You can fit so many arguments about consumer rights into this bad boy Bambu Lab pushes a control system for 3D printers, and boy, did it not go well Security measure? Boxing out third-party tools? Or something more complex? Kevin Purdy Jan 21, 2025 6:21 pm | 29 Credit: Bambu Lab Credit: Bambu Lab Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreBambu Lab, a major maker of 3D printers for home users and commercial "farms," is pushing an update to its devices that it claims will improve security while still offering third-party tools "authorized" access. Some in the user communityand 3D printing advocates broadlyare pushing back, suggesting the firm has other, more controlling motives.As is perhaps appropriate for 3D printing, this matter has many layers, some long-standing arguments about freedom and rights baked in, and a good deal of heat. Bambu Lab's image marketing Bambu Handy, its cloud service that allows you to "Control your printer anytime anywhere, also we support SD card and local network to print the projects." Credit: Bambu Lab Bambu Lab's image marketing Bambu Handy, its cloud service that allows you to "Control your printer anytime anywhere, also we support SD card and local network to print the projects." Credit: Bambu Lab Printing more, tweaking lessBambu Lab, launched in 2022, has stood out in the burgeoning consumer 3D printing market because of its printers' capacity for printing at high speeds without excessive tinkering or maintenance. The product page for the X1 series, the printer first targeted for new security, starts with the credo, "We hated 3D printing as much as we loved it." Bambu's faster, less fussy multicolor printers garnered attentionincluding an ongoing patent lawsuit from established commercial printer Stratasys.Part of Bambu's "just works" nature relies on a relatively more closed system than its often open-minded counterparts. Sending a print to most Bambu printers typically requires either Bambu's cloud service, or, in "LAN mode," a manual "sneakernet" transfer through SD cards. Cloud connections also grant perks like remote monitoring, and many customers have accepted the trade-off.However, other customers, eager to tinker with third-party software and accessories, along with those fearing a subscription-based future for 3D printing, see Bambu Lab's purported security concerns as something else. And Bambu acknowledges that its messaging on its upcoming change came out in rough shape.Authorized access and operations"Firmware Update Introducing New Authorization Control System," posted by Bambu Lab on January 16 (and since updated twice), states that Bambu's printersstarting with its popular X series, then the P and A lineswill receive a "significant security enhancement to ensure only authorized access and operations are permitted." This would, Bambu suggested, mitigate risks of "remote hacks or printer exposure issues" and lower the risk of "abnormal traffic or attacks.""By ensuring that all interactions with the hardwaresuch as moving axes, heating components, or performing other critical actionsare verified and secure, we can minimize risks and prevent potentially dangerous situations," Bambu wrote in a FAQ. This was necessary, Bambu wrote, because of increases in requests made to its cloud services "through unofficial channels," targeted DDOS attacks, and "peaks of up to 30 million unauthorized requests per day" (link added by Bambu).While Bambu has caused attention-getting "abnormal traffic" before, and 3D printer web hacks are real, many of its customers noticed a less-touted effect: third-party software and tools, like slicers (which turn 3D designs into machine-printable "slices") and third-party screens, losing direct access to Bambu printers. Instead, "Bambu Connect" software offers devices like OrcaSlicer protocols to send printer instructions and get a printer's status. As pitched initially, this would have applied to all Bambu printers, whether on local, non-Internet-exposed "LAN Mode" or on "Cloud Mode"Notably, those who use Bambu's own slicer, Bambu Studio, would not be impacted by the incoming firmware upgrade, as that software will keep working as-is.Unfortunate misinformation circulating onlineHow did this go over? So well that Bambu issued a second blog post about the change four days later, sub-titled "Setting the record straight about our security update." Addressing "a mix of valuable feedback and unfortunate misinformation circulating online," the firm denied claims about subscription-required printing, remote file monitoring or bricking, third-party filament blocking, and other fears, uncertainties, and doubts.Using third-party software through Bambu Connect, the difference for users is "not much," Bambu Lab suggests, adding a GIF of a "seamless" authentication inside the OrcaSlicer app. More importantly, the firm said it would update LAN mode on its devices so that there is a Standard Mode with Bambu Connect in place and a Developer Mode that leaves the printer's MQTT, live stream, and FTP functions open.The MQTT protocol blocking is particularly notable, as a popular third-party screen and control device, Panda Touch, would not work without it in "Standard Mode." Bambu states in its second post that it reached out to manufacturer BTT and informed them that using undocumented ("exploited," in Bambu's terms) MQTT protocols "was unsustainable and would place customers in an awkward situation once we updated the system." Big Tree Tech has posted its own version of their talks and history, suggesting that it never got full answers from Bambu, but it plans to ensure the devices work with Developer Mode in the future.Private key already extractedOpen source hardware hacker and YouTube creator Jeff Geerling posted a video on Monday, titled "I probably won't buy another Bambu Lab printer." Geerling doesn't traffic in motives or conspiracy but speaks to broader concerns about Bambu's messaging, treatment of third-party hardware, and customer rights. As for security, "Every IoT [Internet of Things] device has these problems, and there are better ways to secure things than by locking out access, or making it harder to access, or requiring their cloud to be integrated," Geerling said.At the Hackaday blog, the mood was a good deal more adversarial. In a post on Monday about Bambu Lab's "announcement that it would be locking down all network access" to affected printers, it was noted that Bambu Connect, a "fairly low-effort Electron-based affair" (i.e., a containerized web application), has had its certificate and private key extracted. This encryption is "the sole thing standing in the way of tools like OrcaSlicer talking with authentication-enabled Bambu Lab printers," Hackday's post states.Repair advocate Louis Rossmann, noting Bambu's altered original blog post, uploaded a video soon after, "Bambu's Gaslighting Masterclass: Denying their own documented restrictions." Rossmann also took aim at Bambu's Terms of Use, suggesting that the company was asking buyers to trust that Bambu wouldn't enact restrictive policies they otherwise wrote into their user agreements.Ars has reached out to Bambu Lab for comment and will update this post with any response.Kevin PurdySenior Technology ReporterKevin PurdySenior Technology Reporter Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch. 29 Comments

Digital distribution RIP EAs Origin launcher: We knew ye all too well, unfortunately End of 32-bit Windows support offered an excuse to put the nail in the coffin. Samuel Axon Jan 21, 2025 4:17 pm | 39 Things did not go well for Origin. Credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images Things did not go well for Origin. Credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAfter 14 years, EA will retire its controversial Origin game distribution app for Windows, the company announced. Origin will stop working on April 17, 2025. Folks still using it will be directed to install the newer EA app, which launched in 2022.The launch of Origin in 2011 was a flashpoint of controversy among gamers, as EAalready not a beloved company by this pointbegan pulling titles like Crysis 2 from the popular Steam platform to drive players to its own launcher.Frankly, it all made sense from EA's point of view. For a publisher that size, Valve had relatively little to offer in terms of services or tools, yet it was taking a big chunk of games' revenue. Why wouldn't EA want to get that money back?The transition was a rough one, though, because it didn't make as much sense from the consumer's point of view. Players distrusted EA and had a lot of goodwill for Valve and Steam. Origin lacked features players liked on Steam, and old habits and social connections die hard. Plus, EA's use of Origina long-dead brand name tied to classic RPGs and other games of the '80s and '90sfor something like this felt to some like a slap in the face.EA eventually put its games back on Steam starting in 2019. It also announced plans to retire the Origin name and app in favor of a more simply branded "EA" app, which launched in 2022.The company attempted to migrate its users from Origin to the new app and stopped releasing games on Origin, but it still remained an option for older games. Come April 17, the app will be retired completely.EA cited Microsoft's plan to end support for the 32-bit version of Windows 10 this coming October as a catalyst. Since there is no 32-bit version of Windows 11, that effectively ends OS support for 32-bit Windows applications as we previously knew it. (The Origin app is 32-bit, and the newer EA app is 64-bit.) It seems as good a time as any to pull the plug.Samuel AxonSenior EditorSamuel AxonSenior Editor Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica. He covers Apple, software development, gaming, AI, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and heis a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development. 39 Comments

