Ars Technica

Enlarge / First and second stages of Blue Origin's "New Glenn" test vehicle. (credit: Blue Origin)

Welcome to Edition 6.28 of the Rocket Report! There's a lot going on in the world of launch as always, but this week I want to take this space for a personal message. I have just announced the forthcoming publication of my second book, REENTRY, on the Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon spacecraft, and development of reusable launch. Full details here. I worked very hard to get the inside story.

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.

Europe seeks to support small launch companies. The European Space Agency and European Commission have selected five launch companies to participate in a new program to provide flight opportunities for new technologies, a sign of a greater role the European Union intends to play in launch, Space News reports. The effort seeks to stimulate demand for European launch services by allowing companies to compete for missions in the European Union’s In-Orbit Demonstration and Validation technology program. Proposals for the program's first phase are due to ESA at the end of February.

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Enlarge / The LISA project will consist of three spacecraft in a triangular configuration, exchanging lasers. (credit: EADS Astrium)

On Thursday, the European Space Agency's Science Programme Committee gave the go-ahead to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA project. This would mean the construction of the mission's three spacecraft could begin as early as a year from now. While the interferometer would follow the same basic principles as the ground-based LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) experiment that first detected gravitational waves, the hardware would be placed 2.5 million kilometers apart, making it sensitive to an entirely new range of astronomical phenomena.

Existing gravitational wave detectors rely on bouncing lasers back and forth between distant mirrors before recombining them to produce an interference pattern. Anything that alters the position of the mirrors—from the rumble of a large truck to the passing of gravitational waves—will change the interference pattern. Having detectors at distant sites helps us eliminate cases of local noise, allowing us to detect astronomical events.

The detectors we've built on Earth have successfully picked up gravitational waves generated by the mergers of compact objects like neutron stars and black holes. But their relatively compact size means that they can only capture high-frequency gravitational waves, which are only produced in the last few seconds before a merger takes place.

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Enlarge / Is this Super Mario Kart or Where's Waldo? (credit: MrL314 / YouTube)

Here at Ars, we're big fans of emulators and ROM hacks that actually improve on the limitations of classic games in some way or another. Today, though, we've found ourselves enamored with a Super Mario Kart ROM patch that easily makes the game much, much worse.

Longtime Super Mario Kart hacker MrL314 calls Resident Evil Kart "the worst thing I have ever created," and it's not hard to see why. As implied by the title, the ROM patch replaces Super Mario Kart's usual over-the-shoulder tracking camera with something more akin to the awkward fixed-angle "perspective shots" of the original PlayStation 1 Resident Evil games. The perspective automatically jumps between these fixed cameras around the track as your racer moves from section to section, forcing you to judge turns and obstacles from very skewed angles.

Resident Evil Kart release trailer.

MrL314 writes that the idea for this hack arose from time spent "researching how the camera system in Super Mario Kart works" as part of the development of the impressive-looking Super Mario Kart Deluxe. He first posted a concept video of the fixed camera system in SMK last July, before sharing an early prototype with his Patreon supporters.

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Enlarge / The iPhone 15 lineup.

To comply with European Union regulations, Apple has introduced sweeping changes that make iOS and Apple's other operating systems more open. The changes are far-reaching and touch many parts of the user experience on the iPhone. They'll be coming as part of iOS 17.4 in March.

Apple will introduce "new APIs and tools that enable developers to offer their iOS apps for download from alternative app marketplaces," as well as a new framework and set of APIs that allow third parties to set up and manage those stores—essentially new forms of apps that can download other apps without going through the App Store. That includes the ability to manage updates for other developers' apps that are distributed through the marketplaces.

The company will also offer APIs and a new framework for third-party web browsers to use browser engines other than Safari's WebKit. Until now, browsers like Chrome and Firefox were still built on top of Apple's tech. They essentially were mobile Safari, but with bookmarks and other features tied to alternative desktop browsers.

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Enlarge / Blizzard shared this image teasing a now-cancelled game in 2022. (credit: Blizzard Entertainment/Twitter)

The survival game that Blizzard announced it was working on in January 2022 has reportedly been canceled. The cut comes as Microsoft is slashing jobs a little over four months after closing its $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition.

Blizzard's game didn't have a title yet, but Blizzard said it would be for PC and console and introduce new stories and characters. In January 2022, Blizzard put out a call for workers to help build the game.

The game's axing was revealed today in an internal memo from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer seen by publications including The Verge and CNBC that said:

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Enlarge / A close-up view of Ingenuity on Mars, as seen by the Perseverance rover. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)

Something has gone wrong with NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars. Although the US space agency has not made any public announcements yet, a source told Ars that the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades. It will not fly anymore. (Shortly after this article was published, NASA confirmed the end of Ingenuity's mission).

