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Hier — 28 mars 2024Ars Technica

Puerto Rico declares public health emergency as dengue cases rise

Par : Beth Mole
Female Aedes aegypti mosquito as she was in the process of obtaining a

Female Aedes aegypti mosquito as she was in the process of obtaining a "blood meal." (credit: US Department of Health and Human Services)

Puerto Rico has declared a public health emergency amid an ongoing outbreak of dengue infections, a mosquito-spread viral infection that can cause fever, aches, rash, vomiting, and, in about 5 percent of cases, a severe disease marked by internal bleeding and shock.

The US territory has tallied 549 cases since the start of the year, representing a 140 percent increase compared with cases tallied at this point last year, according to the territory's health department. The Associated Press reported that more than 340 of the 549 cases have been hospitalized.

In 2023, the island nation of more than 3.2 million people had over 1,000 cases of dengue throughout the year.

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À partir d’avant-hierArs Technica

Cows in Texas and Kansas test positive for highly pathogenic bird flu

Par : Beth Mole
Image of cows

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Peter Cade)

Wild migratory birds likely spread a deadly strain of bird flu to dairy cows in Texas and Kansas, state and federal officials announced this week.

It is believed to be the first time the virus, a highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), has been found in cows in the US. Last week, officials in Minnesota confirmed finding an HPAI case in a young goat, marking the first time the virus has been found in a domestic ruminant in the US.

According to the Associated Press, officials with the Texas Animal Health Commission confirmed the flu virus is the Type A H5N1 strain, which has been ravaging bird populations around the globe for several years. The explosive ongoing spread of the virus has led to many spillover events into mammals, making epidemiologists anxious that the virus could adapt to spread widely in humans.

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Here’s BMW’s electric replacement for the X3—production starts in 2025

A BMW Vision Neue Klasse X concept in the courtyard of a modern house

Enlarge

CASCAIS, Portugal—BMW is one of the more advanced automakers when it comes to electrification. Its current portfolio of electric vehicles includes the iX and i7, both of which have the edge on the competition in their respective classes—not bad for cars that use an underlying architecture that was designed to be powertrain-agnostic. Engineers back at the corporate base in Munich have been hard at work on its next platform, though, which will be just for battery EVs and will debut with next year's Neue Klasse.

Last year, we saw a preview of what the Neue Klasse sedan should look like when it goes on sale in 2025. Now, we've seen the Vision Neue Klasse X, which will morph next year into BMW's next electric crossover, probably with the iX3 nameplate. It will be an important car for the German automaker; crossovers and SUVs fail to get any less popular with the car-buying public, and demand for the production version of the Neue Klasse X will surely outstrip that of the four-door car.

BMW would prefer to call its X cars "Sports Activity Vehicles" rather than SUVs or crossovers and argues that it invented the breed with the original X5. That car was a handsome machine, and the Neue Klasse X keeps those classic two-box proportions and adorns them with bold angular creases that emphasize the wheel arches and create some negative space lower down the car's side that has the effect of reducing its visual bulk.

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New EPA, DOE fuel regs give automakers longer to reduce CO2 emissions

An EV charger and a fuel container on a balance

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

This week, the US Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency have published new fuel efficiency rules that will go into effect in 2026. The rules favor both battery-electric vehicles and also plug-in hybrid EVs, but not to the degree as proposed by each agency last April.

Those would have required automakers to sell four times as many electric vehicles as they do now. This was met with a rare display of solidarity across the industry—automakers, workers, and dealers all called on the White House to slow its approach.

Under the 2023 proposals, the DOE would change the way that Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations are calculated for model years 2027–2032 (which would take place from partway through calendar year 2026 until sometime in calendar year 2031), and the EPA would implement tougher vehicle emissions standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles for the same time period.

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Rocket launch marks big step in building China’s lunar infrastructure

A Long March 8 rocket, standing 165 feet (50 meters) tall, rolled out of its assembly building to its launch pad Sunday at the Wenchang Space Launch Site.

Enlarge / A Long March 8 rocket, standing 165 feet (50 meters) tall, rolled out of its assembly building to its launch pad Sunday at the Wenchang Space Launch Site. (credit: Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)

The next phase of China's Moon program began with the launch of a new data relay satellite Monday to link lunar landers and rovers on the far side of the Moon with ground controllers back on Earth.

This launch sent China's Queqiao-2 relay spacecraft toward the Moon, where it will enter an elliptical orbit and position itself for the arrival of China's next robotic lunar lander, Chang'e 6, later this year.

A medium-lift Long March 8 rocket carried the Queqiao-2 spacecraft aloft from the Wenchang launch base, located on Hainan Island in southern China. This was the third flight of the kerosene-fueled Long March 8, one of a new generation of Chinese rockets designed to replace older Long March launcher designs burning toxic propellant.

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The Honda CR-V e:FCEV is a plug-in fuel-cell hybrid nobody asked for

A white Honda CR-V fuel cell hybrid parked next to a static fuel cell generator

Enlarge / We still think hydrogen fuel cells make more sense for static generators like the ones in the background, but Honda decided to make a fuel cell-powered CRV. (credit: Honda)

Hydrogen as a fuel source for light passenger vehicles is a tough sell in the US. It has a woefully underdeveloped refueling infrastructure in the US, being almost nonexistent outside of California, and even there, retail hydrogen stations are closing down. And hydrogen prices fluctuate like crazy, with recent costs hitting $33 per kilogram, when you can even get it. In short, it seems like a weird time for a company to introduce a new hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, but that's just what Honda is doing with its awkwardly named CR-V e:FCEV.

The fuel cell CR-V is unique in a few ways that make it interesting, the biggest of which is that it's effectively a plug-in hybrid, only instead of an internal combustion engine being paired with an electric drivetrain, this has a fuel cell powering a 17.7 kWh battery pack and a traction motor that bears more resemblance to one you'd find in an EV than in a traditional PHEV. Cool, right?

The biggest question that we have is simply why?

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Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Edition debuts to stuffed servers, angry players

Exploding ship in a Star Wars battle scene.

Enlarge / Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection has had an early reception much like the ship at left in this battle off the planet of Felucia. (credit: Aspyr Media)

The last version of Star Wars: Battlefront, released by Electronic Arts, was so stuffed full of loot boxes and pay-to-play systems that EA admitted it "got it wrong" and overhauled the game.

So it was that when the well-regarded, pre-EA versions of Star Wars: Battlefront were announced for a modern remaster and re-release, by experienced porting firm Aspyr Media, there was (forgive us) a new hope. As we wrote at the announcement:

[T]here was nothing quite like the originals, which were PC games first and foremost ... There was a purity to those games that's lost in the general, well, EA-ness of the reboots.