Here we go again New Netflix price hikes increase subscription fees by up to $2.50 a month The cheapest ad-free plan increases from $15.49 to $17.99. Scharon Harding Jan 21, 2025 5:20 pm | 0 A scene from the Netflix original series Squid Game. Credit: Netflix A scene from the Netflix original series Squid Game. Credit: Netflix Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreToday Netflix, the biggest streaming service based on subscriber count, announced that it will increase subscription prices by up to $2.50 per month.In a letter to investors [PDF], Netflix announced price changes starting today in the US, Canada, Argentina, and Portugal.People who subscribe to Netflix's cheapest ad-free plan (Standard) will see the biggest increase in monthly costs. The subscription will go from $15.49/month to $17.99/month, representing a 16.14 percent bump. The subscription tier allows commercial-free streaming for up to two devices and maxes out at 1080p resolution. It's Netflix's most popular subscription in the US, Bloomberg noted.Netflix's Premium ad-free tier has cost $22.99/month but is going up 8.7 percent to $24.99/month. The priciest Netflix subscription supports simultaneous streaming for up to four devices, downloads on up to six devices, 4K resolution, HDR, and spatial audio.Finally, Netflix's Standard With Ads tier will go up by $1, or 14.3 percent, to $7.99/month. This tier supports streaming from up to two devices and up to 1080p resolution. In Q4 2024, this subscription represented "over 55 percent of sign-ups" in countries where it's available and generally grew "nearly 30 percent quarter over quarter," Netflix said in its quarterly letter to investors."As we continue to invest in programming and deliver more value for our members, we will occasionally ask our members to pay a little more so that we can re-invest to further improve Netflix," Netflix's letter reads.Netflix most recently raised subscription prices in 2023, when the Premium plan went up by $3 and the Basic plan increased by $2 (Netflix killed off the Basic plan in 2024).Ads continue to be a central focus for Netflix moving forward. As it stands, Netflix's ad business wasn't yet large enough to be broken out in Netflix's Q4 2024 earnings report but should be relevant by 2026, the streaming company said."Were on track to reach sufficient scale for ads members in all of our ads countries in 2025," Netflix told investors. "A top priority in 2025 is to improve our offering for advertisers so that we can substantially grow our advertising revenue."In Q4 2024, Netflix gained more subscribers than it ever has in a single quarter, buoyed by live sporting events and a new season of one of its most popular series, Squid Game. The streaming platform added 18.91 million subscribers for a total of 301.63 million. Netflix has said it will not report quarterly subscriber numbers in future reports.In addition to record subscriber gains, Netflix also saw its largest quarterly revenue gainup 16 percent to $10.2 billionsince 2021 in Q4 2024.With Netflix already enacting a successful password crackdown, launching an ad-supported subscription offering, and topping subscriber counts, there are limited ways for it to fuel growth. It also needs billions of dollars to pay for and continue to win the rights to stream live events. Netflix plans to get some of these funds from current subscribers' wallets.Scharon HardingSenior Technology ReporterScharon HardingSenior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Toms Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 0 Comments

WAR OF THE WEIGHTS Cutting-edge Chinese reasoning model rivals OpenAI o1and its free to download DeepSeek R1 is free to run locally and modify, and it matches OpenAI's o1 in several benchmarks. Benj Edwards Jan 21, 2025 1:28 pm | 56 Credit: Wong Yu Liang Credit: Wong Yu Liang Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreOn Monday, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released its new R1 model family under an open MIT license, with its largest version containing 671 billion parameters. The company claims the model performs at levels comparable to OpenAI's o1 simulated reasoning (SR) model on several math and coding benchmarks.Alongside the release of the main DeepSeek-R1-Zero and DeepSeek-R1 models, DeepSeek published six smaller "DeepSeek-R1-Distill" versions ranging from 1.5 billion to 70 billion parameters. These distilled models are based on existing open source architectures like Qwen and Llama, trained using data generated from the full R1 model. The smallest version can run on a laptop, while the full model requires far more substantial computing resources.The releases immediately caught the attention of the AI community because most existing open-weights modelswhich can often be run and fine-tuned on local hardwarehave lagged behind proprietary models like OpenAI's o1 in so-called reasoning benchmarks. Having these capabilities available in an MIT-licensed model that anyone can study, modify, or use commercially potentially marks a shift in what's possible with publicly available AI models."They are SO much fun to run, watching them think is hilarious," independent AI researcher Simon Willison told Ars in a text message. Willison tested one of the smaller models and described his experience in a post on his blog: "Each response starts with a <think>...</think> pseudo-XML tag containing the chain of thought used to help generate the response," noting that even for simple prompts, the model produces extensive internal reasoning before output.Simulated reasoning in actionThe R1 model works differently from typical large language models (LLMs) by incorporating what people in the industry call an inference-time reasoning approach. They attempt to simulate a human-like chain of thought as the model works through a solution to the query. This class of what one might call "simulated reasoning" models, or SR models for short, emerged when OpenAI debuted its o1 model family in September 2024. OpenAI teased a major upgrade called "o3" in December.Unlike conventional LLMs, these SR models take extra time to produce responses, and this extra time often increases performance on tasks involving math, physics, and science. And this latest open model is turning heads for apparently quickly catching up to OpenAI.For example, DeepSeek reports that R1 outperformed OpenAI's o1 on several benchmarks and tests, including AIME (a mathematical reasoning test), MATH-500 (a collection of word problems), and SWE-bench Verified (a programming assessment tool). As we usually mention, AI benchmarks need to be taken with a grain of salt, and these results have yet to be independently verified. A chart of DeepSeek R1 benchmark results, created by DeepSeek. Credit: DeepSeek TechCrunch reports that three Chinese labsDeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI's Kimihave now released models they say match o1's capabilities, with DeepSeek first previewing R1 in November.But the new DeepSeek model comes with a catch if run in the cloud-hosted versionbeing Chinese in origin, R1 will not generate responses about certain topics like Tiananmen Square or Taiwan's autonomy, as it must "embody core socialist values," according to Chinese Internet regulations. This filtering comes from an additional moderation layer that isn't an issue if the model is run locally outside of China.Even with the potential censorship, Dean Ball, an AI researcher at George Mason University, wrote on X, "The impressive performance of DeepSeek's distilled models (smaller versions of r1) means that very capable reasoners will continue to proliferate widely and be runnable on local hardware, far from the eyes of any top-down control regime."Benj EdwardsSenior AI ReporterBenj EdwardsSenior AI Reporter Benj Edwards is Ars Technica's Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site's dedicated AI beat in 2022. He's also a tech historian with almost two decades of experience. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC. 56 Comments

