It's tough for there to be any one best cable management solution, because everyone's needs are so different. In this case industrial designer Eric Strebel needed something to hold the necessary cables in his sound recording booth, so he designed and built his own.

During the video he touches on the all-important topic of time management (your time, versus a machine's time), evaluates Polysmooth filament and shows you how it can be touched up with rubbing alcohol.

Strebel's posted the build files for free on Thingiverse.

Definitely not a vehicle I thought I'd see on Jay Leno's Garage: The Tesla Cybertruck.

Here Elon Musk and Tesla designer Franz von Holzhausen present it to Jay to evaluate himself, with a test drive around L.A. They even drive it through Musk's Boring Company tunnel:

Unlike cars, lawn mowers and wood chippers often have their drain plugs in inconvenient places. On both my riding mower and chipper, I've had to rig up DIY funneling devices out of plastic sheets to keep the draining oil from pouring all over the place. But YouTuber Chris Notap has come up with a cleaner, easier, faster method: Using his shop vac. I know it sounds crazy, but look at how simple and quick this is.

With this method I wouldn't need the funnel rigs, nor the drain pan, nor the step of funneling from the drain pan into the disposal bottle, nor even the wrench to unscrew the drain plug. The only slight hassle I could foresee is ensuring you've got the hose down to the bottom of the tank to drain every last drop. I'd probably mark the disposal bottle so that I knew when it was filled with the correct amount of waste oil.

Next I'd love to see Notap solve the problem of oil going everywhere when you remove the filter.

Officials in Negrar di Valpolicella, an Italian village midway between Milan and Venice, have made a startling discovery several meters below a vineyard: A perfectly preserved mosaic floor dating back to the 3rd Century A.D.

In 1922, hints of a Roman villa had been discovered on the site, but no successful excavations had been performed until now. "After countless decades of failed attempts," the municipality writes on their Facebook page, "part of the flooring and foundations of the Roman Villa have been located."

Uncovering the floor completely "will not come soon," the municipality writes, pointing out that "significant resources will be needed." They are also working "to identify the most suitable ways to make this archaeological treasure available and open and visible under our feet."

David Lewin, a designer who transitioned out of corporate and now has years of experience in industrial design consulting in Portland, Oregon goes 1:1 with Michael DiTullo examining the nuances of working with clients in product development, the benefits of studio space, seeking diversified revenue within design practice and dipping into "almost famous" stories.

Guest, David Lewin https://www.lewinindustrialdesign.com

Host, Michael DiTullo http://www.michaelditullo.com

"Someone once rearranged these to spell out 'OPEN PLAN SUCKS.' We terminated them immediately."

"My roommate has a permanent crick in his neck, so his books go in the middle."

"The blueprints got crumpled coming off of the plotter. The contractor did the best he could."

True story: This two-piece, high-end Squatty Potty alternative is designed to nest one inside the other to save space. It also gives you a fun activity to futz your way through right before you take a dump.

"Our research shows that most framers not only want the waffle head, but a slippery wooden handle and a nearly flat claw that's unusable for de-nailing."

"Limited Edish, yo."
"Our design firm specializes in ergonomics."

In the way that some people have a fear of clowns, I have a fear of this table.

"The design brief was to make it difficult to select the knife that you want."

"I wanted a front door that me and a flock of crows could all enter at the same time. It's also great for letting moths in at night."

Assuming you can develop the skill, gnocchi has got to be the most satisfying pasta to shape:

If you're the type of person who wants to make your own gnocchi, chances are you'll want to make the gnocchi board, too. Here's Chris Salomone showing you how he made his:

Not too shabby!

Da Enzo, a social-distance-observing restaurant in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood, has figured out how to do away with menus. The waitress simply holds up a sheet of paper with a QR code on it.

Diners capture it with their phone, giving them access to the menu.

Other restaurants, like Duke's in Thailand, simply post the QR code on a window.

There's no restaurants where I live, but I assume other place are doing this in America. And this is a practice that should persist after the pandemic is over. Printed menus are dumb. When I was a waiter, I hated cleaning them. Managers can't like having to reprint an entire batch every time there's a change. And the last time I went to a restaurant in the city, a combination of poor lighting and font size meant I could barely read the damn thing. I'd much rather have it in my phone.

The only downside is that diners without smartphones can't access them. But post-pandemic, at least, restaurants could simply keep a small stock of menus for such cases.

How does a priest baptize a baby while adhering to social distancing? Industrial designer Joshua Skirtich observed the new trend of using squirt guns loaded with holy water.