And, lo, was there much rejoicing when Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection arrived? There was not. Reviews of the $35 package are "Mostly Negative" on Steam as this is written, with roughly 20 percent of reviews positive. Players are reporting numerous bugs and (rightfully, we might suggest) complaining about the lack of an option to invert joystick axes. There's also a lack of aim assist for console players, which typically helps round out their relative disadvantage to PC players using a mouse and keyboard.

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Blue cheese shows off new colors, but the taste largely remains the same

Scientists at University of the Nottingham have discovered how to create different colours of blue cheese.

Enlarge / Scientists at the University of Nottingham have discovered how to create different colors of blue cheese. (credit: University of Nottingham)

Gourmands are well aware of the many varieties of blue cheese, known by the blue-green veins that ripple through the cheese. Different kinds of blue cheese have distinctive flavor profiles: they can be mild or strong, sweet or salty, for example. Soon we might be able to buy blue cheeses that belie the name and sport veins of different colors: perhaps yellow-green, reddish-brown-pink, or lighter/darker shades of blue, according to a recent paper published in the journal Science of Food.

“We’ve been interested in cheese fungi for over 10 years, and traditionally when you develop mould-ripened cheeses, you get blue cheeses such as Stilton, Roquefort, and Gorgonzola, which use fixed strains of fungi that are blue-green in color," said co-author Paul Dyer of the University of Nottingham of this latest research. "We wanted to see if we could develop new strains with new flavors and appearances."

Blue cheese has been around for a very long time. Legend has it that a young boy left his bread and ewe's milk cheese in a nearby cave to pursue a lovely young lady he'd spotted in the distance. Months later, he came back to the cave and found it had molded into Roquefort. It's a fanciful tale, but scholars think the basic idea is sound: people used to store cheeses in caves because their temperature and moisture levels were especially hospitable to harmless molds. That was bolstered by a 2021 analysis of paleofeces that found evidence that Iron Age salt miners in Hallstatt (Austria) between 800 and 400 BCE were already eating blue cheese and quaffing beer.

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Rooster Teeth, home of Red Vs. Blue and RWBY, shutting down after 21 years

Halo-helmeted greeter at RTX festival

Enlarge / Near the height of its powers in 2018, Rooster Teeth's annual RTX conference was drawing more than 62,000 people to Austin, Texas, each year. (credit: Nathan Mattise)

Rooster Teeth, a studio that pioneered machinima with its Red vs. Blue series and went on to develop a fandom-focused stable of shows, videos, and podcasts, is being shut down by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) was unsuccessful in trying to sell the company as a whole, according to a company memo obtained by Variety (and later published on Rooster Teeth’s site). Rooster Teeth's general manager pinned the closure on "challenges facing digital media resulting from fundamental shifts in consumer behavior and monetization across platforms, advertising, and patronage."

WBD is still looking to sell certain Rooster Teeth series' backlogs and rights, including RWBY, Red vs. Blue, and Gen:Lock, an animated mecha series backed by actor Michael B. Jordan. WBD is also looking to offload the company's Roost podcast network.

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Blue Origin is getting serious about developing a human spacecraft

Dave Limp, Blue Origin's new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / Dave Limp, Blue Origin's new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. (credit: Jeff Bezos via Instagram)

The space company named Blue Origin is having a big year. New chief executive Dave Limp, who arrived in December, is working to instill a more productive culture at the firm owned by Jeff Bezos. In January, the company's powerful BE-4 rocket engine performed very well on the debut launch of the Vulcan booster. And later this year, possibly as soon as August, Blue Origin's own heavy-lift rocket, New Glenn, will take flight.

But wait, there's more. The company has also been hard at work developing hardware that will fly on New Glenn, such as the Blue Ring transfer vehicle that will be used to ferry satellites into precise orbits. In addition, work continues on a private space station called Orbital Reef.

One of the key questions about that space station is how astronauts will get there. The only current means of US crew transportation to low-Earth orbit is via Blue Origin's direct competitor, SpaceX, with its Dragon vehicle. This is likely unpalatable for Bezos.

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CDC ditches 5-day COVID isolation, argues COVID is becoming flu-like

Par : Beth Mole
A view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta.

Enlarge / A view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta. (credit: Getty | Nathan Posner)

COVID-19 is becoming more like the flu and, as such, no longer requires its own virus-specific health rules, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday alongside the release of a unified "respiratory virus guide."

In a lengthy background document, the agency laid out its rationale for consolidating COVID-19 guidance into general guidance for respiratory viruses—including influenza, RSV, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, enteroviruses, and others, though specifically not measles. The agency also noted the guidance does not apply to health care settings and outbreak scenarios.

"COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses, including influenza and RSV," the agency wrote.

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Meta will start collecting “anonymized” data about Quest headset usage

Meta is watching for your "anonymized" VR data.

Enlarge / Meta is watching for your "anonymized" VR data. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Meta will soon begin "collecting anonymized data" from users of its Quest headsets, a move that could see the company aggregating information about hand, body, and eye tracking; camera information; "information about your physical environment"; and information about "the virtual reality events you attend."

In an email sent to Quest users Monday, Meta notes that it currently collects "the data required for your Meta Quest to work properly." Starting with the next software update, though, the company will begin collecting and aggregating "anonymized data about... device usage" from Quest users. That anonymized data will be used "for things like building better experiences and improving Meta Quest products for everyone," the company writes.

A linked help page on data sharing clarifies that Meta can collect anonymized versions of any of the usage data included in the "Supplemental Meta Platforms Technologies Privacy Policy," which was last updated in October. That document lists a host of personal information that Meta can collect from your headset, including:

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A giant meteorite has been lost in the desert since 1916—here’s how we might find it

Chinguetti slice at the National Museum of Natural History

Enlarge / Chinguetti slice at the National Museum of Natural History. A larger meteorite reported in 1916 hasn't been spotted since. (credit: Claire H./CC BY-SA 2.0)

In 1916, a French consular official reported finding a giant "iron hill" deep in the Sahara desert, roughly 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Chinguetti, Mauritania—purportedly a meteorite (technically a mesosiderite) some 40 meters (130 feet) tall and 100 meters (330 feet) long. He brought back a small fragment, but the meteorite hasn't been found again since, despite the efforts of multiple expeditions, calling its very existence into question.

Three British researchers have conducted their own analysis and proposed a means of determining once and for all whether the Chinguetti meteorite really exists, detailing their findings in a new preprint posted to the physics arXiv. They contend that they have narrowed down the likely locations where the meteorite might be buried under high sand dunes and are currently awaiting access to data from a magnetometer survey of the region in hopes of either finding the mysterious missing meteorite or confirming that it likely never existed.

