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Flying Car Lifts Off, Is Certified Airworthy in Slovakia

Plus, Instagram works to combat hate speech on its platform, password manager 1Password nears a $7 billion valuation and studies show how adjusting traffic signal timing significantly reduces pedestrian collisions.

Flying car from Klein Vision
Klein Vision

READY FOR LIFTOFF


We may be one step closer to living the future envisioned on The Jetsons. After first taking flight in 2020 and since then racking up more than 70 hours in the air, the AirCar flying car from Klein Vision has been given a certificate of airworthiness from the Slovakian Transport Authority. The two-seat prototype runs on a BMW combustion engine that drives the vehicle both on the ground and in flight. The transition from road driving to air travel takes about two minutes.
Source: New Atlas


15%


A U.S. study of more than 100 intersections in three cities found that adjusting traffic signals so that pedestrians start crossing a street a few seconds before cars get a green light reduced pedestrian collisions by 15 percent. Called a “leading pedestrian interval,” this makes people on foot more visible to drivers. The practice has been implemented successfully across the city of Toronto.
Source: Boing Boing

NO HATE?


Popular photo- and video-sharing app Instagram is trying to reduce the number of “potentially upsetting” posts users see when scrolling their feeds. In a blog post early this year, Instagram said they’ve changed their algorithm so that posts that might contain bullying or hate speech, or that promote violence, appear lower in the feed. The platform explained the system will now consider posts that users are likely to report as inappropriate, in addition to those users are likely to like, save or share. Instagram says this is part of an overall effort to be more transparent about how the platform works.
Source: Instagram

$6.8B


That’s the valuation of password management platform 1Password after it raised a $620 million Series C round in January. The company attributes its massive growth over the past year to the increase in remote work, adoption of cloud-based apps and employee burnout, which 1Password says leads stressed workers to reuse just a few passwords for all applications and opens up risk of cyber attacks.
Source: TechCrunch
Lauren Kinkade is the managing editor for Government Technology magazine. She has a degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and more than 15 years’ experience in book and magazine publishing.