Let’s be honest, spacewalks, as a whole, can be pretty boring to watch.
Yes, it’s one of the most dangerous things an astronaut or cosmonaut can do in space: floating out into the void with just a relatively thin spacesuit to protect them.
But at the end of the day, these spacewalks usually amount to some pretty tedious tasks performed in the name of routine maintenance on the International Space Station.
On Tuesday, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev ventured outside of the station to perform a little rocket surgery.
The cosmonauts headed out on the spacewalk to inspect a Soyuz capsule — used by the astronauts and cosmonauts to fly to and from the space station — to make sure it was well-fixed after an earlier repair.
Sounds pretty easy right? Wrong. At various times Kononenko and Prokopyev had to use what looked like garden shears and knives to actually cut through the tough insulation on the outside of the Soyuz.
It looked pretty dang dramatic.
All that cutting and chopping — which is pretty intense considering the only thing protecting the crewmembers from the vacuum of space was a pressurized suit — created a whole bunch of debris.
NASA expects that this won’t be a problem, however, and most of it should fall harmlessly through the Earth’s atmosphere, burning up in the process, in the next few days.
The cosmonauts were so focused on their tasks that they all but refused to take even a 2 minute break as they were working in tough conditions for more than 7 hours.
Mission control repeatedly asking the cosmonauts to take a break, even for a few minutes. Nearly five hours into the spacewalk now
While the spacewalk made for some entertaining NASA TV, it was all in the name of safety.
Russia felt that the cosmonauts needed to cut through the tough insulation on the Soyuz to figure out more about what caused the air leak before the ship brings a crew back home to Earth on December 19.
The actual leak was discovered in August when mission managers noticed a dip in pressure on the station that was traced to the Soyuz, NASA said.
Crewmembers patched the leak and since then, pressure hasn’t been a problem on the station.
Kononenko and Prokopyev took photos and inspected the problem part of the Soyuz, so hopefully now mission managers will have enough information to get to the bottom of what actually caused the craft to spring a leak.
Initially, managers thought that the Soyuz could have been hit by a meteor, but further inspection caused some speculation that a drilling mishap on the ground could have punched the hole.
Hopefully this spacewalk will get to the bottom of exactly what happened.
President Donald Trump appears to see an upside to being blamed for furloughed workers and shuttered federal agencies in the name of fulfilling one of his key campaign promises. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
The president’s eagerness to take ownership of a partial government shutdown if he doesn’t get border wall funding has painted Republicans into a corner.
President Donald Trump just made it nearly impossible for Republicans to blame Democrats for an increasingly likely partial government shutdown. But they’re going to try anyway.
House Republicans are considering passing a stopgap spending bill that provides $5 billion for Trump’s border wall, essentially daring Senate Democrats to accept it or face the fallout of any funding lapse next week, according to multiple GOP sources.
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But Democrats — and some Republicans — aren’t taking the gambit seriously after Trump boasted that he’d be “proud” to shut down the government over his wall demands during an extraordinary Oval Office clash with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Tuesday.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) was taken aback when asked if the president’s negotiating style had aided Republicans: “Everybody wants to blame it on the other party, always. That’s what you typically do. That’s out the window now.”
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) conceded that neither side had made any apparent effort to compromise and that Democrats were skillfully sidestepping the GOP’s efforts to pin the blame on them.
“I think Sen. Schumer was very shrewd in his efforts to make certain that whatever blame is to be had for a shutdown doesn’t rest with the Democrats,” added Moran. “It’s disappointing that the outcome is what it is at the moment.”
Coming off a remarkable televised exchange between Trump, Schumer and Pelosi, congressional Republicans were reeling as they tried to adjust to the president’s stunning willingness to own an impending partial shutdown over his border wall demands. For weeks the GOP had been attacking Democrats for their unwillingness to help Trump shore up the border.
And with just a few words directed at Schumer, Trump laid all those plans to waste: “I am proud to shut down the government for border security.” Later in the day, Trump dug in even further, declaring: “I don’t mind owning that issue. … We’re closing it down for border security and I think I win that every single time.”