Captain Gaston Ripert was in charge of the Chinguetti camel corps. One day he overheard a conversation among the chameliers (camel drivers) about an unusual iron hill in the desert. He convinced a local chief to guide him there one night, taking Ripert on a 10-hour camel ride along a "disorienting" route, making a few detours along the way. He may even have been literally blindfolded, depending on how one interprets the French phrase en aveugle, which can mean either "blind" (i.e. without a compass) or "blindfolded." The 4-kilogram fragment Ripert collected was later analyzed by noted geologist Alfred Lacroix, who considered it a significant discovery. But when others failed to locate the larger Chinguetti meteorite, people started to doubt Ripert's story.

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Rocket Report: Starliner launch preps; Indian rocket engine human-rated

The first stage of United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket was lifted onto its launch platform this week in preparation for an April liftoff with two NASA astronauts on Boeing's Starliner Crew Flight Test.

Enlarge / The first stage of United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket was lifted onto its launch platform this week in preparation for an April liftoff with two NASA astronauts on Boeing's Starliner Crew Flight Test. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

Welcome to Edition 6.32 of the Rocket Report! I'm writing the report again this week as Eric Berger is in Washington, DC, to receive a well-earned honor, the 2024 Excellence in Commercial Space Journalism Award from the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. Cape Canaveral is the world's busiest spaceport, and this week, three leading US launch companies were active there. SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 rocket, and a few miles away, Blue Origin raised a New Glenn rocket on its launch pad for long-awaited ground testing. Nearby, United Launch Alliance began assembling an Atlas V rocket for the first crew launch of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in April. 2024 is shaping up to be a truly exciting year for the spaceflight community.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Astroscale inspector satellite launched by Rocket Lab. Astroscale, a well-capitalized Japanese startup, has launched a small satellite to do something that has never been done in space, Ars reports. This new spacecraft, delivered into orbit on February 18 by Rocket Lab, will approach a defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket that has been circling Earth for more than 15 years. Over the next few months, the satellite will try to move within arm's reach of the rocket, taking pictures and performing complicated maneuvers to move around the bus-size H-IIA upper stage as it moves around the planet at nearly 5 miles per second (7.6 km/s).

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Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket finally makes an appearance on the launch pad

Dave Limp, Blue Origin's new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / Dave Limp, Blue Origin's new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. (credit: Jeff Bezos via Instagram)

Anyone who has tracked the development of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket has been waiting for signs of progress from the usually secretive space company. On Wednesday, engineers rolled a full-scale New Glenn rocket, partially made up of flight hardware, to a launch pad in Florida for ground testing.

The first New Glenn launch is almost certainly at least six months away, and it may not even happen this year. In the last few years, observers inside and outside the space industry have become accustomed to the nearly annual ritual of another New Glenn launch delay. New Glenn's inaugural flight has been delayed from 2020 until 2021, then 2022, and for now, is slated for later this year.

But it feels different now. Blue Origin is obviously moving closer to finally launching a rocket into orbit.

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Stability announces Stable Diffusion 3, a next-gen AI image generator

Stable Diffusion 3 generation with the prompt: studio photograph closeup of a chameleon over a black background.

Enlarge / Stable Diffusion 3 generation with the prompt: studio photograph closeup of a chameleon over a black background. (credit: Stability AI)

On Thursday, Stability AI announced Stable Diffusion 3, an open-weights next-generation image-synthesis model. It follows its predecessors by reportedly generating detailed, multi-subject images with improved quality and accuracy in text generation. The brief announcement was not accompanied by a public demo, but Stability is opening up a waitlist today for those who would like to try it.

Stability says that its Stable Diffusion 3 family of models (which takes text descriptions called "prompts" and turns them into matching images) range in size from 800 million to 8 billion parameters. The size range accommodates allowing different versions of the model to run locally on a variety of devices—from smartphones to servers. Parameter size roughly corresponds to model capability in terms of how much detail it can generate. Larger models also require more VRAM on GPU accelerators to run.

Since 2022, we've seen Stability launch a progression of AI image-generation models: Stable Diffusion 1.4, 1.5, 2.0, 2.1, XL, XL Turbo, and now 3. Stability has made a name for itself as providing a more open alternative to proprietary image-synthesis models like OpenAI's DALL-E 3, though not without controversy due to the use of copyrighted training data, bias, and the potential for abuse. (This has led to lawsuits that are unresolved.) Stable Diffusion models have been open-weights and source-available, which means the models can be run locally and fine-tuned to change their outputs.

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Honda’s first US-market EV is here—the 2024 Prologue, driven

Honda definitely doesn't want you to think of the Prologue as a rebadged Chevy Blazer EV, and it has worked quite hard to make it feel like a Honda.

Enlarge / Honda definitely doesn't want you to think of the Prologue as a rebadged Chevy Blazer EV, and it has worked quite hard to make it feel like a Honda. (credit: Robin Warner)

HEALDSBURG, Calif. — The beginning of Honda’s transition story away from internal combustion starts, fittingly enough, with the Prologue. The Japanese brand’s first mainstream battery-electric vehicle for the United States market plops right in the center of the red-hot midsize crossover SUV segment.

At first glance, the Prologue looks awfully similar to the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, and for good reason. The two share the Ultium platform structure as a foundation, not to mention the same 121.8-inch (3,094-mm) wheelbase and very similar dimensions. However, the Prologue measures a smidge shorter, wider, and lower at 192 inches (4,877 mm) long, 78.3 inches (1,989 mm) wide, and 64.7 inches (1,643 mm) tall.

A nod to ’80s design

Indeed, Honda engineers moved to southeast Michigan to join GM in creating this platform, and much of the Prologue’s development happened in Michigan, not Ohio. "We didn’t want to change the Ultium platform," John Hwang, project lead of the Honda Prologue, said. "We want to take the best part of that: great suspension, great performance, great range."

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Blue Origin has emerged as the likely buyer for United Launch Alliance

The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida in January 2024.

Enlarge / The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida in January 2024. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has emerged as the sole finalist to buy United Launch Alliance.

The sale is not official, and nothing has been formally announced. The co-owners of United Launch Alliance (ULA), Lockheed Martin and Boeing, have yet to comment publicly on the sale of the company, which, until the rise of SpaceX, was the sole major launch provider in the United States. They declined again on Wednesday.

"Consistent with our corporate practice, Boeing doesn’t comment on potential market rumors or speculation," a Boeing spokesperson said.

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White House to weaken climate-fighting fuel efficiency targets for 2030

At an intersection in Denver, Colorado, exhaust pours out of a tailpipes from accelerating vehicles onto Santa Fe Drive.

Enlarge / Polluted street scenes like this will remain common in the United States, which will abandon ambitious fuel efficiency standards in the face of complaints from automakers and unions. (credit: Getty Images)

It appears as if ambitious new fuel efficiency regulations that would require Americans to adopt many more electric vehicles are to be watered down. Last year, President Biden's administration published proposed new Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations for 2027–2030, regulations that would require automakers to sell four times as many zero-emissions vehicles as they do now.