When it launched to Mars more than three years ago, the small Ingenuity helicopter was an experimental mission, a challenge to NASA engineers to see if they could devise and build a vehicle that could make a powered flight on another world.

This was especially difficulty on Mars, which has a very thin atmosphere, with a pressure of less than 1 percent that of Earth's. The solution they landed on was a very light 4-lb helicopter with four blades. It was hoped that Ingenuity would make a handful of flights and provide NASA with some valuable testing data.

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Enlarge / Who doesn't want less recoil? Unless, that is, you're someone competing against the person getting this benefit with a $100 "emulation" device. (credit: Cronus)

The Cronus Zen describes itself as a hardware tool for "universal controller compatibility," letting you plug in a third-party controller, an Xbox controller into a PlayStation, or even your keyboard and mouse into a console. But you can also use its scripting engine to "amplify your game" and set up "GamePacks" to do things like reduce recoil animations in games like Call of Duty. And that is where Cronus seems to have gotten into trouble.

As first noted by the Call of Duty news channel CharlieIntel, the latest update to the PlayStation 5's system (24.01-08.60.00) software blocks the Cronus from connecting. The update is "NOT mandatory," Cronus claims in a notice on its website, so Zen players can hold off and keep playing. Still, there is "currently no timetable on a fix … it could be 24 (hours), 24 days, 24 months, we won't know until we've dug into it." There is, for now, a "Remote Play Workaround" for those already too far updated.

Ars attempted to reach Cronus for comment and reached out to Sony as well and will update this post with any new information.

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• Step 1: get the phone as close to your face as possible. [credit: Google ]

Most Pixel 8 Pro owners have probably forgotten that there's an infrared temperature sensor on the back of the phone next to the LED camera flash. But it's still there, and almost four months after launch, it's getting a new feature: body temperature measurement. The four-month hold-up is because body temperature sensors are regulated as medical devices, so Google needed FDA approval to enable the feature. The company has a blog post detailing the feature, which says: "In clinical trials, our software algorithm was able to calculate body temperature in the range of 96.9°F–104°F (36.1°C–40°C) to within ±0.3°C when compared with an FDA-cleared temporal artery thermometer. In layman's terms, this means the Pixel body temperature feature is about as accurate as other temporal artery thermometers." The feature only works in the US.

Like everything about the Pixel 8 Pro's temperature sensor, the basic feature idea sounds fine (if not several years late), but the execution leaves much to be desired. Google has a support page detailing how to use the body temperature sensor, and you'll need to slowly swipe the phone across your entire face over four seconds to get a reading. The sensor needs to be extremely close to your face to work; Google says it wants the phone "as close as possible to the skin without touching." If you wear glasses, you'll need to take them off, because the phone needs to be so close to your face it will hit them. If you manage all that, you'll get a body temperature reading that you can save to your Fitbit profile.

We found the temperature sensor to be the biggest negative mark in our Pixel 8 Pro review. I'm not entirely sure a well-executed temperature sensor would be a useful feature on a phone, but the Pixel 8's temperature sensor is just such a hassle to use. Besides forehead measuring, it can also check the temperature of objects, but it only has a range of two inches. There's also no camera feed or any targeting system to be sure of what you're measuring—you get a blank screen with a "measure" button, you press it, and a number appears. Temperature sensing also stops the instant it reads any single temperature—it's not continuous. All the user experience problems made the temperature sensor instantly forgettable. The body temperature addition isn't helping and feels like a feature that would be better suited for a smartwatch.

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Enlarge / "Well, we all have a face/That we hide away forever" (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

If you've paid any attention to the intersection of AI and culture this month, you’ve probably stumbled across a video billed as a “comedy AI” doing a 60-minute impression of a stand-up routine by the late, great George Carlin. Even if you didn’t watch “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” you probably stumbled on some of the many, many headlines suggesting that AI had brought the legendary comedian “back from the dead” in some sense.

Or maybe you saw some of the disgusted and/or panicked responses to the special among Carlin fans, comedy purists, and AI fearmongers. Those included Carlin’s daughter, Kelly, who told The Daily Beast that she’s talking to lawyers about the possibility of legal action against the special’s creators, the comedy podcast Dudesy.

But I think that anger is at least partially misplaced. After spending the last few weeks diving down a distractingly deep rabbit hole, I’m convinced that Dudesy’s “AI-generated” George Carlin special was actually written by a human, using voice- and image-generation tools to essentially perform in “AI face” as part of an ongoing comedy bit.

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Enlarge / A red mud retaining pond in Germany. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The metals that form the foundation of modern society also cause a number of problems. Separating the metals we want from other minerals is often energy-intensive and can leave behind large volumes of toxic waste. Getting them in a pure form can often require a second and considerable energy input, boosting the associated carbon emissions.