a coupla physicists sitting around talking How to get a perfect salt ring deposit in your pasta pot Particle diameter, height from which they fall through water, and particle volume are key factors. Jennifer Ouellette Jan 21, 2025 12:41 pm | 18 Releasing a handful of salt into a pasta pan can result in a circular ring deposit Credit: Mathieu Souzy Releasing a handful of salt into a pasta pan can result in a circular ring deposit Credit: Mathieu Souzy Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn morePhysicist Mathieu Souzy of the University Twente was enjoying an evening of pasta and board games with several colleagues when the conversation turned to how adding salt to a pasta pot to make it boil faster can leave a white ring on the bottom of the pot. Ever the curious scientists, they wondered about the various factors that would contribute to creating the perfect circular pattern for a salt ring.By the end of our meal, wed sketched an experimental protocol and written a succession of experiments we wanted to try on my youngest sons small whiteboard, said Souzy. It all comes down to three factors: the diameter of the particles (grains of salt, in this case), the settling height, and the number of particles released simultaneously, according to a new paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids.We've previously reported on physicists' longstanding interest in similar phenomena like the "coffee ring effect," when a single liquid evaporates and the solids that had been dissolved in the liquid (like coffee grounds) form a ring. It happens because the evaporation occurs faster at the edge than at the center. Any remaining liquid flows outward to the edge to fill in the gaps, dragging those solids with it. Mixing in solvents (water or alcohol) reduces the effect as long as the drops are very small. Large drops produce more uniform stains.There are also the so-called "whiskey webs" formed by American whiskeys (but not their Scottish counterparts): an unusual web-like pattern as droplets dry up. Those webs are different for different brands, making them a kind of "fingerprint." Similarly, when a drop of watercolor paint dries, the pigment particles of color break outward, toward the rim of the drop.A pinch of saltSouzy et al. specifically wanted to explore what mechanisms produce the salt rings and whether other deposit shapes are possible, as well as identify the key parameters involved. For their experiments, they used a large transparent water tank filled with waterlarge enough that the physicists could discount any effects a nearby wall might have on the results. Deposit morphologies for a settling particle. When increasing either the injection volume or the settling height, the deposit radius increases. Credit: M. Souzy et al., 2025 They used spherical borosilicate glass beads of varying diameters to represent the grains of salt and loaded different fixed volumes of beads into cylindrical tubes. Then they slid open the tube's bottom to release the beads, capturing how they fell and settled with a Nikon D300 camera placed at the top of the tank. The tank was illuminated from below by a uniform LED light screen and diffuser to get an even background.The physicists found that gravity will pull a single particle to the bottom of the tank, creating a small wake drag that affects the flow of water around it. That perturbation becomes much more complicated when many large particles are released at once, each with its own wake that affects its neighbors. So, the falling particles start to shift horizontally, distributing the falling particles in an expanding circular pattern.Particles released from a smaller height fall faster and form a pattern with a clean central region. Those released from a greater height take longer to fall to the bottom, and the cloud of particles expands radially until the particles are far enough apart not to be influenced by the wakes of neighboring particles such that they no longer form a cloud. In that case, you end up with a homogeneous salt ring deposit.These are the main physical ingredients, and despite its apparent simplicity, this phenomenon encompasses a wide range of physical concepts such as sedimentation, non-creeping flow, long-range interactions between multiple bodies, and wake entrainment, said Souzy. Things get even more interesting once you realize larger particles are more radially shifted than small ones, which means you can sort particles by size just by dropping them into a water tank. It was a great overall experience, because we soon realized our simple observation of daily life conceals a rich variety of physical mechanisms.Those phenomena are just as relevant outside the kitchen, according to the authors, most notably in such geophysical and industrial contexts as "the discharge of dredged materials and industrial waste into rivers lakes and oceans," they wrote. "In scenarios involving contaminated waste, comprehending the behavior of both the solid waste and the interacting fluid is crucial."Physics of Fluids, 2025. DOI: 10.1063/5.0239386 (About DOIs).Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 18 Comments

Ru ready for k2? Satellite firm bucks miniaturization trend, aims to build big for big rockets "We decided to go after one of the big problems." Eric Berger Jan 21, 2025 1:04 pm | 5 A view inside the K2 factory. Credit: K2 A view inside the K2 factory. Credit: K2 Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreA potentially disruptive satellite company launched its first spacecraft last week as part of a Transporter mission flown on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.The demonstration mission from a California-based firm named K2 aims to "burn down" the risk of the technology that will fly on the company's first full-sized satellite. So far, so good, but it's early days for the demo flight.Founded a little less than three years ago, K2 seeks to disrupt the production of large satellites by focusing on vertical integration and taking advantage of large launch vehicles, such as SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn, which can throw a lot of payload into space."We think we're about to go from an era of mass constraints to an era of mass abundance," said Karan Kunjur, co-founder and chief executive of K2, in an interview with Ars.They go small, we go bigBy contrast, over the last decade, much of the satellite industry has gone smaller. Similar to the trend in consumer electronics, in which more computing power and other capability can be packed into smaller devices, satellites have also gotten smaller and cheaper."When we looked at the market, we saw a massive amount of small satellites," Kunjur said. "The small satellite boom figured out how to go cheaper and faster, but it hasn't figured out how to do that without sacrificing capability."Smaller satellites typically sacrifice a lot of power, going from as much as 20 kilowatts down to 1 or 2 kW, Kunjur said. They also often have a smaller aperture (such as a lens in a telescope), reducing the quality of observations. And they have to make difficult trades between payload capacity and on-board propellant.Taking on an industry titanThere has been less innovation in larger satellites.One of the industry-leading large satellite busesa satellite bus is the main structural component of a satellite, upon which payloads are hostedis Lockheed Martin's LM2100 spacecraft. It is a proven vehicle with a payload capacity of more than 1 ton and 20 kW of peak power. It is used for the military's Global Positioning Satellites and other government applications. The LM2100 is a robust satellite capable of operating in geostationary orbit for 15 years or longer.Although the price of this satellite bus is proprietary, various estimates place the cost at between $100 million and $150 million. One reason for the expense is that Lockheed Martin buys most of the satellite's elements, such as its reaction wheels, from suppliers."Lockheed is amazing at doing those missions with really complex requirements," Kunjur said. "But they just have not changed the way they build these larger, more complex spacecraft in the last 15 or 20 years."Vertical integration is the way?K2 aims to disrupt this ecosystem. For example, the reaction wheels that Honeywell Aerospace sells to Lockheed cost approximately $500,000 to $1 million apiece. K2 is now on its