It’s the latest surprise from a president who has routinely upended the way Washington works. But Trump’s confidence, and his partnership with the congressional GOP, will be tested if roughly a quarter of the government ends up closing after next week without a bipartisan agreement.
A House GOP member who lost reelection said Trump’s performance on Tuesday “was unbelievable. I literally couldn’t believe a president of the United States was acting that crazy.” When asked why he didn’t come out publicly with his criticism, the soon-to-be-ex-lawmaker deadpanned “Hey, I gotta work, don’t I?”
Inside the White House, Schumer probed Trump about his end game during the private portion of their meeting. He noted that if the government shuts down, Pelosi will pass a bill restarting the government on Jan. 3, putting the onus on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to buckle or stick with Trump’s border fight.
“What do you think Mitch will do? Keep it shut down another month, another week?” Schumer asked Trump, according to a person briefed on the meeting. Trump did not reply, the person said, and did not completely rule out potentially passing stop-gap bills to avoid a shutdown.
Yet publicly, Trump is all in on the shutdown and almost portrayed it as an act of kindness toward Schumer, whose own caucus forced a brief funding lapse earlier this year. Trump said Schumer was “killed” over the episode.
“He doesn’t want to own it. I said rather than us debating who is owning it, I’ll take it. I’ll take it,” Trump said.
Yet that scuttles all the messaging work that Republicans have done in recent weeks. Over and over again, they’ve said Democrats would be the unreasonable party if the government shuts down over Trump’s border wall.
Now they are faced with something new altogether: A president who sees an upside to being blamed for furloughed workers and shuttered federal agencies in the name of fulfilling one of his key campaign promises.
House Republican leaders had told their rank-and-file members that there would be no votes on Monday and Tuesday of next week, anticipating a budget deal to keep the federal government open beyond the Dec. 21 deadline. But they may need to scrap those plans to give Trump billions for a border barrier, even if it faces no chance of getting through the Senate.
“Yes, we’d have the votes to pass it if we put it out there,” McCarthy declared, contradicting Pelosi’s taunts that the House can’t pass Trump’s bill. The California Republican — a close Trump ally who takes over as minority leader in in January — said he’s “always supported more money for border security.”
And some Trump backers quickly threw their lot in with the president, who ran counter to the immigration views of many in the GOP. They seem to trust his political acumen, no matter how counter-intuitive Trump’s move to tout a potential shutdown might be.
“I’m going to stick by President Trump. He needs to dig in, not give in. Let’s take it to the public,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “This liberal arrogance, I’ve had enough of it. Take it on. Stare it down, see what happens.”
Democrats say they aren’t feeling arrogant, but that they’ve already won the debate.
Pelosi crowed after the meeting to her Democratic members that they’d gotten Trump to own the shutdown and Schumer told reporters that it was now up to McConnell to “persuade” Trump not to enter into an intractable impasse.
And most Republicans were highly reluctant to join Trump in his “proud” stand to own a shutdown.
“I’ve never said that myself,” said Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who has met repeatedly with Trump about the border wall. “I’m always trying to work to fund the government.”
Schumer has been firm since the election that gave Democrats the House: His caucus simply won’t give in to Trump’s demands, no matter what the GOP-controlled House does in its final days of the lame duck session.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) tried to fight back against the “Trump shutdown” narrative unfolding, despite the president’s own words. Scalise dismissed suggestions that Trump’s comments tie Republicans’ hands and argued that if Democrats are “for open borders, Pelosi ought to come out and say that.”
“If Pelosi and Schumer are against any attempt to make sure the president has the tools he needs to keep the country safe just because they want to try play some kind of political games, then we’ll keep battling this out,” Scalise said.
At a party lunch with Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Republicans tried to get back on the same page. They discussed how Democrats have previously supported larger amounts of money for border security, senators said. Afterward, GOP leaders came out to tell reporters of their strong support for the president’s border security demands.