But opposition to the new CAFE standards has been fierce, and now Reuters reports that the White House is backing down and will issue new guidelines with less ambitious goals in the coming weeks.

The White House's goal had been for US EV adoption to reach 50 percent of all new light vehicle sales by 2030, rising to 60 percent by 2032. In part, it proposed changing the modifier applied to each new zero-emissions vehicle when used to calculate an automaker's fleet emissions.

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Our unbiased take on Mark Zuckerberg’s biased Apple Vision Pro review

No way would Zuckerberg be photographed wearing a Vision Pro, but let's just imagine he's looking at a picture of one in his headset here...

Enlarge / No way would Zuckerberg be photographed wearing a Vision Pro, but let's just imagine he's looking at a picture of one in his headset here... (credit: @zuck Instagram | Aurich Lawson)

Since the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, it's not been hard to find countless thoughts and impressions on the headset from professional reviewers and random purchasers. But among all those hot takes, the opinions of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stand out for a few reasons—not least of which is that he and his company have spent years of development time and lost tens of billions of dollars creating the competing Quest headset line.

For that reason alone, Zuckerberg's Instagram-posted thoughts on the Vision Pro can't be considered an impartial take on the device's pros and cons. Still, Zuckerberg's short review included its fair share of fair points, alongside some careful turns of phrase that obscure the Quest's relative deficiencies.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck)

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“Very sick” pet cat gave Oregon resident case of bubonic plague

Par : Beth Mole
A cat, but not the one with plague.

Enlarge / A cat, but not the one with plague. (credit: Getty | Silas Stein)

An Oregon resident contracted bubonic plague from their "very sick" pet cat, marking the first time since 2015 that someone in the state has been stricken with the Black Death bacterium, according to local health officials.

Plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis, circulates cryptically in the US in various types of rodents and their fleas. It causes an average of seven human cases a year, with a range of 1 to 17, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The cases tend to cluster in two regions, the CDC notes: a hotspot that spans northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, and southern Colorado, and another region spanning California, far western Nevada, and southern Oregon.

The new case in Oregon occurred in the central county of Deschutes. It was fortunately caught early before the infection developed into a more severe, systemic bloodstream infection (septicemic plague). However, according to a local official who spoke with NBC News, some doctors felt the person had developed a cough while being treated at the hospital. This could indicate progression toward pneumonic plague, a more life-threatening and more readily contagious variety of the plague that spreads via respiratory droplets. Nevertheless, the person's case reportedly responded well to antibiotic treatment, and the person is recovering.

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Retail H2 stations close in California while H2 heavy trucking expands

An employee handles a pump at a hydrogen refueling point at a Royal Dutch Shell Plc gas station in Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021.

Enlarge (credit: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Shell has closed all seven of its retail hydrogen filling stations in California, according to Hydrogen Insight. Now, the energy company will just operate a trio of hydrogen stations for heavy-duty vehicles like class 8 drayage trucks or garbage trucks. It's further confirmation that while hydrogen has a role as a clean fuel for transportation, that will not involve passenger cars, at least not any time soon.

Shell piloted its first California retail hydrogen station in a 2008 pilot program in Los Angeles. In 2011, it built its first pipeline-fed hydrogen station in Torrance—conveniently near Toyota's then-HQ. Six years later, Shell revealed plans for more hydrogen stations in the state, funded in part by grants from the California Energy Commission.

Things started to look a bit more ambitious with "Project Neptune," which would see Shell build out 48 new hydrogen stations in California and upgrade a pair of existing sites. Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai all agreed to help fund the project, which also obtained a $40 million, five-year grant from the CEC.

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I was wrong to ignore Zigbee and Z-Wave. They’re the best part of my smart home.

Hue hub in stark relief against wood desk

Enlarge / Where it all started for the author, even if he didn't know it at the time. (credit: Getty Images)

I've set up dozens of smart home gadgets across two homes and two apartments over the last five years. I have a mental list of brands I revere and brands from which nothing shall ever be purchased again. In my current abode, you can stand in one place and be subject to six different signal types bouncing around, keeping up the chatter between devices.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for a certain kind of preparedness and creativity. The kind that's completely irrelevant if the power goes out.

When I started at Ars in the summer of 2022, the next generation of smart home standards was on the way. Matter, an interoperable device setup and management system, and Thread, a radio network that would provide secure, far-reaching connectivity optimized for tiny batteries. Together, they would offer a home that, while well-connected, could also work entirely inside a home network and switch between controlling ecosystems with ease. I knew this tech wouldn't show up immediately, but I thought it was a good time to start looking to the future, to leave behind the old standards and coalesce into something new.

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Critical vulnerability affecting most Linux distros allows for bootkits

Par : Dan Goodin
Critical vulnerability affecting most Linux distros allows for bootkits

Enlarge

Linux developers are in the process of patching a high-severity vulnerability that, in certain cases, allows the installation of malware that runs at the firmware level, giving infections access to the deepest parts of a device where they’re hard to detect or remove.

The vulnerability resides in shim, which in the context of Linux is a small component that runs in the firmware early in the boot process before the operating system has started. More specifically, the shim accompanying virtually all Linux distributions plays a crucial role in secure boot, a protection built into most modern computing devices to ensure every link in the boot process comes from a verified, trusted supplier. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability allows attackers to neutralize this mechanism by executing malicious firmware at the earliest stages of the boot process before the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface firmware has loaded and handed off control to the operating system.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-40547, is what’s known as a buffer overflow, a coding bug that allows attackers to execute code of their choice. It resides in a part of the shim that processes booting up from a central server on a network using the same HTTP that the the web is based on. Attackers can exploit the code-execution vulnerability in various scenarios, virtually all following some form of successful compromise of either the targeted device or the server or network the device boots from.

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Bluesky finally gets rid of invite codes, lets everyone join

Bluesky finally gets rid of invite codes, lets everyone join

Enlarge (credit: Darrell Gulin | The Image Bank)

After more than a year as an exclusive invite-only social media platform, Bluesky is now open to the public, so anyone can join without needing a once-coveted invite code.

In a blog, Bluesky said that requiring invite codes helped Bluesky "manage growth" while building features that allow users to control what content they see on the social platform.

When Bluesky debuted, many viewed it as a potential Twitter killer, but limited access to Bluesky may have weakened momentum. As of January 2024, Bluesky has more than 3 million users. That's significantly less than X (formerly Twitter), which estimates suggest currently boasts more than 400 million global users.

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The right bacteria turn farms into carbon sinks

Image of a woman in a lab coat holding a bacterial culture plate

Some of the microbes that make carbon sequestration work. (credit: Andes Ag, Inc)

In 2022, humans emitted a staggering 36 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Along with reducing emissions, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a key climate mitigation strategy. But Gonzalo Fuenzalida wasn’t looking to help solve climate change when he co-founded the US company Andes.