fourth iteration of an internally built reaction wheel and has driven the cost down to $35,000. Kunjur said about 80 percent of K2's satellite production is vertically integrated.The company is now building its first "Mega Class" satellite bus, intended to have similar capabilities to Lockheed's LM2100: 20 kW of power, 1,000 kg of payload capacity, and propulsion to move between orbits. But it's also stackable: Ten will fit within a Falcon 9 payload fairing and about 50 within Starship's fairing. The biggest difference is cost. K2 aims to sell its satellite bus for $15 million.The US government is definitely interested in this capability. About a month ago, K2 announced that it had signed a contract with the US Space Force to launch its first Mega Class satellite in early 2026. The $60 million contract for the "Gravitas" mission will demonstrate the ability of K2's satellite bus to host several experiments and successfully maneuver from low-Earth orbit to middle-Earth orbit (several thousand km above the surface of Earth).Although the Mega Class satellite is attractive to government and commercial customersits lower cost could allow for larger constellations in middle- and geostationary orbitsKunjur said he and his brother Neel Kunjur founded K2 to enable more frequent science missions to other planets in the Solar System."We looked at the decadal studies and saw all the mission concept studies that were done," Kunjur said. "There were maybe 50 studies over a 10-year period. And we realized that if NASA funding remains level, we'll be able to do one or maybe two of these. So we decided to go after one of the big problems."So, if we're moving into an era of launch abundance, K2 might just solve the problem of affordable science satellites to launch on all these rocketsif it all works, of course.Eric BergerSenior Space EditorEric BergerSenior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 5 Comments

burnout Southern California wildfires likely outpace ability of wildlife to adapt Even species that evolved with wildfires, like mountain lions, are struggling. Liza Gross, Inside Climate News Jan 21, 2025 10:35 am | 3 A family of deer gather around burned trees from the Palisades Fire at Will Rogers State Park on Jan. 9 in Los Angeles. Credit: Apu Gomes/Getty Images A family of deer gather around burned trees from the Palisades Fire at Will Rogers State Park on Jan. 9 in Los Angeles. Credit: Apu Gomes/Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAs fires spread with alarming speed through the Pacific Palisades region of Los Angeles Tuesday, Jan. 7, a local TV news crew recorded a mountain lion trailed by two young cubs running through a neighborhood north of the fire. The three lions were about three-quarters of a mile from the nearest open space. Another TV crew captured video of a disoriented, seemingly orphaned fawn trotting down the middle of a street near the Eaton Fire in Altadena, her fur appearing singed, her gait unsteady.Firefighters are still struggling to contain fires in Los Angeles County that have so far destroyed thousands of homes and other structures and left more than two dozen people dead. Fires and the notorious Santa Ana winds that fuel their spread are a natural part of this chaparral landscape.But a warming world is supercharging these fires, experts say. Climate change is causing rapid shifts between very wet years that accelerate the growth of scrubland grasses and brush, leading to whats known as excessive fuel loading, that hotter summers and drier falls and winters turn into easily ignited tinderbox conditions. The area where the fires are burning had the singularly driest October through early January period we have on record, said climate scientist Daniel Swain during an online briefing last week.Its too soon to know the toll these fires have taken on wildlife, particularly wide-ranging carnivores like mountain lions. But biologists worry that the growing severity and frequency of fires is outpacing wildlifes ability to adapt.State wildlife officials dont want people to provide food or water for wild animals, because it can alter their behavior, spread disease, and cause other unintended effects. What wildlife need right now, they say, is to reach safe habitat as fast as they can.Wildlife living at the interface of urban development already face many challenges, and now these fires have deprived them of critical resources, said Beth Pratt, California National Wildlife Federation regional executive director. Animals that escaped the flames have lost shelter, water, and food sources, all the things they need to survive, she said. The fires are even wiping out many of the plants butterflies and other pollinators need to feed and reproduce, she noted.Connecting isolated patches of habitat with interventions like wildlife crossings is critical not only for building fire resilience, Pratt said, but also for protecting biodiversity long term.Mountain lions and other wildlife adapted to the wildfires that shaped the Southern California landscape over thousands of years.Many animals respond to cues that act as early warning signs of fire, using different strategies to avoid flames after seeing or smelling smoke plumes or hearing tree limbs crackle as they burn. Large animals, like mountain lions and deer, tend to run away from advancing flames while smaller species may try to take cover.But now, with major fires happening every year around highly urbanized areas like LA, they cant simply move to a nearby open space.Daniel Blumstein, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and others have exposed animals to fire-related sensory cues in experiments to study their responses.A variety of different species, including lizards, hear or smell these cues and modify their behavior and take defensive action to try to survive, said Blumstein.If youre a lizard or small mammal, he said, getting underground in something like a burrow probably protects you from fire burning above you.But the magnitude and rapidity of these sorts of fires, and the rapidity of these fires particularly, you cant do anything, said Blumstein. I expect lots of wildlife has been killed by this fire, because it just moved so fast.Helping wildlife during emergenciesWildlife experts urge California residents not to provide food or water for wildlife during emergencies like the LA fires. Attracting wildlife to urban areas by providing food and water can have several unintended negative consequences.Fire events often leave many concerned citizens wondering what they can do to help displaced or injured wildlife, said California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Krysten Kellum. The agency appreciates people wanting to help wild animals in California, she said, offering the following recommendations to best help wildlife during emergencies:Please DO NOT provide food or water to wildlife. While this may seem well intentioned, the most critical need of wildlife during and after a wildfire is for them to find their way to safe habitat as quickly as possible. Stopping for food or water in fire zones and residential areas poses risks to them and you. Finding food and water in a specific location even one time can permanently alter an animals behavior. Wildlife quickly learns that the reward of receiving handouts from humans outweighs their fears of being around people. This often leads to a cycle of human-wildlife conflicts, which can easily be avoided.CDFW also advises leaving wild animal rescue to trained professionals. If you find an orphaned, sick, or injured wild animal after a fire event, report the sighting to local CDFW staff by emailing details to R5WildlifeReport@wildlife.ca.gov. You can also contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. For a list of licensed rehabilitators, visit the CDFW website.Just as human defenses didnt work against flames fanned by winds moving 100 miles an hour, he said, things animals might do might not be effective for something traveling so fast.Tuesday night, Jan. 7, Blumstein saw the Eaton Fire burning in the mountains around Altadena, about 30 miles northeast of his home in the Santa Monica Mountains. When he woke up later in the night, he saw that the whole mountain was on fire.You cant run away from that, he said.An evolutionary mismatchThe Los Angeles region is the biggest metropolitan area in North America inhabited by mountain lions. City living has not been kind to the big cats.If they dont die from eating prey loaded with rat poison, lions must navigate a landscape so fragmented by development they often try to cross some of the busiest freeways in the world, just to find food or a mate or to avoid a fight with resident males.Its a lethal choice. About 70 mountain lions are killed on California roads every