It's obviously disturbing to see an adult pointing any type of firearm-like device at a baby. Skirtich came up with something far better. Here's his project:

3:16 Magnum (Product Name)

In the Catholic Church, infants are baptized to welcome them into the Catholic faith and to free them from the original sin they were born with. This is usually performed by a priest who douses the child's forehead with holy water (water that has been blessed by a member of the clergy.

Recently, Catholic priests began using squirt guns loaded with holy water to baptize from afar. Photos of these Covid-19 Baptisms showcase uniformed men holding vibrant, plastic, toys for what is normally a serious, sacred ceremony. I initially thought to redesign the gun as a joke, but later realized it as a serious opportunity to design a premium squirt gun - something that has never really had a reason to exist.

The gun's silhouette is a cross, the most important symbol of Christianity. The red cross floating in acrylic doubles as crosshairs (to aim with) and another nod to Christianity. 

Three holes in the barrel signify " the father, the son, and the holy spirit," a doctrine used to explain the complex structure of God being three entities at once. During a baptism, the priest will say "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

Well done, Skirtich!

If you've got a 3D printer and you're organizing your home/shop/garage, you could probably use some of these:

The files for these customizable latching tool handle holders have been posted to Thingiverse by Australian engineer and Prusa user Greg Frost. And you can obviously scale things up or down depending on what you intend it to hold. "I have used it for big things like a pool scoop, right down to little things like a pen," Frost writes.

Some pertinent details:

"It prints as one piece using its own parts for support. Where the hinges join, the model is weakened by leaving a blank layer and minimising the contact so that it can be broken free to actuate the hinge.

"Each hinge is designed to use a metal pin (three needed in total). You can use anything from a screw to a nail to a paperclip or a piece of coat hanger. I have been using nails with 2mm diameter in holes designed to 3mm so they slide in easily."

Download the files here.

A particularly ingenious Redditor called Pyroblock is restoring a 1975 Camaro. Having removed most of the mechanicals, he now needs to strip some paint from the underside and weld new suspension mounts on--both tasks that would be far easier if the car were on its side, as opposed to up on a lift, with the work above you.

Well, here's how he solved that problem, using some dimensional lumber and plywood:

Video by Pyroblock

Brilliant!

Watch the original video with sound here (we're having problems embedding it).

Mechanical engineer Brian Ignaut is the guy who designed SpaceX's unfolding solar arrays, then branched out into designing and building origami-like unfolding furniture under his own company, Degrees of Freedom. While prototyping a new design for an expanding table, he discovered a new way to make multiple surfaces fold relative to one another, which he then adapted into a chessboard:

Ignaut's brief development story is below:

"In the design, four wood panels are connected by six stainless steel links, four of which are used in pairs while the last two are used alone.

"The link pairs keep the joined panels parallel during all movement, while the single links permit rotation between boards which is used when pivoting the board into its playing orientation.

"I originally tried using this mechanism for an expanding table concept, and only came across the secondary crossing functionality after I started playing with the first prototype. I've been dreaming about this design for well over a year so it was fun to finally see it take shape!"

Check out more of Ignaut's work on the Degrees of Freedom Instagram.

New-Zealand-based Variant Spaces is a design-build firm specializing in kitting out tiny houses--and thus, they're specialists in space-saving solutions. While some of their stuff are things we've seen before, like a pulley-based laundry rack, fold-out tables and a magnetic wall-mounted spice rack…

f

…I hadn't seen a DIY cable storage solution as simple as this:

What most caught my eye was this shot of a washing machine in a tiny house that they did for a client. Absent any free space, they tucked it behind the stairs to the loft.

If I was doing laundry every day, sure, flipping the steps up each time would grow tiresome. But the procedure doesn't look so bad if you're doing laundry once a week:

Alternatively, perhaps these Kiwis could get together with Aussie designer Zev Bianchi and his glorious disappearing staircase solution.

Lynx represents the research in the simplicity of form through the use of a few elements. A single panel of mdf wood, finished with a particular laser technique, and a single fixing element to maintain the shape. Few components to create an attractive, elegant and modern object.

View the full project here

The New Historia YouTube channel edited together an animated flythrough of ancient Rome, and it's stunning. It gives you a look at what a well-managed, pre-industrial urban environment would look like: Orderly public spaces, no vehicle pollution, no factory smokestacks belching smoke, no buildings blocking the sun, no billboards, no advertisements, no electricity.

Here's the video:

What's amusing is the provenance of the footage--it was apparently extracted from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series of videogames. So it is accurate? I have no idea; while the company famously consulted with Egyptologists to recreate Egypt for their Assassin's Creed: Origins game, I couldn't find any mention of them working with historians on Rome. But I'd like to believe it looked like this.

via BoingBoing

Without the creation, discovery, licensing and sharing of intellectual property (IP), the modern world of electronics would look very different. In the semiconductor chip space, IP has enabled the creation of highly complex system on chips (SoCs) and acompanying software systems, which are the cornerstones of today’s consumer electronic markets such a smartphone and other mobile devices.