“We started this company with the idea of using microbes to make the process of growing food more resilient,” says Fuenzalida. “We stumbled upon these microbes that have the ability to create minerals in the soil which contain carbon, and that intrigued us.”

Fuenzalida, alongside his co-founder Tania Timmermann-Aranis, had an unconventional notion: They could harness the power of microbes residing in plant roots within the soil to remove carbon from the atmosphere. These naturally occurring microbes can be applied to the soil by blending them with pesticides or other soil treatments—they will strategically position themselves within the root structure of corn, wheat, and soy plants.

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Here’s how Honda and GM are building production hydrogen fuel cells

a roll of film is coated with fuel cell

Enlarge / Anode and cathode "inks" are applied to carbon-fiber paper. (credit: GM/Honda)

BROWNSTOWN, Mich.—Today, a joint venture between General Motors and Honda Motor Company, named Fuel Cell System Manufacturing LLC (FCSM LLC), officially started producing its one and only product—a fuel cell system—on a commercial scale. FCSM officially began in January of 2017 with an initial investment between GM and Honda of $85,000,000. Now, the 70,000-square-foot (6,500 m2) facility in Brownstown, Michigan, houses 80 employees and enough robots, clean rooms, and all sorts of high-tech equipment to make Ironman blush.

FCSM managing to build fuel cells quickly, reliably, and cost effectively is what's new here, not the fuel cells themselves. And, according to Tetsuo Suzuki, vice president of FCSM LLC, that proved the biggest challenge. "Our fuel cell system consists of more than 300 individual cells [307 in total], each cell is composed of very expensive materials. If there is a defect in even one cell, the entire stack would be unusable," Suzuki said. "Therefore, we designed all of our mass production processes with a zero-defect mindset." Adding, "We introduced quality control into every process."

This is the assembly line.

This is the assembly line. (credit: GM/Honda)

How to build a fuel cell

More specifically, each cell consists of several parts, starting with two different liquids that FCSM calls "inks." One ink forms an anode, the other, a cathode. FCSM then pours each liquid onto a carbon-fiber paper, which it then heats to dry. It then precisely cuts these two different papers into shape and bonds them together to form what it calls a unitized electrode assembly, or UEA; the cathode on one side, the anode on the other. Both of the anode and cathode sheets are black, but the cathode sheet is gloss, and the anode sheet is matte.

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CDC reports dips in flu, COVID-19, and RSV—though levels still very high

Par : Beth Mole
The influenza virus from an image produced from an image taken with transmission electron microscopy. Viral diameter ranges from around 80 to 120 nm.

Enlarge / The influenza virus from an image produced from an image taken with transmission electron microscopy. Viral diameter ranges from around 80 to 120 nm. (credit: Getty | BSIP)

Key indicators of seasonal flu activity declined in the first week of the year, signaling a possible reprieve from the high levels of respiratory virus transmission this season—but the dip may only be temporary.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its latest flu data for the week ending on January 6. Outpatient visits for influenza-like illnesses (ILI) were down that week, the first decline after weeks of rapid increases. Flu test positivity and hospitalizations were also down slightly.

But transmission is still elevated around the country. Fourteen states have ILI activity at the "very high" level in the current data, down from 22 the week before. And 23 states have "high" activity level, up from 19 the week before. (You can see the week-by-week progression of this year's flu season in the US here.)

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Quantum computing startup says it will beat IBM to error correction

The current generation of hardware, which will see rapid iteration over the next several years.

Enlarge / The current generation of hardware, which will see rapid iteration over the next several years. (credit: QuEra)

On Tuesday, the quantum computing startup Quera laid out a road map that will bring error correction to quantum computing in only two years and enable useful computations using it by 2026, years ahead of when IBM plans to offer the equivalent. Normally, this sort of thing should be dismissed as hype. Except the company is Quera, which is a spinoff of the Harvard Universeity lab that demonstrated the ability to identify and manage errors using hardware that's similar in design to what Quera is building.

Also notable: Quera uses the same type of qubit that a rival startup, Atom Computing, has already scaled up to over 1,000 qubits. So, while the announcement should be viewed cautiously—several companies have promised rapid scaling and then failed to deliver—there are some reasons it should be viewed seriously as well.

It’s a trap!

Current qubits, regardless of their design, are prone to errors during measurements, operations, or even when simply sitting there. While it's possible to improve these error rates so that simple calculations can be done, most people in the field are skeptical it will ever be possible to drop these rates enough to do the elaborate calculations that would fulfill the promise of quantum computing. The consensus seems to be that, outside of a few edge cases, useful computation will require error-corrected qubits.

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Flurry of firmware updates makes Analogue Pocket an even better retro handheld

An Analogue Pocket running <em>Super Mario World</em> on an openFPGA core with the scanline filter enabled.

Enlarge / An Analogue Pocket running Super Mario World on an openFPGA core with the scanline filter enabled. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

We've got a soft spot for the Analogue Pocket, the premium portable game console that melds 2020s technology with the design of the original Game Boy. Since its release, Analogue has added some new capabilities via firmware updates, most notably when it added support for emulating more consoles via its OpenFPGA platform in the summer of 2022. This allows the FPGA chip inside of the pocket to emulate the hardware of other systems, in addition to the portable systems the Pocket supports natively.

But aside from finalizing and releasing that 1.1 firmware, 2023 was mostly quiet for Pocket firmware updates. That changed in December when the company released not one but two major firmware upgrades for the Pocket that slipped under our radar during the holidays. These updates delivered a combination of fixes and long-promised features to the handheld, which Analogue has been re-releasing in different color palettes now that the original versions are more consistently in stock.

The most significant update for OpenFPGA fans is the ability to use display filters with third-party FPGA cores. Part of the appeal of the Pocket is its 1,600×1,440 screen, which is sharp enough to perfectly re-create the huge chunky pixels of the original Game Boy screens. By default, most FPGA cores now get access to a similarly high-quality CRT screen filter named after the Sony Trinitron TV, adding a touch of retro-blurriness to the sharp edges of 8- and 16-bit games. I've seen lots of bad, unconvincing scanline filters in retro game re-releases, and this isn't one of them.

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Cobalt Core is a tight, funny roguelike deck-builder deserving of many runs

Scene from Cobalt Core game

Enlarge / These symbols might not mean anything to you now. But give it a few runs, and you might lose a few minutes strategizing this ship's ideal next turn, based on this image alone. (credit: Brace Yourself Games)

Games come and go through my Steam and Nintendo Switch libraries: a twitchy, grim action epic, then a metaphysical puzzle-platformer, and maybe a boomer shooter or turn-based tactical along the way. I try hard not to get stuck in one style or mindset—both for my enjoyment and my writing.