year, according to the UC Davis Road Ecology Center. The Los Angeles region is a hotspot for such deaths.Roads are the highest source of mortality in our study area, said Jeff Sikich, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service who has been studying the impacts of urbanization and habitat fragmentation on mountain lions in and around the Santa Monica Mountains for more than two decades.Sikich and his team track adults and kittens that they implant with tiny transmitters. In 2023, one of those transmitters told him a three-month-old kitten had been killed on a road that cuts through the Santa Monica Mountains.The kittens caught on video following their mom near the Palisades Fire are probably about the same age.Lions living in the Santa Monica Mountains are so isolated from potential mates by roads and development, Sikich and other researchers reported in 2022, they face a high risk of extinction from extremely low levels of genetic diversity.We dont have many lions radio collared now, but there is one adult male that uses the eastern Santa Monica Mountains, where the Palisades Fire is, Sikich said. I located him on Monday outside the burn area, so hes good.Most of the animals dont have radio collars, though, so Sikich cant say how theyre doing. But if they respond to these fires like they did to previous conflagrations, theyre likely to take risks searching for food and shelter that increase their chances of fatal encounters andif these types of fires persistextinction.We learned a lot after the Woolsey Fire that happened in 2018 and burned nearly half of the Santa Monica Mountains and three-quarters of the Simi Hills, said Sikich.Sikich and his team had 11 lions collared at the time and lost two in the Woolsey Fire. One of the cats just couldnt escape the flames, Sikich said. A second casualty, tracked as P-64 (P is for puma), was a remarkably resourceful male nicknamed the culvert cat because hed managed to safely navigate deadly roadways to connect three different mountain ranges within his home range. P-64, an adult male mountain lion, travels through a tunnel under Highway 101, heading south toward the Santa Monica Mountains in 2018. Credit: National Parks Service P-64, an adult male mountain lion, travels through a tunnel under Highway 101, heading south toward the Santa Monica Mountains in 2018. Credit: National Parks Service The cat traversed a long, dark tunnel under Highway 101, used by more than 350,000 cars a day, to reach a small patch of habitat north of the Santa Monica Mountains. Then he used another tunnel, made for hikers and equestrians, to reach a much larger open space to the north. But when the fire broke out, he didnt have time to reach these escape routes.Sikich could see from P-64s GPS collar that he was in the Simi Hills when the fire started. He began heading south, but ran smack into a developed area, which adult males do their best to avoid, even without the chaos of evacuations and fire engines.So he had two options, Sikich said. He could have entered the urban area or turned around and go back onto the burnt landscape, which he did.A few weeks later, Sikich got a mortality signal from P-64s radio collar. We didnt know at the time, of course, but when we found him, he had burnt paws, he said. So he died from the effects of the fire.The cat was emaciated, with smoke-damaged lungs. His burnt paws hindered his ability to hunt. He likely starved to death.When the team compared collared cats 15 months before and after the fire, they saw that the surviving cats avoided the burned areas. Lions need cover to hunt but the area was just a moonscape, Sikich said. The loss of that habitat forced the cats to take greater risks, likely to find food.Mountain lions tend to be more active around dawn and dusk, but after the fire, collared cats were more active during the day. That meant they were more likely to run into people and cross roads and even busy freeways, Sikich and his team reported in a 2022 study. On Dec. 3, 2018, National Park Service researchers discovered the remains of P-64, who survived the flames of the Woolsey Fire but died a few weeks later. The lion was emaciated and likely starved to death, unable to hunt with burnt paws. Credit: National Park Service On Dec. 3, 2018, National Park Service researchers discovered the remains of P-64, who survived the flames of the Woolsey Fire but died a few weeks later. The lion was emaciated and likely starved to death, unable to hunt with burnt paws. Credit: National Park Service We expect animals, in the long run, to adapt to the environments in which they live, said Blumstein, who contributed to the study. In California, they adapted to coastal chaparral fires but not to fires in a fragmented habitat dominated by development. And when animals adapt to something, there can be mismatches between what they see as attractive and whats good for them, he explained.Historically, being attracted to dense vegetation might have been a good thing, but if the only dense vegetation left after a fire is around peoples houses, that may not be a good thing, he said.Two cats tracked after the fire died of rodenticide poisoning and another was killed by a vehicle.The cats also traveled greater distances, which put young males at greater risk of running into older males defending their territory. The cat who died on the road was the first to successfully cross the 405 interstate, the busiest in the nation, from the Santa Monica Mountains into the Hollywood Hills. Sikich knew from remote cameras that an adult male had lived there for years. Then after the fire, surveillance footage from a camera in a gated community caught that dominant male chasing the young intruder up a tree, then toward the freeway.He tried to head back west but wasnt lucky this time as he crossed the 405, Sikich said.Add climate change-fueled fires to the list of human activity thats threatening the survival of Southern Californias mountain lions.Counting on wildlife crossingsWhen the Woolsey Fire took out half of the open space in the Santa Monica Mountains, it placed considerable stress on animals from mountain lions to monarchs, said Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation. These massive fires underscore the urgent need to connect isolated patches of habitat to boost species ability to cope with other stressors, especially in an urban environment, she said.Studies by Sikich and others demonstrated the critical need for a wildlife crossing across Highway 101 to connect protected habitat in the Santa Monica Mountains with habitat in the Simi Hills in the north. It was at a tunnel underneath the 101 connecting those two regions that Sikich first saw the culvert cat, the lion with burnt paws who perished in the Woolsey Fire.More than 20 years of research highlights the importance of connectivity in these fire-prone areas, he said, so animals can safely get across the freeways around these urban areas.Pratt helped raise awareness about the need for a wildlife crossing through the #SaveLACougars campaign. She also helped raise tens of millions of dollars to build the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, aided by P-22, the mountain lion who became world-famous as the Hollywood cat. P-22 lived his life within an improbably small 8-square-mile home range in LAs Griffith Park, after crossing two of the nations busiest freeways.The crossing broke ground in 2022, the same year wildlife officials euthanized P-22, after they determined the 12-year-old cat was suffering from multiple serious injuries, likely from a vehicle strike, debilitating health problems, and rodenticide poisoning.Wildlife crossing and connectivity projects dont just address biodiversity collapse, they also boost fire and climate resilience, Pratt said, because they give animals options, whether to escape fire, drought, or roads.Thinking of fire as something to fight is a losing battle, she said. Its something we have to coexist with. And I think that we are making investments that are trying to take out a reliance on fossil fuels so that the conditions for these fires are not so severe, she said, referring to Californias targets to slash greenhouse gas emissions within the next 20 years.Even with the inbreeding and lethal threats from cars and rat poison, Sikich sees reason to be hopeful for the Santa Monica lion population.For one thing, he said, were seeing reproduction, pointing to the mom with kittens seen above the Palisades fire and new litters among the females his team is following. And the amount of natural habitat we do have is great, he said, with plenty of deer and cover for hunting. Thats why we still have lions.This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.Liza Gross, Inside Climate News 3 Comments