Given the importance of IP to electronic and mechatronic design and manufacturing, you’d think it would be a highly prized and well-managed asset. Such is not the case, according to a recent 2020 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report. One of the key findings of the report, which was produced by the Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC) and focused solely on open source software components, was that 91% of commercial applications contain outdated or abandoned open-source components —a potentially serious security threat and legal concern.

Further, the report revealed that 99% of the 1,250 commercial codebases audited contained open-source code, with open source comprising 70% of the code overall. According to a press release, what was, “more notable is the continued widespread use of aging or abandoned open source components, with 91% of the codebases containing components that either were more than four years out of date or had seen no development activity in the last two years.

The four main findings were:

• Open-source adoption continues to soar. (36%).
• Outdated and “abandoned” open-source components are pervasive.
• The use of vulnerable open-source components is trending upward again.
• Open-source license conflicts continue to put intellectual property at risk.

Open source software is no different from any other software in that its use is governed by a license that describes the rights conveyed to users and the obligations those users must meet.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI), a nonprofit corporation that promotes the use of open source software in the commercial world, defines open source with 10 criteria and lists 82 OSI-approved licenses, with nine being “popular, widely used, or having strong communities.”

(Image Source: Open Source License, Synopsys 2020 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report)

Analyses from the OSSRA report indicates that the 20 most popular licenses cover approximately 98% of the open source in use. One application that uses a lot of open source licenses is blockchain project. The report notes that one such project used a GNU Affero General Public License (AGPLv3) that generally states, “if you use a licensed component (or a derivative) in your software, you must make your source code available under the same conditions as the original component.” Many companies are reluctant to open their own source code to general use and are wary of any ensuring compliance issues.  

 (Image Source: Synopsys 2020 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report)

Engineers reading the OSSRA report might be tempted to say, “OK, so what? Do I really need to worry about open source software (or hardware) compliance and IP management issues in addition to all the critical design, verification or manufacturing work that I have to do?”

The question is particularly troublesome for chip hardware engineers. Warren Savage, Visiting Researcher at the University of Maryland and former CEO of IPextreme, acknowledges the problem: “Open source hardware (i.e. IP) has been something that has intrigued the semiconductor community for a long time.  However, unlike its cousin, open source software, it has failed to materially impact the semiconductor IP market. There are technical and legal issues at play. Given the multi-million-dollar cost of wafers, few engineering managers are willing to bet their job if the IP would turn out to have latent bugs and or worse—patent infringement issues.”

Michael Munsey, while working at Dassault Systems, once answered the question this way: “Most designers and verification engineers understand the need for IP reuse in system-on-chip (SoC) design. But few seem aware of the management and governance that such IP will require. For example, as companies reuse more internal IP and acquire more external IP, they’ll need to create a cataloging system. This catalog will lead to a grading of IP based upon its usage and known defects. Just as with internal IP, the third-party IP must be tracked not only for bug issues but also for royalty and licensing payments. For large companies, all of these management activities will need to happen across a multiple of projects.”

The last point has become more critical for consumer electronics and other mass markets. Handling multiple projects often within a product family – like a smart phone – requires the management of slightly variant designs. Olivier De Percin, VP, Digital and Industry, at Dassault Systemes, noted that mass customizations in the design will also mean having many variants in the field. Keeping track of both the design, manufactured and field variations requires the capability to manage all resources but especially all of the IP.

Another reason to maintain a database of all hardware and software IP used in a design is to safeguard against infringements. The big problem facing most companies is that they don’t know what IP they have. One reason for this is the poor internal governance within corporate databases. Often, companies simply lose track of where the IP is used. There should be a managed pedigree or record of IP heritage.

Like it or not, the governance and management of IP is the primary way to deal with outdated and abandoned bits of design and even manufacturing code. The question is, who’s going to do it?

Failure to comply with open source IP has legal ramifications. (Image Source: IP Management Compliance, Adobe)

 

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John Blyler is a Design News senior editor, covering the electronics and advanced manufacturing spaces. With a BS in Engineering Physics and an MS in Electrical Engineering, he has years of hardware-software-network systems experience as an editor and engineer within the advanced manufacturing, IoT and semiconductor industries. John has co-authored books related to system engineering and electronics for IEEE, Wiley, and Elsevier.

