Why betting on TV shows would not be a cultural low point

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Dear John: You recently wrote that there might one day be betting on TV shows.

What about “Survivor” or “American Ninja”? I could go on and on.

Don’t you think betting on TV shows is idiotic? How low have we gone? Steve

Dear Steve: I think that someday we will be allowed to bet on live TV shows.

And if people don’t like the idea, they won’t bet. And eventually, betting on shows will stop.

I also think there are many better examples than this of the degree to which American culture has sunk.

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Readers: I’m still waiting for the folks at New York’s E-ZPass operations to tell me where all the money people prepay on their accounts is kept.

Which bank? Does a Wall Street firm manage this money? Does an executive of E-Z­Pass keep it in his basement?

The longer it takes E-ZPass to respond, the more suspicious I get.

The answer should be very simple to provide.

Y2K-like issue could cause major GPS problems on April 6

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Now may be a good time to buy a map.

A Y2K-like computer issue affecting GPS satellites and devices could cause some major problems on April 6.

Much like the bug in 2000, many experts believe the systems in question will just roll over and adjust to the reported data change — but there’s at least one tech insider preparing for the worst.

“I’m not going to be flying on April 6,” said Bill Malik, vice president of the cyber security company Trend Micro, in an interview with Tom’s Guide.

“Ports load and unload containers automatically, using GPS to guide the cranes,” he said. “Public-safety systems incorporate GPS systems, as do traffic-monitoring systems for bridges.”

The issue in question will ultimately affect GPS receivers and their time counters, which are reportedly set to roll over to zero next month. If the systems do go haywire, then ships and older aircraft will likely be impacted the most. Smartphone receivers are expected to be fine.

The same exact issue affected GPS systems in 1999 — months before Y2K — and they updated accordingly. However, Malik and others believe society’s increased dependency on the technology could make things very different this go around.

“Twenty years ago these links were primitive,” Malik said. “Now they are embedded. So any impact now will be substantially greater.”

Government officials have been preparing for the data rollover for several years now, as have GPS device makers. The Department of Homeland Security sent out a memo in April 2018 warning “federal, state, local, and private sector organizations” of what could happen now that everyone has become so dependent on GPS.

“Critical Infrastructure (CI) owners and operators and other users who obtain Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) from Global Positioning System (GPS) devices should be aware of the GPS Week Number (WN) rollover events and the possible effect a GPS WN rollover event may have on the reliability of the reported UTC,” the memo said. “A GPS device that conforms to the latest IS-GPS-200 and provides UTC should not be adversely affected. However, tests of some GPS devices revealed that not all manufacturer implementations correctly handle the April 6, 2019 WN rollover.”

To make matters worse, a US Naval Observatory memo from 2017 warned that “the failure” may not be limited to April 6.

“Any month/year conversion could also fail,” the memo said. “Navigation solution should be OK, but associated time tags could be incorrect thus still corrupting navigation data at the system level.”

NASA captures first-ever photos of colliding supersonic shock waves

Using the schlieren photography technique, NASA was able to capture the first air-to-air images of the interaction of shock waves from two supersonic aircraft flying in formation. NASA

NASA captured a stunning, first-of-its-kind image showing the colliding shock waves from two jets flying at supersonic speeds.

The images, which feature a pair of T-38s from the US Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base flying in formation, give a clear view of the intersecting shock waves from the two jets.

Shock waves are produced due to rapid pressure changes that occur when a plane flies at supersonic speeds.

According to a statement from NASA, the jets were flying about 30 feet away from each other, with a King Air flying about 2,000 feet above them — all of it perfectly timed so that the cameras could record the images within seconds.

“What’s interesting is, if you look at the rear T-38, you see these shocks kind of interact in a curve,” Neal Smith, a research engineer with AerospaceComputing Inc. at NASA Ames’ fluid mechanics laboratory, said in a statement. “This is because the trailing T-38 is flying in the wake of the leading aircraft, so the shocks are going to be shaped differently. This data is really going to help us advance our understanding of how these shocks interact.”

Researchers have been interested in studying how shock waves interact for a long time. The images, which were captured during the fourth phase of Air-to-Air Background Oriented Schlieren flights, or AirBOS, were taken from a NASA B-200 King Air that had a significantly upgraded camera system and data storage system.