oh well Californias air pollution waiver and the EV mandate are banned by Trump Among the new president's many executive orders were attacks on clean vehicle policies. Jonathan M. Gitlin Jan 21, 2025 8:19 am | 87 Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreUS President Donald Trump swore his oath of office on Monday, ascending yet again to the head of the federal government. As widely expected, he signed a swath of executive orders on his first day, many aimed at upending existing policies and satisfying grievances, whether that's pulling the country out of membership of the World Health Organizationor reversing the nation's clean vehicle policies.The Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 were signature pieces of former President Joe Biden's term of office. Among other things, the two bills contained many provisions meant to boost US competitiveness in EV manufacturing and build out publicly funded charging infrastructure.Specifically, the IIJA included $7.5 billion in funding for charging infrastructure. The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure programs were modeled on federal highway funding programs, where the funds are disbursed to state departments of transportation, which then award the money to successful applications. NEVI was meant to create corridors of fast chargers along federal highways, and CFI to build out charging infrastructure in underserved areas.That all seems very unlikely now. Trump has ordered the end of the "Green New Deal." He has ordered that all agencies immediately pause any disbursement of funds for NEVI and CFI and that those agencies conduct a review of their policies. If those agencies want to hand out any of that money from now on, they will have to satisfy the new head of the Office of Management and Budget that doing so is consistent with the president's desire to end any favorable treatment toward EVs.EV tax credit and Californias waiverThe executive order "Unleashing American Energy" also kills off former President Biden's goal of increasing EV adoption to 50 percent of all new vehicle sales by 2032. The order claims that it is ensuring "consumer choice" and "a level regulatory field" for vehicle sales.To do this, it eliminates "state emissions waivers that function to limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles." That spells bad news for California and the 17 other states that follow the California Air Resources Board's Zero Emissions Vehicles regulations. California has been granted waivers under the Clean Air Act to set emissions controls within its state borders, but the first Trump administration spent much time and energy battling CARB's waiver.The previous moves to block CARB's waiver were partially successful and only reversed by the US Environmental Protection Agency just over a month ago.The revised clean vehicle tax credit, which provides up to $7,500 in credit toward the purchase of a new EV, or up to $4,000 for the purchase of a used EV, also looks to be in trouble. The executive order also calls out "unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase by individuals, private businesses, and government entities alike by rendering other types of vehicles unaffordable." However, as the clean vehicle tax credit is a part of the tax code, changes to it will require Congress to pass legislation to that effect.As you might expect, environmental groups are not impressed. "The transition to electric vehicles is opening factories and putting people back to work across the country," said Katherine Garca, Sierra Club director of the Clean Transportation for All campaign. "Instead of building upon progress weve made, Donald Trump remains intent on fear-mongering around electric vehicles and taking the US back in time while the rest of the world moves forward on auto innovation. Rolling back vehicle emission safeguards harms our health, our wallets, and our climate."Jonathan M. GitlinAutomotive EditorJonathan M. GitlinAutomotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 87 Comments

Second attempt Trump orders US withdrawal from the World Health Organization A withdrawal from the UN health agency is a year-long process. Beth Mole Jan 20, 2025 10:35 pm | 29 World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Credit: Getty | Fabrice Cof World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Credit: Getty | Fabrice Cof Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreOn his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order to withdrawal the US from the World Health Organization, a process that requires a one-year notice period as set out in a 1948 Joint Resolution of Congress.Trump initially tried to extract the US from the United Nations health agency in July 2020, but the process did not come to completion before he was voted out of office.At the time, Trump criticized the agency's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, claimed it was protecting China, and asserted that it was overcharging the US in dues. "China has total control over the World Health Organization despite only paying $40 million per year, compared to what the United States has been paying, which is approximately $450 million a year," Trump said in 2020 prior to issuing the first notice of withdrawal.President Biden rescinded the withdrawal notice on his first day in office in January 2021.In the executive order issued today, Trump reinstated the withdrawal while reiterating the original reasoning for the departure:The United States noticed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2020 due to the organizations mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states. In addition, the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries assessed payments. China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.Health experts fear that a US withdrawal from the agency would significantly diminish the agency's resources and capabilities, leave the world more vulnerable to health threats, and isolate the US, hurting its own interests and leaving the country less prepared to respond to another pandemic. The New York Times noted that a withdrawal would mean that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would lose, among many things, access to global health data that the WHO compiles.It remains legally unclear if Trump can unilaterally withdrawal the country from the WHO, or if the withdrawal also requires a joint act with Congress.Beth MoleSenior Health ReporterBeth MoleSenior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technicas Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 29 Comments

An update about sorting updates Report: Apple Mail is getting automatic categories on iPadOS and macOS It's pretty smart, but it doesn't require Apple Intelligence. Kevin Purdy Jan 20, 2025 5:28 pm | 18 Credit: Apple Credit: Apple Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreA report from Mark Gurman in Bloomberg makes the very reasonable suggestion that automatic email categorization in Apple Mail, already present since iOS 18 arrived on the iPhone, is coming to Macs and iPads in a few months. The feature should arrive with macOS 15.4 and possibly iPadOS 18.4, both due in April.Similar to Google's server-side Gmail sorting, which debuted in May 2013, Apple's Mail app on iOS sorts email into categories: "Primary," "Transactions," "Updates," and "Promotions." Moving an email manually from one category to another generally fixes the categorization for that sender from then on. You cannot create new categories, however, or alter how Apple's sorting functions.Some may prefer the simplicity of a single scroll of messages, versus having to check four separate inboxes to ensure that nothing got missorted or is more important than the label implies. I've used sorting on iOS and generally found it helpful, though I also use the Filters button in the lower-left corner on iOS to do a double-check of all the mail addressed specifically to me. On a Mac desktop, I'm partial to Mimestream, but that's because all my mail comes through Google/Workspace accounts. I'll be watching to see how Mail's sorting translates to macOS.Unlike numerous other new and recent OS-level features from Apple, mail sorting does not require a device capable of supporting its Apple Intelligence (generally M-series Macs or iPads), and happens entirely on the device. It's an optional feature and available only for English-language emails.Apple released a third beta of MacOS 15.3 just days ago, indicating that early, developer-oriented builds of macOS 15.4 with the sorting feature should be weeks away. While Gurman's newsletter suggests mail sorting will also arrive in the Mail app for iPadOS, he did not specify which version, though the timing would suggest the roughly simultaneous release of iPadOS 18.4.Also slated to arrive in the same update for Apple-Intelligence-ready devices is the version of Siri that understands more context about questions, from what's on your screen and in your apps. "Add this address to Rick's contact information," "When is my mom's flight landing," and "What time do I have dinner with her" are the sorts of examples Apple highlighted in its June unveiling of iOS 18.Since then, Apple has divvied up certain aspects of Intelligence into different OS point updates. General ChatGPT access and image generation have arrived in iOS 18.2 (and related Mac and iPad updates), while notification summaries, which can be pretty rough, are being rethought and better labeled and will be removed from certain news notifications in iOS 18.3.Kevin PurdySenior Technology ReporterKevin PurdySenior Technology Reporter Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch. 18 Comments