A team of researchers from Germany has now figured out how to handle some of these problems for a specific class of mining waste created during aluminum production. Their method relies on hydrogen and electricity, which can both be sourced from renewable power and extracts iron and potentially other metals from the waste. What's left behind may still be toxic but isn't as environmentally damaging.

The first step in aluminum production is the isolation of aluminum oxide from the other materials in the ore. This leaves behind a material known as red mud; it's estimated that nearly 200 million tonnes are produced annually. While the red color comes from the iron oxides present, there are a lot of other materials in it, some of which can be toxic. And the process of isolating the aluminum oxide leaves the material with a very basic pH.

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Enlarge / A delegation of French military officers visited the Combined Space Operations Center in 2022 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. (credit: US Space Force/Tech. Sgt. Luke Kitterman)

Late last year, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks signed a memo to overhaul a decades-old policy on how the Pentagon keeps sensitive military space programs secret. However, don't expect defense officials to openly discuss everything they're doing to counter China and Russia in orbit.

John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, revealed the policy change in a roundtable with reporters on January 17. For many years, across multiple administrations, Pentagon officials have lamented their inability to share information with other countries and commercial partners. Inherently, they argued, this stranglehold on information limits the military's capacity to connect with allies, deter adversaries, and respond to threats in space.

In his statement last week, Plumb said this new policy "removes legacy classification barriers that have inhibited our ability to collaborate across the US government and also with allies on issues related to space."

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Enlarge / A studio portrait of a crying baby. (credit: Getty | Tim Clayton)

It's hard to imagine a more common stressor for new parents than the recurring riddle: Why is the baby crying? Did she just rub her eyes—tired? Is he licking his lips—hungry? The list of possible culprits and vague signs, made hazier by brutal sleep deprivation, can sometimes feel endless. But for one family in New England, the list seemed to be swiftly coming to an end as their baby continued to slip away from them.

According to a detailed case report published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, it all started when the parents of an otherwise healthy 8-week-old boy noticed that he started crying more and was more irritable. This was about a week before he would end up in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of the Massachusetts General Hospital.

His grandmother, who primarily cared for him, noticed that he seemed to cry more vigorously when the right side of his abdomen was touched. The family took him to his pediatrician, who could find nothing wrong upon examination. Perhaps it was just gas, the pediatrician concluded—a common conclusion.

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Enlarge / Still images of AI-generated video examples provided by Google for its Lumiere video synthesis model. (credit: Google)

On Tuesday, Google announced Lumiere, an AI video generator that it calls "a space-time diffusion model for realistic video generation" in the accompanying preprint paper. But let's not kid ourselves: It does a great job at creating videos of cute animals in ridiculous scenarios, such as using roller skates, driving a car, or playing a piano. Sure, it can do more, but it is perhaps the most advanced text-to-animal AI video generator yet demonstrated.

According to Google, Lumiere utilizes unique architecture to generate a video's entire temporal duration in one go. Or, as the company put it, "We introduce a Space-Time U-Net architecture that generates the entire temporal duration of the video at once, through a single pass in the model. This is in contrast to existing video models which synthesize distant keyframes followed by temporal super-resolution—an approach that inherently makes global temporal consistency difficult to achieve."

In layperson terms, Google's tech is designed to handle both the space (where things are in the video) and time (how things move and change throughout the video) aspects simultaneously. So, instead of making a video by putting together many small parts or frames, it can create the entire video, from start to finish, in one smooth process.

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Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

It's almost hard to believe this is happening again, but Pixel users are reporting that an OS update has locked them out of their phones' internal storage, causing app crashes, non-functional phones, and a real possibility of data loss. Over in the Google Pixel subreddit, user "Liv-Lyf" compiled a dozen posts that complain of an "internal storage access issue" and blame the January 2024 Google Play system update.

In October, Pixel phones faced a nightmare storage bug that caused bootlooping, inaccessible devices, and data loss. The recent post says, "The symptoms are all the same" as that October bug, with "internal storage not getting mounted, camera crashes, Files app shows no files, screenshots not getting saved, internal storage shows up empty in ADB Shell, etc." When asked for a comment, Google told Ars, "We're aware of this issue and are looking into it," and a Google rep posted effectively the same statement in the comments.

In the October bug, users were locked out of their system storage due to a strange permissions issue. Having a phone try to run without any user access to your own storage is a mess. It breaks the camera and screenshots because you can't write media. File Managers read "0 bytes" for every file and folder. Nothing works over USB, and some phones, understandably, just fail to boot. The issue in October arrived as part of the initial Android 14 release and only affected devices that had multiple users set up.

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Enlarge / Tesla sold 1.2 million Model Y crossovers last year. (credit: John Paraskevas/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

Tesla published its financial results for the last three months of 2023 this afternoon. The good news for the company is that it met its goal of delivering 1.8 million electric vehicles to customers, as Ars reported earlier this month when the automaker published that data. But a look at the company's full financial results for Q4 are not as encouraging, and Tesla shares have fallen steeply in post-market trading.