And GOP leaders said that Trump’s quotes on Tuesday, which might have stuck to other presidents for months, will be forgotten if Democrats vote against a bill to fund Trump’s border wall in the coming days.
In other words, the blame game isn’t over yet.
“This is going to be the finger pointing exercise we always go through … irrespective of that interesting press conference,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 GOP leader. “I’m not sure I see the endgame at the moment.”
The nostalgia carousel keeps going round and round, and brands have happily hopped on for the ride.
Puma announced Monday that it would reissue a little-known shoe with a technical twist from 1986: the RS-Computer Shoe. The shoe, then and now, looks like a running shoe with a plastic protuberance on the back — which is where the shoe tracks your movement and activity.
Chunky and retro fabulous? Yep, sounds like a very on-trend shoe to us. Plus, Puma is only releasing 86 of these babies (as in the year the shoe was released). So the hype beasts might really line up for this one.
Smart shoes of the ’80s, reissued for today.
Image: puma
In 1986, the Running System (RS) Computer Shoe used a computer chip embedded in the shoe to measure speed, distance, and calories burned. Those functions are a lot like a stripped down Fitbit or other modern activity tracker — it just required a connection to an Apple IIE or Commodore 64 computer to read the data.
The new edition will look the same as the 1986 version, but has technologically updated guts, and there’s no Apple IIE C64 connection required. Instead, it can connect to an iPhone or Android via Bluetooth, charge through a USB cable, and work with an app.
But even the decidedly modern app gets a retro finish. It’s designed with 8-bit style graphics and has an 8-bit game inside it. So after going for a run in your sweatband, high socks, and short shorts, you can hit the arcade.
It’s not just a Puma, it’s a workout system.
Image: puma
According to archival footage via the sneaker website DeFy New York, the RS-Computer Shoe was a novel device for its time. Histories of wearables typically skip over this 1986 achievement and go straight from the Walkmen of the late ’70s to the first Bluetooth of the late ’90s. But it’s definitely not something to sleep on – just look how cool it is!
The 86 RS-Computer Shoes will be available online and in select Puma stores. Mashable has reached out to Puma to learn more about a release date and other details, and will update this story when and if we hear more.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s long-awaited Congressional hearing took place on Tuesday.
Pichai testified before Congress on Google+ data breaches, the controversial Chinese-censorship friendly search product, and perceived anti-conservative bias. But, there was one more pressing concern that took center stage to those watching the hearing: Several members of Congress, at least on the House Judiciary Committee, have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to technology.
The main topic of the hearing — anti-conservative bias within Google’s search engine — really puts how little Congress understands into perspective. Early on in the hearing, Rep. Lamar Smith claimed as fact that 96 percent of Google search results come from liberal sources. Besides being proven false with a simple search of your own, Google’s search algorithm bases search rankings on attributes such as backlinks and domain authority. Partisanship of the news outlet does not come into play. Smith asserted that he believe the results are being manipulated, regardless of being told otherwise.
Rep. Steve Chabot brought us one of the most unfortunate self-owns of the hearing while discussing Google search and anti-conservative bias. Bringing up his own personal experience, Chabot questioned Pichai on why Google returned so much negative criticism on Republicans’ bill to repeal and replace Obamacare last year. Unaware of the implication that so many outlets reported on the bill in this way simply because, maybe, it was just bad, Chabot went on to bring up a similar experience with the GOP tax plan.
When Iowa Rep. Steve King demanded to know why a nasty image of the Congressman would appear on his granddaughter’s phone while she was playing a game, Pichai had to point out that Google doesn’t make the iPhone. King’s response? It could have been an Android!
But, not to be outdone by his peers, the most cringeworthy moment of the entire hearing has to go to Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert. The Republican Congressman was upset with the fact that Google shows Wikipedia in its search results. Gohmert proceeded to throw himself under the bus in a bizarre moment where he blamed the free online encyclopedia for removing edits his staff makes to his own Wikipedia page. Remember that this is being said at a hearing on political bias on the internet!