Ex-beachfront property? Field of mounds on Mars may be sign of erosion at the edge of an ocean What may have been an ancient shoreline has signs of a water-driven transformation. John Timmer Jan 20, 2025 5:14 pm | 0 The Mawrth Vallis region of Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona The Mawrth Vallis region of Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreFor decades, we have been imaging the surface of Mars with ever-finer resolution, cataloging a huge range of features on its surface, studying their composition, and, in a few cases, dispatching rovers to make on-the-ground readings. But a catalog of what's present on Mars doesn't give us answers to what's often the key question: how did a given feature get there? In fact, even with all the data we have available, there are a number of major bits of Martian geography that have produced major academic arguments that have yet to be resolved.In Monday's issue of Nature Geoscience, a team of UK-based researchers tackle a big one: Mars' dichotomy, the somewhat nebulous boundary between its relatively elevated southern half, and the low basin that occupies its northern hemisphere, a feature that some have proposed also served as an ancient shoreline. The new work suggests that the edge of the dichotomy was eroded back by hundreds of kilometers during the time when an ocean might have occupied Mars' northern hemisphere.Close to the edgeTo view the Martian dichotomy, all you need to do is color-code a relief map of the Martian surface, something that NASA has conveniently done for us. Barring a couple of enormous basins, the entire southern hemisphere of the red planet is elevated by a kilometer or more, and sits atop a far thicker crust. With the exception of the volcanic Tharsis region the boundary between these two areas runs roughly along the equator. There's a clear difference between Mars' northern and southern hemispheres, called the Martian dichotomy. Credit: NASA There are two mysteries associated with this dichotomy. One is how it got there, with ideas that range from an abortive early form of plate-tectonics to various planet-shaping impact scenarios. The second is whether it served a function early in the planet's history. All indications are that Mars had a warmer, watery past, and there have been proposals that included an ocean filling Mars' northern basin. But that has also been subject to debate.The new work focuses on an area called Mawrth Vallis, which sits at the edge of the dichotomy. Relative to the northern basin, it's a kilometer-high plateau cut by a major outflow channel that seems to have been caused by one or more massive floods. The slopes surrounding the plateau feature different types of clay-derived minerals, suggesting the area had been subject to interactions between the original materials and water.Rather than focusing on the plateau itself, the work focuses on the neighboring lowlands, which include a large region dotted with thousands of buttes and mesas that rise roughly a kilometer above the surrounding plains. Using data from the ESA's Mars Express mission, they determine that these features tend to top out at the same height as the nearby plateau. And, using data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, they determined that the clays present along the slopes match those found on the plateau as well.Their conclusion from this is that the mesas and buttes are the remains of what was once a far larger plateau, which was largely eroded away on the side facing the northern basin. And that erosion took place across a pretty significant distance, as the buttes extend hundreds of kilometers away from the present highlands.And, just as at the highland plateau, these mounds hint at a water-based process that modified the rocks from the top down. That's because the deeper clays are often magnesium-rich, which tends to happen when water comes in contact with volcanic rocks or material with similar chemistry. Closer to the surface, things transition to aluminum- and iron-rich clays. These clays can occur when the water source is acidic or can be simply due to longer exposure to water, as the magnesium clays are a bit more soluble.A shoreline transformed?The huge area covered by these mounds gives a sense of just how significant this erosion was. "The dichotomy boundary has receded several hundred kilometres," the researchers note. "Nearly all intervening materialapproximately 57,000cubic kilometers over an area of 284,000square kilometers west of Ares Vallis alonehas been removed, leaving only remnant mounds."Based on the distribution of the different clays, the team argues that their water-driven formation took place before the erosion of the material. This would indicate that water-rock interactions were going on over a very wide region early in the history of Mars, which likely required an extensive hydrological cycle on the red planet. As the researchers note, a nearby ocean would have improved the chances of exposing this region to water, but the exposure could also have been due to processes like melting at the base of an ice cap.Complicating matters further, many of the mounds top out below one proposed shoreline of the northern ocean and above a second. It's possible that a receding ocean could have contributed to their erosion. But, at the same time, some of the features of a proposed shoreline now appear to have been caused by the general erosion of the original plateau, and may not be associated with an ocean at all.Overall, the new results provide mixed evidence for the presence of a Martian ocean. They clearly show an active water cycle and erosion on a massive scale, which are both consistent with having a lot of water around. At the same time, however, the water exposure the mesas and buttes have experienced needn't have come through their being submerged by said ocean and, given their elevation, might best be explained through some other process.Nature Geoscience, 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-024-01634-8 (About DOIs).John TimmerSenior Science EditorJohn TimmerSenior Science Editor John is Ars Technica's science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots. 0 Comments

Enhanced surveillance DC-area veterinarians on heightened alert amid potential inauguration risks There is no specific threat, but the alert highlights One Health approach to risk. Beth Mole Jan 20, 2025 2:57 pm | 2 Credit: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc via Getty Credit: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc via Getty Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreVeterinarians in the Washington, DC region have been put on alert for any unusual illnesses in their non-human patients amid today's presidential inaugurationa nod to the significance of potential zoonotic bioterror threats.In a recent letter to Virginia veterinarians, the state health department requested assistance in the "enhanced surveillance," while noting that, currently, there is no report of threats or bioterrorism-related illnesses."As with any large-scale public event, there will be heightened security, and the region will be on alert or signs of bioterrorism or other potential threats," the letter read. "Enhanced surveillance is being conducted out of an abundance of caution."Health officials are asking veterinarians to report any animals who develop an unusual, severe illness within 14 days of exposure to the National Mall area during the inaugural period between January 19 and January 21. The cases could include animals who travel to the area or who live there. If such a case arises, veterinarians should report the case "rapidly by phone" to the officials in the state's Zoonotic Disease Program. That includes State Public Health Veterinarian Julia Murphy.In an interview with Ars Technica, Murphy noted that the health department has