Tesla brought in $25.2 billion in total revenue for Q4 2023, a year-over-year increase of 3 percent. Gross profits were down 23 percent for the quarter year over year, although net income (as determined by generally agreed accounting principles) increased 115 percent year over year. In large part, this was due to Tesla recording a "one-time non-cash tax benefit of $5.9 [billion] in Q4 for the release of valuation allowance on certain deferred tax assets"; non-GAAP income dropped 39 percent.

Free cash flow increased by 33 percent for the quarter, but its operating margin is almost half that of Q4 2022 at 8.2 percent.

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Enlarge (credit: Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images North America)

Amazon Ring has shut down a controversial feature in its community safety app Neighbors that has allowed police to contact homeowners and request doorbell and surveillance camera footage without a warrant for years.

In a blog, head of the Neighbors app Eric Kuhn confirmed that "public safety agencies like fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events," but the Request for Assistance (RFA) tool will be disabled.

"They will no longer be able to use the RFA tool to request and receive video in the app," Kuhn wrote.

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan )

eBay is laying off approximately 1,000 employees in a move that reduces its full-time workforce by 9 percent, the company announced yesterday. eBay also plans "to scale back the number of contracts we have within our alternate workforce over the coming months," CEO Jamie Iannone wrote in a message to staff that was titled, "Ensuring eBay's Long-Term Success."

Iannone cited "the challenging macroeconomic environment" and said that eBay has too many employees. "While we are making progress against our strategy, our overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business," he wrote.

eBay asked all US-based employees to work from home on Wednesday "to provide some space and privacy" for conversations in which laid-off employees were to be given the bad news. The 1,000 layoffs come nearly one year after eBay eliminated 500 employees.

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Enlarge / Jason Bateman and Laura Linney in the Netflix original series Ozark. (credit: Netflix/YouTube)

Netflix subscribers can expect more price hikes as the company looks to grow revenue in 2024. In its Q4 2023 letter to shareholders, Netflix also revealed plans to eliminate the cheapest ad-free plan available to users.

In the January 23 letter (PDF), Netflix said:

As we invest in and improve Netflix, we’ll occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra to reflect those improvements, which in turn helps drive the positive flywheel of additional investment to further improve and grow our service.

The statement will be unsavory for frugal streamers who have recently endured price hikes from Netflix and other streaming services. In January 2022, Netflix increased the price of its Basic no-ads tier from $8.99 per month to $9.99/month. In October 2023, that same plan went up to $11.99/month. Meanwhile, Netflix's Premium ad-free plan increased from $17.99/month to $19.99/month in January 2022 and then to $22.99/month in October.

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Popular apps like Venmo, Zelle, and Cash App aren't doing enough to protect consumers from fraud that occurs when unauthorized users gain access to unlocked devices, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg warned.

“Thousands or even tens of thousands can be drained from financial accounts in a matter of seconds with just a few taps," Bragg said in letters to app makers. "Without additional protections, customers’ financial and physical safety is being put at risk."

According to Bragg, his office and the New York Police Department have been increasingly prosecuting crimes where phones are commandeered by bad actors to quickly steal large amounts of money through financial apps.

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If Google sticks to the usual cadence of device releases, the Google Pixel 9 will come out in around 9 months. That's a long ways away, but still not so far away that it can't be leaked: the ever-reliable Steve Hemmerstoffer, aka OnLeaks, has a set of Pixel 9 Pro renders up over at MySmartPrice. Usually, these renders are based on the CAD files that accessory designers need before they can begin making products, so while all the major components should be correct down to the millimeter, the materials, colors, and some small details may be speculative.

There are a lot of differences in these renders. First, the renders show a flat metal band around the sides, making it look a lot like an iPhone. Samsung also adopted this design for the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus, so everyone seems to want to look just like their biggest rival. This allows the front and back of the phone to be completely flat slabs of glass, instead of the rounded glass back of the Pixel 8. The screen is also completely flat again.

Check out the new camera bar design. (credit: OnLeaks and MySmartPrice)

The other major visible difference is the camera bar, which used to stretch from side to side across the back of the phone, but now is a floating bar that isn't connected to the sides. That makes the camera bar closer to the Pixel Fold design. The Pixel Fold camera bar was a rounded rectangle, but this is a full-on pill shape, which, in these renders, follows the shape of the camera glass cover. Besides the camera lenses, the bar has an LED flash and a second mystery sensor circle. On the Pixel 8, the circle under the LED is a temperature sensor. I feel like the temperature sensor has been either panned or forgotten about, so it wouldn't surprise me to see it cut, but the realities of the smartphone development cycle might make it too early for that.

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