Image source: Bandai Namco

Toru Iwatani. Image source: Critical Path YouTube Image source: Bandai Namco $399 40th Anniversary Pac-Man Game. Image source: Tastemakers, LLC

The world recently observed the 40th anniversary of the arcade debut of the game that became a cultural phenomenon: Pac-Man. It has been four decades since Namco game designer Toru Iwatani’s maze eating game was released to Tokyo arcades. It came to the U.S. in 1981 and within 15 months Pac-Man had gobbled four billion quarters, or $1 billion.

Iwatani had noticed that game parlors were almost exclusively patronized by men and boys, so he set out to develop a game that would appeal to the whole population rather than half of it.

Eating is a universal activity, so he hit upon the idea of making it an eating game. The game’s power pills, which let Pac-Man eat the antagonizing ghosts, were inspired by Popeye’s spinach, Iwatani said in an interview with CNN. And the idea for the ghosts as opponents came from the Caspar the Friendly Ghost cartoon.

Those ghosts don’t just have different colors; they have different personalities written into their algorithms, he said. “Our programmer, Funaki-san, devised a

system where the four ghosts will position themselves around Pac-Man. He assigned each ghost a different kind of algorithm so that they run after Pac-Man in different ways.”

The game’s name drew on Japanese culture, he continued. “In Japanese, we have an onomatopoeia called ‘paku-paku,’ as in ‘paku paku taberu’ (gobble down). That’s where the name of Pac-Man came from.” 

Intentionally creating a game with broad appeal instead of the teen boy-centric shoot ‘em ups that were industry mainstays sounds like a winning strategy, but Pac-Man’s blockbuster success came as a surprise. “I never thought it would be loved and played so widely throughout the world,” Iwatani admitted.

The world was reminded of Pac-Man’s entrancing power in 2010, when Google posted a playable version of the game on its home page as the Google Doodle logo in honor of Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary. Google subsequently reported 4.8 million hours of worker productivity were lost to playing the game.

The original arcade Pac-Man saw sequels such as Ms. Pac-Man and spin-offs that included an ABC-TV cartoon show. The song “Pac-Man Fever” reached the top ten on the pop music charts for commercial jingle writers Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia. “We'd put our names on the song and get some local play and that would help usget some commercials,” Buckner told Songfacts.com. “That was the original intention. We never dreamed that this thing could be a national hit like it was."

Pac-Man has staying power that has seen it propel the success of new home arcade machines from Arcade 1Up. “The game is easy to pick up and play – they are easy to learn yet hard to master,” observed David McIntosh, director of marketing and communications for Tastemakers, LLC, the parent company of Arcade 1Up. “This is the foundation to most arcade games and that play pattern is appreciated in a time and day where modern games are extremely sophisticated.”

A licensing agreement with Bandai Namco ensures that these new three-quarter scale home machines look and play exactly like those maddeningly addictive classic machines, with none of the buyer’s remorse that struck Atari 2600 players when they discovered that their home console version of the arcade game was almost unplayable.

Bandai Namco has kept the title current with releases on new platforms such as Nintendo Switch that apply glossy modern graphics to the original game’s concept, so players have the option of classic or contemporary iterations of the game. Perhaps we can look forward to a holographic iteration for Pac-Man’s 50th anniversary.

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Dan Carney is a Design News senior editor, covering automotive technology, engineering and design, especially emerging electric vehicle and autonomous technologies.

Have you ever thought of becoming a disease detective tracking down COVID-19 infections? What’s involved and what are the benefits? What part does technology play? Before answering these questions, let’s start with the basics.

The main task of the disease gumshoe is contact tracing, i.e., identifying all persons who may have come into contact with an infected person. By tracing the contacts of infected individuals, testing them for infection, treating the infected and tracing their contacts in turn, public tracers aim to significantly reduce infections in a population.

Contact tracing is nothing new. It has been a vitally important part of communicable disease control for decades. The eradication of smallpox, for example, was achieved not by universal immunization but by exhaustive contact tracing to find all infected persons. More recently, contact tracing has been credited with helping stop the SARS epidemic in 2004.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough COVID-19 trackers. According to a recent bipartisan estimate, over 180,000 contact tracers are needed around the country. Other estimates place the need between 100,000 to 300,000.

How does one get trained as a disease tracker? Not surprisingly, it helps to have experience in the public health and care markets. Fluency in multiple languages is also a plus. Regardless of one’s background, training exists to become a contact tracer. The CDC provides a list of educational training plus a list of paid part-time and full-time job postings.