It should be no surprise that a majority of our elected officials aren’t the most tech-savvy. But, while one can argue that platforms like Facebook and Twitter are only around a decade old, Google search has been a part of our internet lives for over 20 years.
There are certainly many concerns and critiques to be had over algorithms and data collection when it comes to Google and its products like Google Search and Google Ads. Sadly, not much time was spent on this substance at Tuesday’s hearing. Google-owned YouTube, the second most trafficked website in the world after Google, was barely addressed at the hearing tool.
Perhaps these important topics will be better addressed at Pichai’s next Congressional hearing. Members of the incoming freshman class of Congress next year are younger and, seemingly, more tech savvy. Maybe they can even invite YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki to that hearing too.
A Canadian court has granted bail to a top executive of Chinese telecom giant Huawei while she awaits an extradition hearing, following her arrest at the request of the United States.
Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and daughter of its founder, was arrested as part of a US fraud investigation on December 1 as she was changing planes in Vancouver.
“The risk of her non-attendance in court (for a future extradition hearing) can be reduced to an acceptable level by imposing the bail conditions proposed by her council,” Justice William Ehrcke said on Tuesday, prompting the courtroom packed with her supporters to erupt in cheers.
The arrest of Meng, 46, roiled financial markets and complicated efforts to resolve a trade war dispute between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies.
Washington has accused Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company to sell equipment in Iran in violation of its sanctions. It also says that Meng and Huawei misled banks about the company’s business dealings in Iran.
On Monday, China detained a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing in apparent retaliation.
President Donald Trump has made numerous derisive comments about female reporters, but White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders won’t say whether he crossed the line.
Defending the president during a talk hosted by POLITICO, Sanders said on Tuesday that male reporters had been equally targeted by Trump’s vitriol and derision during press briefings.
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“The president’s had an equal number of contentious conversations with your male colleagues,” Sanders told POLITICO’s Eliana Johnson at the 6th annual Women Rule Summit. “Women wanted to be treated equally, and we have a president that certainly does that.”
Trump has personally mocked many reporters in the two years of his presidency. During a Rose Garden briefing in October, he told ABC’s Cecilia Vega: “I know you’re not thinking. You never do.” He has also attacked male reporters, getting into an infamous tusslewith CNN’s Jim Acosta last month that led to Acosta’s White House access being temporarily denied.
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Instagram is taking new steps to woo some of its highest profile users.
The app is testing “creator accounts,” which would add new analytics and messaging features geared toward influencers and other power users of the photo-sharing app.
The update is currently being tested and will roll out more broadly next year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It will offer influencers an alternative to Instagram business profiles, which the company introduced in 2016, Instagram wrote in a statement.
“Increasingly, creators rely on Instagram to connect with followers and grow their personal brands, however the tools that are currently available to businesses today make it difficult for them to track their growth and engagement over time. We’re building the new Creator Account to help solve some of those challenges and make it easier for creators to grow their personal brands on Instagram,” the announcement reads.
The profiles will come with new ways to customize contact information on profiles, as well as tools for filtering messages.
Though many Instagram influencers rely on the service to make connections with potential sponsors and other business contacts, it can be challenging to do so with existing tools. Features like message filtering would make it much easier to separate important messages from the fan mail and spam that often clutters the inboxes of high-profile accounts.
THR reports that influencer accounts will also come with the option to get more advanced analytics, which would provide “weekly and daily data around how their follower count has changed.” Instagram currently provides some analytics to business accounts, but not in the detail that would be available to creator accounts. This is especially important, not just because it allows account holders to gauge the effect of their content more accurately, but because the lack of sophisticated analytics has indirectly made some accounts more vulnerable to being hacked.
Right now, there are a number of (unsanctioned) third-party tools that purport to provide the kinds of in-depth analytics Instagram doesn’t. But clever hackers have taken to spoofing many of these sites and tricking people into entering their account credentials in order to steal their account. So, by offering more in depth analytics of its own, Instagram will be able to provide an alternative to these sometimes shady services.
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#GridironHeights x Fight Club
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