Estonian scientists recently published research on making robots more agile, by giving attaching moose-like hooves to their feet. The moose shoes could make robots more capable, by enabling them to:

navigate in complex natural terrains to conduct sensitive environmental monitoring, aid in agriculture and participate in disaster response.

Or attack enemies in war. Probably mostly that.

Last fall, the National Zoo in DC welcomed two new pandas, Bao Li and Qing Bao. They’re not receiving visitors just yet, but yesterday, they got to play in their first American snow. The video is a delight.¹

I hope you can take a moment to appreciate this panda making a snow angel.

Footnotes:

1. X Formerly Twitter can’t be trusted at all, so the video is archived here. ↩︎

The headline on this is misleading clickbait, as there are a few hundred of these machines, and even more techs for them. Still, it’s a fascinating look at some foundational technology that’s incredibly hard to comprehend.

Scientists at Cornell have created technology to enable mice to better experience VR in the lab. I give you “MouseGoggles”!

I ran some numbers, and it appears that MouseGoggles actually have almost as many daily users as Apple Vision Pro.

Hertz is moving away from EVs in their rental fleet, and they’re apparently trying to offload their existing inventory onto customers who currently have them in their possession. Despite Hertz’s statement that they’re expanding customer choice, a Tesla Model 3 with 30,000 miles for $18K falls squarely in the “please take this problem off our hands” price level.

Still, this might be the cheapest way to avoid any further bad publicity due to erroneous customer charges for failing to fill the non-existent gas tank.

Urban cyclists looking to change things up from just getting doored or right hooked should head to Newton, Massachusetts, where a fun new challenge awaits:

The state has been working on improving this road via a redesign which includes a separated bike lane, but the utility companies have not yet done their part.

“The poles in this area are a mix of poles owned by Eversource and poles owned by Verizon. They are responsible for removing these poles,” a MassDOT spokesperson told StreetsblogMASS on Monday.”

I wonder if, as an entity of the state, MassDOT could possibly lean on them to speed that process up? Nah, that’s probably crazy talk.

Did you know that the NOAA has an official definition for a “white Christmas”, and that it’s incredibly nitpicky?

A white Christmas is officially defined as having at least 1 inch of snow on the ground at 7 am local time Christmas Day.

If that strikes you as a bit ridiculous, know that you’re not alone. And if Mother Nature drops a foot of powder on December 25, but doesn’t get started until 7:01 AM, we’re all still going to call it a white Christmas. The NOAA can just pound snow.