But there is always one type of game that is installed and ready to go for the next trip or idle couch moment: a roguelite deck-builder. Cobalt Core is the latest game in that slot, and it's on Steam for Windows (and definitely Steam Deck) and Switch. It's the most fun I've had in this particular obsession since Monster TrainCobalt Core stretches into other genres, like perfect-knowledge turn-based tactics and space battle, but it's cards and randomness down to its electric-blue center.

Launch trailer for Cobalt Core.

A few years ago, I didn't know what a "roguelike deck-builder" was or what either of those compound phrases meant. Then, one day, there was a sale on Slay the Spire. That 2019 game refined the fusion of two game mechanics: constant failure against randomized encounters (a la Rogue, but with a "lite" gradual progression) and the refining of a deck of combat-minded cards (as in Magic: The Gathering, Dominion, and Netrunner). You attack and defend against increasingly tough enemies with your cards, you gain and upgrade and ditch cards as you go, you lose, and then you get slightly better tools on your next do-over.

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AI-created “virtual influencers” are stealing business from humans

digital influencer

Enlarge / Aitana Lopez, an AI-generated influencer, has convinced many social media users she is real. (credit: FT montage/TheClueless/GettyImages)

Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as hair care line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret.

Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media—despite the fact that she is entirely fictional.

Aitana is a “virtual influencer” created using artificial intelligence tools, one of the hundreds of digital avatars that have broken into the growing $21 billion content creator economy.

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Matter, set to fix smart home standards in 2023, stumbled in the real market

Illustration of Matter protocol simplifying a home network

Enlarge / The Matter standard's illustration of how the standard should align a home and all its smart devices. (credit: CSA)

Matter, as a smart home standard, would make everything about owning a smart home better. Devices could be set up with any phone, for either remote or local control, put onto any major platform (like Alexa, Google, or HomeKit) or combinations of them, and avoid being orphaned if their device maker goes out of business. Less fragmentation, more security, fewer junked devices: win, win, win.

Matter, as it exists in late 2023, more than a year after its 1.0 specification was published and just under a year after the first devices came online, is more like the xkcd scenario that lots of people might have expected. It's another home automation standard at the moment, and one that isn't particularly better than the others, at least how it works today. I wish it was not so.

Setting up a Matter device isn't easy, nor is making it work across home systems. Lots of devices with Matter support still require you to download their maker's specific app to get full functionality. Even if you were an early adopting, Matter-T-shirt-wearing enthusiast, you're still buying devices that don't work quite as well, and still generally require a major tech company's gear to act as your bridge or router.

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Banks use your deposits to loan money to fossil-fuel, emissions-heavy firms

Par : WIRED
High angle shot of female hand inserting her bank card into automatic cash machine in the city. Withdrawing money, paying bills, checking account balances and make a bank transfer. Privacy protection, internet and mobile banking security concept

Enlarge (credit: d3sign)

When you drop money in the bank, it looks like it’s just sitting there, ready for you to withdraw. In reality, your institution makes money on your money by lending it elsewhere, including to the fossil fuel companies driving climate change, as well as emissions-heavy industries like manufacturing.

So just by leaving money in a bank account, you’re unwittingly contributing to worsening catastrophes around the world. According to a new analysis, for every $1,000 dollars the average American keeps in savings, each year they indirectly create emissions equivalent to flying from New York to Seattle. “We don’t really take a look at how the banks are using the money we keep in our checking account on a daily basis, where that money is really circulating,” says Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, which published the analysis. “But when we look under the hood, we see that there's a lot of fossil fuels.”

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EVs and hybrids had a noticeable effect on US fuel consumption, says EPA

Fuel gauge's red needle indicating full gas tank on black background. Horizontal composition with copy space.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

I like the idea of drawing the year to a close with some good news for a change, and I think maybe the US Environmental Protection Agency does as well. On Wednesday, the EPA published its Automotive Trends Report, which now included data for model-year 2022 vehicles.

And the data is good: record-low carbon emissions and record-high fuel economy, and the biggest improvement year on year for almost a decade.

For MY2022, the EPA says that the average real-world CO2 emissions for all new vehicles fell by 10 g/mile to 337 g/mile, the lowest average it has ever measured. Similarly, real-world fuel economy increased by 0.6 mpg for MY2022, to 26 mpg—this, too, is a record high and the single-largest year-on-year improvement for both CO2 and mpg for nine years.

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Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket flies for first time in 15 months

Blue Origin's New Shepard booster comes in for a landing in West Texas at the conclusion of Tuesday's suborbital flight.

Enlarge / Blue Origin's New Shepard booster comes in for a landing in West Texas at the conclusion of Tuesday's suborbital flight. (credit: Blue Origin)

With redesigned engine components, Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket took off from West Texas and flew to the edge of space on Tuesday with a package of scientific research and technology demonstration experiments.

This was the first flight of Blue Origin's 60-foot-tall (18-meter) New Shepard rocket since September 12, 2022, when an engine failure destroyed the booster and triggered an in-flight abort for the vehicle's pressurized capsule. There were no passengers aboard for that mission, and the capsule safely separated from the failed booster and parachuted to a controlled landing.

The flight on Tuesday also didn't carry people. Instead, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, lofted 33 payloads for NASA, research institutions, and commercial companies. Some of these payloads were flown again on Tuesday's launch after failing to reach space on the failed New Shepard mission last year. Among these payloads were an experiment to demonstrate hydrogen fuel cell technology in microgravity and an investigation studying the strength of planetary soils under different gravity conditions.

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Disgraced Nikola founder Trevor Milton gets 4-year sentence for lying about EVs

Trevor Milton, founder of Nikola Corp., arrives at court in New York on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. Milton is set to be sentenced on Monday after being found guilty of securities fraud and wire fraud in October 2022.

Enlarge / Trevor Milton, founder of Nikola Corp., arrives at court in New York on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. Milton is set to be sentenced on Monday after being found guilty of securities fraud and wire fraud in October 2022. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

The disgraced founder and former CEO of the "zero emissions" truck company Nikola, Trevor Milton, was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday, Bloomberg reported.

That's a lighter sentence than prosecutors had requested after a jury found Milton guilty of one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud in 2022. During the trial, Milton was accused of lying about “nearly all aspects of the business,” CNBC reported.

From 2016 to 2020, Milton's "extravagant claims" were fueled by a desire to pump up the value of Nikola stock, The New York Times reported. He was accused of misleading investors about everything from fake prototypes of emission-free long-haul trucks to billions worth of supposedly binding orders for hydrogen fuel cells and batteries that were never shipped. In a sentencing memo, prosecutors said that Milton targeted "less sophisticated investors," the Times reported, engaging "in a sustained scheme to take advantage of" their inexperience.