The space agency says that the data from the AirBOS flights will be analyzed, helping NASA refine their techniques so that future flights could take place at even higher altitudes. The research will help advance knowledge of the unique traits of shock waves as NASA progresses toward quiet supersonic research flights with the X-59 and moves closer to a major aviation milestone.

“The biggest challenge was trying to get the timing correct to make sure we could get these images,” said Heather Maliska, AirBOS sub-project manager, in a statement. “I’m absolutely happy with how the team was able to pull this off. Our operations team has done this type of maneuver before. They know how to get the maneuver lined up and our NASA pilots and the Air Force pilots did a great job being where they needed to be.”

“They were rock stars,” she added.

Israeli spacecraft snaps out-of-this-world selfie during moon voyage

Israeli spacecraft Beresheet snaps a selfie 23,000 miles above Earth. Beresheet

Shalom from space!

An Israeli spacecraft snapped a photo of itself from 23,000 miles above Earth on Tuesday as it orbits the planet ahead of its planned trip to the moon.

Beresheet — which means “Genesis” in Hebrew — lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida two weeks ago atop a used SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

In the photo taken during a slow spin of the 1,300-pound spacecraft, the Israeli flag with the Star of David is seen along with the inscription in English, “Small Country, Big Dreams.”

The plaque also contains the Hebrew phrase “Am Israel Chai,” which translates to, “The nation of Israel lives.”

Meanwhile, Australia is clearly visible on Earth’s Southern Hemisphere.

“The selfie of the spacecraft is proof of the technological power of Israel,” declared Israeli Minister of Science and Technology Ofir Akunis, according to the Jerusalem Post.

“Despite the small size of the spacecraft Beresheet, it brings us great joy. The spacecraft is proof of the technological strength and power of Israel, and its success passes on an educational message as well to the children of Israel: You need to dream big.”

Beresheet will remain in orbit until March 20, when it is planned to reach lunar capture orbit and eventually land on the moon’s Sea of Serenity on April 11.

Giant asteroids are way harder to blow up than we think: scientists

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Giant asteroids hurling their way towards Earth are harder to destroy than scientists –or Hollywood screenwriters — previously thought, according to new research.

John Hopkins researchers found that asteroids couldn’t be completely shattered by foreign objects — including ones launched to stop an end-of-days-style collision, as seen in sci-fi films such as “Deep Impact.”

“It is only a matter of time before these questions go from being academic to defining our response to a major threat,” said K.T. Ramesh a professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, who contributed to the report.“We are impacted fairly often by small asteroids, such as in the Chelyabinsk event a few years ago.”

To test whether the massive space rocks could be destroyed, scientists plugged factors such as mass, temperature and material brittleness into a computer program — and simulated a 15-mile-long object smashing into an asteroid at roughly three miles per second, according to the study, which is set to be published in the journal Icarus on March 15.

Unlike a similar study from 2000 that showed asteroids could be completely destroyed by the impact, they found that the core of the asteroid was damaged but not completely broken, researchers said.

Instead of smashing the space rock in to a “rubble pile,” the center of the asteroid merely cracked but didn’t completely break — allowing it to continue to catapult through space, according to the report.

The previous study, which was not as detailed, failed to take into consider cracks in the astroid, which slowed its speed and made the impact of the two objects less powerful, researchers said.

“We used to believe that the larger the object, the more easily it would break, because bigger objects are more likely to have flaws. Our findings, however, show that asteroids are stronger than we used to think and require more energy to be completely shattered,” says lead researcher Charles El Mir, of the Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

He added, “It may sound like science fiction but a great deal of research considers asteroid collisions.”

Lyft zooms past Uber in IPO race

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Investors, start your engines: The ride-hailing IPO race is finally kicking off.

Lyft — the No. 2 taxi app behind Uber — pulled ahead of its bigger rival on Friday as it made a long-anticipated filing for an initial public offering.

The San Francisco-based company is expected to go public later this month on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “LYFT” in a deal that’s expected to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion in cash and value the app at more than $20 billion.

In a thick prospectus loaded with financial information, the company confirmed it’s spending a fortune to compete — losing a staggering $911 million last year to make $2.2 billion in revenue.

