards with tiny components — everything is there. And that’s not to mention all the other gear Lightman had in his room, like the top-load VCR, the printer, the 8″ floppies — even the acoustically coupled modem he used to nearly launch World War 3. Shall we play a game?
“All of which begs the question: If we’ve had vehicles of “exotic origin” available to us for decades, where the hell are our flying cars?”
SpaceX.
Bioweapon defense? How does the cabin make positive pressure with no air input? If I put a fan in a bottle and leave the cap lose but on, will I see air leaking out of it? I mean all cars have a recirculation mode, it is the symbol with a arrow turning back on itself inside an outline of a car. But you can’t recirculate air and build positive pressure. I can see this if it builds pressure through filtering the air and pressurizing the cabine but not when it is recirculating the air. I don’t know, did I miss understand something?
The air intake is not shut down, it is just pulled through a filter more quickly than the cabin air leaks out. This same approach is used in semiconductor fab equipment.
Closing air intakes seems to be a hackaday invention, it doesn’t appear in the original source https://www.tesla.com/blog/putting-tesla-hepa-filter-and-bioweapon-defense-mode-to-the-test
It *might* shut down air outlets to make it easier to keep positive pressure, but the sources don’t state that either.
If you shut down the air intake, how can you make the cabin have positive pressure?
By farting power, obviously.
In pork country that mode gets hit before you pass a farm, or possibly pass out.
I’ve noticed that in the past 20 years or so, the odors from pig and turkey farms have decreased. I think the farmers are using better waste handling techniques. It used to be you could smell them a half mile away, nowadays you may wonder if the barns are occupied because you don’t smell the old pungent air of old.
farmers in many countries are mandated to use slurry injection systems on their tank spreaders to reduce nitrogen emissions. this may affect smell. poultry farms have started to use methane gas bio reactor tanks to produce fuel also.
Huge difference between…
This is a very unpleasant smell.
…and…
I have to wear a particulate filter mask while I sleep so I don’t have an asthma attack.
But keep making those fart jokes.
Really keeps people thinking about the health hazards.
Grusch has been peddling his story for quite some time, and it’s never been credible. The UFO “government disclosure movement:” is and always has been about landing high-paid sinecures for military flunkies, nothing more. A worthwhile press would either not cover this kind of junk, or would at least cover it more critically. Grusch, Elizondo, et al and con men; nothing they say is worthwhile, and nothing they claim to know is correct.
Does HEPA stop smoke? That is like stopping a glucose molecule isn’t it?
A properly-rated HEPA will stop a whole lot more than smoke… think virus-sized “particles” (smoke is a whole lot bigger than that).
Standards for HEPA filters generally require removal of 99.9something% of 0.3μm particles, which is the worst-performing particle size (more efficient with both larger and smaller particles). Soot particles in smoke vary both larger and smaller but are right in that range. Obviously wouldn’t do anything about toxic gases but that’s only really a concern right up close to the fire.
It would be nice to get a description of what “Bioweapon Defense Mode” actually does, beyond Tesla’s stupid infomercial marketing bluster (wtf is a military grade bio attack? are there other grades of bio attacks?). Hackaday made up the idea that it “shuts off outside air intake” (c’mon guys), but it sounds like they’re really just saying it has a HEPA cabin air filter, and a stupidly-named button that… turns on the fan. There’s no indication that it’s ever pulling any air *not* through the filter, because then there would be no point in having the filter.
It’s just marketing.
Did you know that EMP bursts can easily be blocked by a simple device that attaches to any power source? It’s even “military tested!”
https://www.empshield.com/
The wonders of what people come up with never cease to amaze me.
It probably was military tested. The real question is whether they passed the military tests.
I worked at Strategic Air Command so I know what it takes for EMP protection. Pretty much a Farraday cage and filters on every input and output. The idea is to channel the EMP around whatever you are protecting. Energy matters. Are we talking about distant lightning bolts or air burst nukes ? Military tested could mean something as stupid as a mil-spec capacitor or choke or a mil-spec copper screen. Doesn’t necessarily mean it was tested for a particular application. I can use a mil-spec part beyond its spec and blow it up immediately.
So I went and looked at their web site and it appears to be whole house surge protection. That is a valid product and would work fine for external lightning strikes and even solar flares. It will not however help you much if the EMP is induced directly into your house internal wiring and devices. Seems like a valid surge protector but nothing earth shatteringly new here. Any halfway decent surge protector does nothing more than send voltages over a cetain level directly to ground. EMP is nothing more than induced voltages. I suppose it passed mil-spec as a garden variety surge protector. Most people though tend to associate EMP with the mass detruction weapon type rather than the garden variety we see everyday. So technically correct but misleading perception.
the “aliens” are back. you know what this means? in means the skunkworks has a new toy to play with and they needed a cover story. lets at least hope its fusion powered.
I tend to agree. These stories tend to pop back up everytime there is something else we are supposed to ignore. The US military has a love hate relationship to the UFO phenomenon, its a pain to keep explaining away but it sure was useful during a lot of flight testing to distract from what is really going on.