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Here’s how an off-road racing series will make its own hydrogen fuel

DECEMBER 03: Lia Block (USA) / Timo Scheider (DEU), Carl Cox Motorsport, battles with Amanda Sorensen (USA) / RJ Anderson (USA), GMC Hummer EV Chip Ganassi Racing during the Copper X-Prix, Chile on December 03, 2023. (Photo by Colin McMaster / LAT Images)

Enlarge / Extreme E travels to remote locations by boat and brings its own energy infrastructure with it. Currently, it makes its own hydrogen on site and uses that to charge EV batteries, but in 2025, the cars will switch to hydrogen fuel cells. (credit: Colin McMaster / LAT Images)

ANTOFAGASTA, Chile — On a picnic bench in Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the most remote locations on Earth, Alejandro Agag is holding court.

"Welcome to the edge of the world," he laughs, gesturing toward the vast desert around him. A gust of wind kicks a cloud of sand and dust across the table. "It's amazing, this place."

The 53-year-old Spanish entrepreneur is taking in the sights and sounds of the season 3 finale of Extreme E, the off-road electric racing series he launched in 2021. Part of the series' ethos is that it races exclusively in regions of the globe that are heavily impacted by climate change (such as the Atacama Desert—the driest, non-polar region on Earth), typically with no spectators present.

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Jeff Bezos says what we’re all thinking: “Blue Origin needs to be much faster”

Jeff Bezos holding aviation glasses up to his face.

Enlarge / Jeff Bezos, shortly after he rode on New Shepard to space. (credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gives very few interviews, but he recently sat down with the computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman for a two-hour interview about Amazon, Blue Origin, his business practices, and more.

The discussion meanders somewhat, but there are some interesting tidbits about spaceflight, especially when the conversation turns to Blue Origin. This is the space company Bezos founded more than 23 years ago. He has invested an extraordinary amount of money into Blue Origin—likely somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion—and it truly is a passion project.

But the inescapable truth about Blue Origin is that to date, it has been a disappointment in terms of execution. At present, Blue Origin employs approximately 11,000 people, about the same total as SpaceX. However, Blue Origin has launched zero rockets this year, whereas SpaceX has launched nearly 100, as well as building and launching thousands of satellites.

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Blue Origin sure seems confident it will launch New Glenn in 2024

This picture, taken several months ago, shows different parts for Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket inside the company's manufacturing facility in Florida.

Enlarge / This picture, taken several months ago, shows different parts for Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket inside the company's manufacturing facility in Florida. (credit: Blue Origin)

For the first time, it's starting to feel like Jeff Bezos's space company, Blue Origin, might have a shot at launching its long-delayed New Glenn rocket within the next 12 months.

Of course, there's a lot for Blue Origin to test and validate before New Glenn is ready to fly. First, the company's engineers need to fully assemble a New Glenn rocket and raise it on the company's sprawling seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. There's a good chance of this happening in the coming months as Blue Origin readies for a series of tanking tests and simulated countdowns at the launch site.

It's tempting to invoke Berger's Law, the guideline championed by my Ars colleague which states that if a launch is scheduled for the fourth quarter of a calendar year—and if it is at least six months away—the launch will delay into the next year. Given Blue Origin's history of New Glenn delays, that's probably the safer bet. New Glenn's inaugural flight has been delayed from 2020 until 2021, then 2022, and for now, is slated for 2024.

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After 15 months Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft will finally fly again

Photos from New Shepard launch day.

Enlarge / Blue Origin's New Shepard launch system consists of a booster and a capsule. (credit: Blue Origin)

Blue Origin is finally returning to flight.

On Tuesday the company announced, via the social media site X, that its New Shepard spacecraft would launch no earlier than next Monday.

"We’re targeting a launch window that opens on Dec. 18 for our next New Shepard payload mission," the company stated. "#NS24 will carry 33 science and research payloads as well as 38,000 @clubforfuture postcards to space."

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OPEC members keep climate accords from acknowledging reality

Image of a person standing in front of a doorway with

Enlarge / Saudi Arabia's presence at COP28 has reportedly been used to limit progress on fossil fuel cutbacks. (credit: Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

Oil-producing countries are apparently succeeding in their attempts to eliminate language from an international climate agreement that calls for countries to phase out the use of fossil fuels. Draft forms of the agreement had included text that called upon the countries that are part of the Paris Agreement to work toward "an orderly and just phase out of fossil fuels." Reports now indicate that this text has gone missing from the latest versions of the draft.

The agreement is being negotiated at the United Nations' COP28 climate change conference, taking place in the United Arab Emirates. The COP, or Conference of the Parties, meetings are annual events that attempt to bring together UN members to discuss ways to deal with climate change. They were central to the negotiations that brought about the Paris Agreement, which calls for participants to develop plans that should bring the world to net-zero emissions by the middle of the century.

Initial plans submitted by countries would lower the world's greenhouse gas emissions, but not by nearly enough to reach net zero. However, the agreement included mechanisms by which countries would continue to evaluate their progress and submit more stringent goals. So, additional COP meetings have included what's termed a "stocktake" to evaluate where countries stand, and statements are issued to encourage and direct future actions.

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Homey Pro review: A very particular set of home automation skills

Homey Pro hub sitting on a desk, with a blue-ish rainbow glow on bottom

Enlarge / The Homey Pro, settling in for some quiet network check-ins at dusk. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

I know there are people who will want to buy the Homey Pro. I’ve seen them on social media and in various home automation forums, and I’ve even noticed them in the comments on this website. For this type of person, the Homey Pro might serve as a specialized, locally focused smart home hub, one that's well worth the cost. But you should be really, truly certain that you’re that person before you take a $400 leap with it.

Homey Pro is a smart home hub pitched primarily at someone who wants to keep things local as much as possible, forgoing phone apps, speakers, and cloud connections. That means using the Homey Pro to boost a primarily Zigbee or Z-Wave network, while also looping in local Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and even infrared remotes. It’s for someone willing to pay $400 for a device that offers robust local or cloud backups, professional design, advanced automation, and even a custom scripting language, along with access to some “experiments” and still-in-progress tech like Matter and Thread. It’s for someone who might want to add a select cloud service or two to their home, but not because they have no other option.

But this somebody has also, somehow, not already invested in Home Assistant, Hubitat, or HomeBridge, which are more open to both add-on hardware (like new capabilities added on by USB stick or GPIO pins) and deep tinkering. It's someone who is willing to check that every device they want to control will work with Homey. While the device offers a pretty sizable range of apps and integrations, it’s far from the near-universal nature of major open-source projects or even the big smart home platforms. And you have to do a little checking further, still, to ensure that individual products are supported, not just the brand.

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Against the Storm feels like WarCraft without the war, and it’s weirdly calming

An advanced Settlement in Against the Storm

Enlarge / I'd like to pretend I'd built a settlement this neatly compact and organized—with street grids, even—but alas, this is a provided screenshot. (credit: Hooded Horse)

Back when WarCraft, StarCraft, and other real-time strategy games were all the rage, I could never actually play them against other people. Even playing against the computer, I might only eke out a victory through dumb luck or an opponent's huge mistake.