Contact tracing basics. (Image Source: Contact Tracing Wikimedia CFCF)

Technology Plays Major Monitoring Role

Several major universities have partnered with the government and industry to create contact tracing technologies. One such partnership is called PACT: Private Automated Contact Tracing. The mission of PACT is to develop technology that enhances the reach and effectiveness of existing contact tracing strategies through the use of personal digital communication devices while preserving privacy concerns.

As a part of PACT, MIT has developed a system for identifying people at risk of infecting COVID-19 by using the Bluetooth signals from cell phones. This technology utilizes an open, privacy-preserving protocol to notify individuals of potential contacts without revealing any private information to other individuals, the government, health care providers, or telecommunication carriers.

Electronic companies are also helping with tracing technology. For example, Apple and Google are working together to develop new contact tracing technology using smartphones and Bluetooth technologies. Last month, the tech giants jointly announced they are collaborating on an API and a platform that will work across both iOS and Android smartphones to help track COVID-19 exposures and warn people who may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus behind the disease.

“Contact tracing can help slow the spread of COVID-19 and can be done without compromising user privacy,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a tweet announcing the new development. “We’re working with @sundarpichai [and] @Google to help health officials harness Bluetooth technology in a way that also respects transparency [and] consent.”

The new API will be followed by a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform. The API will facilitate interoperability between various public health apps on iOS and Android. The Bluetooth tracing platform will be opt-in and will provide a more robust solution that allows people to be notified if they’ve been potentially exposed to COVID-19.

But there are limitations to the new technology. Users would have to opt-in and people without smartphones would not get notified.

Not all contact tracing tech relies on Bluetooth. For example, IoT specialist Kerlink has partnered with the data management company Microshare to create a system that traces contacts proximity in the workplace to help fight the spread of Covid-19. The two companies have jointly used their experience in indoor asset tracking within facilities and around ring-fenced properties to deliver a contact-tracing solution based on LoRaWAN gateways. The LoRaWAN specification is a Low Power, Wide Area Network (LPWAN) wireless telecommunication protocol design. Compared to WiFi and Bluetooth, an LPWAN is known for its ability to transmit small data packets over incredible, long-range distances using the unlicensed spectrum.

In the end, contact tracing has proven highly successful in greatly mitigating the disastrous effects of past diseases. It can work equally well with COVID-19, but only if the public is willing to participate. Unfortunately, some American’s have a negative attitude toward the government’s preventative measures, which will pose serious challenges for efforts to track and contain coronavirus cases.

Google Bluetooth platform. (Image source: Google, Apple)

 

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• Everything You Need to Know about LoRa and the IoT

John Blyler is a Design News senior editor, covering the electronics and advanced manufacturing spaces. With a BS in Engineering Physics and an MS in Electrical Engineering, he has years of hardware-software-network systems experience as an editor and engineer within the advanced manufacturing, IoT and semiconductor industries. John has co-authored books related to system engineering and electronics for IEEE, Wiley, and Elsevier.

 

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Rob Spiegel has covered automation and control for 19 years, 17 of them for Design News. Other topics he has covered include supply chain technology, alternative energy, and cyber security. For 10 years, he was owner and publisher of the food magazine Chile Pepper.

I am going to tell you something you might not have heard during the COVID-19 pandemic — now is a great time to take a little risk.

Something COVID-19 has us all really thinking about is the concept of risk vs. reward. It is a concept as old as time. Our distant ancestors might have asked themselves, “Should we go out and hunt for food, which we need to live, knowing we might be eaten ourselves?”

I heard a debate on the news the other day about whether or not to open local schools in the fall. I am sure that debate is happening in thousands of school districts across the country. One mother said that opening schools would be exposing children to risk and was against it.

How does this concept of risk-reward translate to your career? Ask any successful person if they ever took a career risk and they will tell you, "Yes." Not all risks are created equal — think about the reward side of that equation. Many companies are and will be changing in a lot of ways — some for the better, some for the worse. Now is the time to be open-minded to change and to not miss out on a positive career move because of this virus. With chaos comes opportunity.

If you want to have your best career, you must put on the table the idea of switching jobs, moving to a new location, or going back to school. Within your own company, consider volunteering to be part of a new project team. Look for what is new, what is growing, what excites you.

Mark Zuckerberg once told a group of young entrepreneurs at Y Combinator’s Startup School in Palo Alto that it is risky not to take chances. “In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks,” he said. Need a little proof? Talk to someone who stayed till the bitter end at Enron, Sears, Kodak, or Circuit City.

Image: Gustavofrazao/Adobe Stock

 

About the author

Paul Sturgeon is CEO of KLA Industries, a national search firm specializing in plastics, packaging, and polymer technology. If you have a topic you would like to see discussed, a company that is growing, or other ideas for this blog, e-mail Sturgeon at paul@klaindustries.com.