To be sure, the latter figure was more than double what Lyft racked up a year earlier, as it scrambled to take advantage of chaos at Uber, including a slew of sex-harassment scandals that helped oust founder Travis Kalanick from the company.

Lyft said its US market share has swelled to 39 percent, up from 22 percent two years ago. Lyft ridership soared to 18.6 million as of December, up from 12.6 million in 2017 and 6.6 million in 2016.

Nevertheless, last year’s heavy losses — up by nearly a third from a year earlier — confirmed that Lyft remains in growth mode, with aggressive spending that’s less palatable to investors outside Silicon Valley.

“Losses are going to be a concern to Wall Street and it’s going to affect their valuation,” said Kathleen Smith, principal at IPO research firm Renaissance Capital.

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Ride-hailing firm Lyft files for IPO, beating rival Uber

“The key is: When are the losses going to end?” Smith added. “The longer the losses … the less valuable the company will be.”

Lyft warned that it may have trouble achieving and maintaining profitability as it is currently investing in shared bikes, scooters and financial support for drivers. Competition could also post threats to the business, Lyft warned.

As such, jumping ahead of Uber in the IPO race may be a smart move, said Rett Wallace of Triton Research, a New York-based firm that tracks tech IPOs.

“Investors who own Lyft will have to make room for Uber versus the other way around,” Smith said.

Lyft was last valued at $15.1 billion but is expected to raise $2 billion to $3 billion when going public at a valuation of $20 billion to $25 billion, according to a report by The Information.

High-profile investors have piled into Lyft in recent years, including Carl Icahn, who funneled $100 million into the company in 2015. As reported by The Post, the billionaire investor is angling to use the auto shop chains he owns to fix up used cars and sell them to Uber and Lyft.

Lyft is “kind of a poster child for pre-IPO investing since it’s 1) a big, well-known company that can 2) absorb a lot of capital, that will 3) actually go public,” Wallace said.

SpaceX launches crew capsule rockets toward space station

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Demo 1 crew capsule lifts off from pad 39A on March 2. AP

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  — America’s newest capsule for astronauts rocketed Saturday toward the International Space Station on a high-stakes test flight by SpaceX.

The only passenger was a life-size test dummy, named Ripley after the lead character in the “Alien” movies. SpaceX needs to nail the debut of its crew Dragon capsule before putting people on board later this year.

This latest, flashiest Dragon is on a fast track to reach the space station Sunday morning, just 27 hours after liftoff.

It will spend five days docked to the orbiting outpost, before making a retro-style splashdown in the Atlantic next Friday — all vital training for the next space demo, possibly this summer, when two astronauts strap in.

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said the launch was “super stressful” to watch, but he’s hopeful the capsule will be ready to carry people later this year.

“To be frank, I’m a little emotionally exhausted,” Musk told reporters barely an hour after liftoff. “We have to dock to the station. We have to come back, but so far it’s worked … we’ve passed the riskiest items.”

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine called it “a big night for the United States of America.”

“We’re on the precipice of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil again for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011,” said Bridenstine, who got a special tour of the launch pad on the eve of launch, by Musk.

An estimated 5,000 NASA and contractor employees, tourists and journalists gathered in the wee hours at Kennedy Space Center with the SpaceX launch team, as the Falcon 9 rocket blasted off before dawn from the same spot where Apollo moon rockets and space shuttles once soared. Across the country at SpaceX Mission Control in Hawthorne, California, company employees went wild, cheering every step of the way until the capsule successfully reached orbit.

Looking on from Kennedy’s Launch Control were the two NASA astronauts who will strap in as early as July for the second space demo, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. Shortly after liftoff, Musk asked them, “How do you feel about flying on it?”

It’s been eight years since Hurley and three other astronauts flew the last space shuttle mission, and human launches from Florida ceased.

NASA turned to private companies, SpaceX and Boeing, and has provided them $8 billion to build and operate crew capsules to ferry astronauts to and from the space station. Now Russian rockets are the only way to get astronauts to the 250-mile-high outpost. Soyuz tickets have skyrocketed over the years; NASA currently pays $82 million per seat.

Boeing aims to conduct the first test flight of its Starliner capsule in April, with astronauts on board possibly in August.

Bridenstine said he’s confident that astronauts will soar on a Dragon or Starliner — or both — by year’s end. But he stressed there’s no rush.