The problem was, I was never ready to attack until I had my base perfectly in order—until the workers carrying oil or crystals or whatnot had the most efficient route from the mine to the base or until my buildings were arranged for optimal use of the revealed land. I just needed one more little guy, one more tower. OK, maybe two. I'm a turtler's turtler.

1.0 release date trailer for Against the Storm.

Against the Storm, which releases from Early Access on Steam for Windows today, has been a deeply satisfying outlet for this pent-up need to build and prosper—in a delightfully WarCraft-ian manner—without the messy business of war. There is still adversity: an ever-advancing "Impatience" meter, hostile spirits you uncover in the woods, and the typical constraints of resources, supply chains, and worker morale. Plus the rainstorms in the title, which occur both in-level, slowing you down, and at a macro level, washing away your little towns to make you start again.

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New systemd update will bring Windows’ infamous Blue Screen of Death to Linux

New systemd update will bring Windows’ infamous Blue Screen of Death to Linux

Enlarge (credit: hdaniel)

Windows' infamous "Blue Screen of Death" is a bit of a punchline. People have made a hobby of spotting them out in the wild, and in some circles, they remain a byword for the supposed flakiness and instability of PCs. To this day, networked PCs in macOS are represented by beige CRT monitors displaying a BSOD.

But the BSOD is supposed to be a diagnostic tool, an informational screen that technicians can use to begin homing in on the problem that caused the crash in the first place; that old Windows' BSOD error codes were often so broad and vague as to be useless doesn't make the idea a bad one. Today, version 255 of the Linux systemd project honors that original intent by adding a systemd-bsod component that generates a full-screen display of some error messages when a Linux system crashes.

The systemd-bsod component is currently listed as "experimental" and "subject to change." But the functionality is simple: any logged error message that reaches the LOG_EMERG level will be displayed full-screen to allow people to take a photo or write it down. Phoronix reports that, as with BSODs in modern Windows, the Linux version will also generate a QR code to make it easier to look up information on your phone.

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White House threatens to veto anti-EV bill just passed by US House

U.S. Capitol and the dome in Washington, DC

Enlarge (credit: L. Toshio Kishiyama/Getty Images)

The White House's plan to boost electric vehicle adoption came under heavy fire in Congress on Wednesday. Five Democratic Representatives joined the Republican majority to pass a bill that would prohibit the US Environmental Protection Agency from enacting stricter new corporate average fuel efficiency regulations that would require automakers to sell many more EVs by the year 2032.

Its passage in the House follows a letter-writing campaign by some US auto dealers to get the White House to abandon its climate targets as the dealers say they find it too difficult to sell electric vehicles.

As Ars detailed at the time, the tougher new regulations will require automakers to sell four times as many zero-emission vehicles to meet the new fleet averages. If the rules go into effect, two-thirds of all new passenger cars and light trucks would have to be EVs by 2032.

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Quantum computer performs error-resistant operations with logical qubits

Image of a massive collection of lenses, mirrors, and wires in a laboratory.

Enlarge / The hardware used for these experiments. (credit: Harvard)

There's widespread agreement that most useful quantum computing will have to wait for the development of error-corrected qubits. Error correction involves distributing a bit of quantum information—termed a logical qubit—among a small collection of hardware qubits. The disagreements mostly focus on how best to implement it and how long it will take.

A key step toward that future is described in a paper released in Nature today. A large team of researchers, primarily based at Harvard University, have now demonstrated the ability to perform multiple operations on as many as 48 logical qubits. The work shows that the system, which shares a heritage with the quantum computing system made by the company QuEra, can correctly identify the occurrence of errors, and this can significantly improve the results of calculations.

Yuval Boger, QuEra's chief marketing officer, told Ars: "We feel it is a very significant milestone on the path to where we all want to be, which is large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

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Apple admits to secretly giving governments push notification data

Apple admits to secretly giving governments push notification data

Enlarge (credit: Dilok Klaisataporn | iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Governments have been secretly tracking the app activity of an unknown number of people using Apple and Google smartphones, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed today.

In a letter demanding that the Department of Justice update or repeal policies prohibiting companies from informing the public about these covert government requests, Wyden warned that "Apple and Google are in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps."

Push notifications are used to provide a wide variety of alerts to app users. A friendly ding or text alert on the home screen notifies users about new text messages, emails, social media comments, news updates, packages delivered, gameplay nudges—basically any app activity where notifications have been enabled could be tracked by governments, Wyden said.

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Just about every Windows and Linux device vulnerable to new LogoFAIL firmware attack

Par : Dan Goodin
Just about every Windows and Linux device vulnerable to new LogoFAIL firmware attack

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Hundreds of Windows and Linux computer models from virtually all hardware makers are vulnerable to a new attack that executes malicious firmware early in the boot-up sequence, a feat that allows infections that are nearly impossible to detect or remove using current defense mechanisms.

The attack—dubbed LogoFAIL by the researchers who devised it—is notable for the relative ease in carrying it out, the breadth of both consumer- and enterprise-grade models that are susceptible, and the high level of control it gains over them. In many cases, LogoFAIL can be remotely executed in post-exploit situations using techniques that can’t be spotted by traditional endpoint security products. And because exploits run during the earliest stages of the boot process, they are able to bypass a host of defenses, including the industry-wide Secure Boot, Intel’s Secure Boot, and similar protections from other companies that are devised to prevent so-called bootkit infections.

Game over for platform security

LogoFAIL is a constellation of two dozen newly discovered vulnerabilities that have lurked for years, if not decades, in Unified Extensible Firmware Interfaces responsible for booting modern devices that run Windows or Linux. The vulnerabilities are the product of almost a year’s worth of work by Binarly, a firm that helps customers identify and secure vulnerable firmware.

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Beeper Mini for Android sends and receives iMessages, no Mac server required

Beeper messages looking iMessage-like blue on an Android phone

Enlarge / A Pixel 3, messaging a savvy iPhone owner, one with the kinds of concerns Beeper hopes to resolve for its customers. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

In the past week, I have sent an iMessage to one friend from a command-line Python app and to another from a Pixel 3 Android phone.

Sending an iMessage without an Apple device isn't entirely new, but this way of doing it is. I didn't hand over my Apple credentials or log in with my Apple ID on a Mac server on some far-away rack. I put my primary SIM card in the Pixel, I installed Beeper Mini, and it sent a text message to register my number with Apple. I never gave Beeper Mini my Apple ID.

From then on, my iPhone-toting friends who sent messages to my Pixel 3 saw them as other-iPhone blue, not noticeably distracting green. We could all access the typing, delivered/read receipts, emoji reactions, and most other iPhone-to-iPhone message features. Even if I had no active Apple devices, it seems, I could have chosen to meet Apple users where they were and gain end-to-end encryption by doing so.

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