requested enhanced surveillance from veterinarians in the past. "We did a similar thing for the last inauguration," she said.The recruitment of veterinarians highlights the threat posed by zoonotic diseasesthat is, those that can transmit between animals and humans. And it demonstrates the value of a "One Health" approach to health, which recognizes the interconnection between animals, humans, and shared environments.In emerging outbreaks or bioterror events, animal illnesses have the potential to act as sentinelsthe first to show signs of a diseaseas well as be informative for understanding the geographic scope and severity of an event, Murphy explained. For instance, the bacterium Francisella tularensis, which causes a potentially serious illness called tularemia, is particularly dangerous for rabbits and rodents. "Their incubation period can be quite shorttypically, not alwaysbut it can often be shorter than in people," she said, referring to the time between an exposure to an illness and when symptoms develop. F. tularensis is considered a potential bioterror weapon and appears on the federal list of Select Agents and Toxins.Role of animalsMurphy also noted the role of birds in detecting the introduction of West Nile Virus to North America in 1999. In August of that year, the New York City Department of Health identified eight people with severe encephalitis (brain inflammation) within a 16-square mile area around Queens. It was not immediately clear what was behind the disease cluster, but a deadly outbreak among area birds at the same time led disease detectives to the answer. West Nile Virus was first isolated from tissue samples from American crows in neighboring Westchester County, N.Y., and a Chilean flamingo in a nearby zoo. Subsequent testing linked the virus to the human cases.In regard to a potential biological or toxic threat at the inauguration, health officials left the possibilities wide open. The letter notes some recognizable threats, such as anthrax, tularemia, Ebola, plague, and botulism. A noninclusive list of concerning symptoms included fever, vesicles, hemorrhage, severe head and neck swelling, paralysis and other neurologic signs, sepsis, multi-organ failure, and death.But Murphy emphasized that these were just some examples. What veterinarians should really look for is a combination of something unusual, exposure to the inauguration area, and being in the two-week window."If they're seeing anything that that strikes them as unusualmaybe unusually severe illness or clusters of illnessand they have any concern at all that that animal may have had some type of connection to the general area around which the inauguration is happening, they should alert us and we can talk it through," Murphy said.Next steps would include connecting with diagnostic resources, and potentially reaching out to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Agriculture.Murphy also noted that the public health system has built up strong relationships with the clinical veterinarian community. "If something was to happen, I have a high degree of confidence that we would hear about it early and quickly."Beth MoleSenior Health ReporterBeth MoleSenior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technicas Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 2 Comments

Cleanup on aisle cerebellum Sleeping pills stop the brains system for cleaning out waste A specialized system sends pulses of pressure through the fluids in our brain. Jacek Krywko Jan 20, 2025 11:54 am | 30 Credit: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/sleeping-pills-in-bedroom-royalty-free-image/819748064? Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreOur bodies rely on their lymphatic system to drain excessive fluids and remove waste from tissues, feeding those back into the blood stream. Its a complex yet efficient cleaning mechanism that works in every organ except the brain. When cells are active, they produce waste metabolites, and this also happens in the brain. Since there are no lymphatic vessels in the brain, the question was what was it that cleaned the brain, Natalie Hauglund, a neuroscientist at Oxford University who led a recent study on the brain-clearing mechanism, told Ars.Earlier studies done mostly on mice discovered that the brain had a system that flushed its tissues with cerebrospinal fluid, which carried away waste products in a process called glymphatic clearance. Scientists noticed that this only happened during sleep, but it was unknown what it was about sleep that initiated this cleaning process, Hauglund explains.Her study found the glymphatic clearance was mediated by a hormone called norepinephrine and happened almost exclusively during the NREM sleep phase. But it only worked when sleep was natural. Anesthesia and sleeping pills shut this process down nearly completely.Taking it slowlyThe glymphatic system in the brain was discovered back in 2013 by Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, a Danish neuroscientist and a coauthor of Hauglunds paper. Since then, there have been numerous studies aimed at figuring out how it worked, but most of them had one problem: they were done on anesthetized mice.What makes anesthesia useful is that you can have a very controlled setting, Hauglund says.Most brain imaging techniques require a subject, an animal or a human, to be still. In mouse experiments, that meant immobilizing their heads so the research team could get clear scans. But anesthesia also shuts down some of the mechanisms in the brain, Hauglund argues.So, her team designed a study to see how the brain-clearing mechanism works in mice that could move freely in their cages and sleep naturally whenever they felt like it. It turned out that with the glymphatic system, we didnt really see the full picture when we used anesthesia, Hauglund says.Looking into the brain of a mouse that runs around and wiggles during sleep, though, wasnt easy. The team pulled it off by using a technique called flow fiber photometry which works by imaging fluids tagged with fluorescent markers using a probe implanted in the brain. So, the mice got the optical fibers implanted in their brains. Once that was done, the team put fluorescent tags in the mices blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and on the norepinephrine hormone. Fluorescent molecules in the cerebrospinal fluid had one wavelength, blood had another wavelength, and norepinephrine had yet another wavelength, Hauglund says.This way, her team could get a fairly precise idea about the brain fluid dynamics when mice were awake and asleep. And it turned out that the glymphatic system basically turned brain tissues into a slowly moving pump.Pumping upNorepinephrine is released from a small area of the brain in the brain stem, Hauglund says. It is mainly known as a response to stressful situations. For example, in fight or flight scenarios, you see norepinephrine levels increasing. Its main effect is causing blood vessels to contract. Still, in more recent research, people found out that during sleep, norepinephrine is released in slow waves that roll over the brain roughly once a minute. This oscillatory norepinephrine release proved crucial to the operation of the glymphatic system.When we used the flow fiber photometry method to look into the brains of mice, we saw these slow waves of norepinephrine, but we also saw how it works in synchrony with fluctuation in the blood volume, Hauglund says.Every time the norepinephrine level went up, it caused the contraction of the blood vessels in the brain, and the blood volume went down. At the same time, the contraction increased the volume of the perivascular spaces around the blood vessels, which were immediately filled with the cerebrospinal fluid.When the norepinephrine level went down, the process worked in reverse: the blood vessels dilated, letting the blood in and pushing the cerebrospinal fluid out. What we found was that norepinephrine worked a little bit like a conductor of an orchestra and makes the blood and cerebrospinal fluid move in synchrony in these slow waves, Hauglund says.And because the study was designed to monitor this process in freely moving, undisturbed mice, the team learned exactly when all this was going on. When mice were awake, the norepinephrine levels were much higher but relatively steady. The team observed the opposite during the REM sleep phase, where the norepinephrine levels were consistently low. The oscillatory behavior was present exclusively during the NREM sleep phase.So, the team wanted to check how the glymphatic clearance would work when they gave the mice zolpidem, a sleeping drug that had been proven to increase NREM sleep time. In theory, zolpidem should have boosted brain-clearing. But it turned it off instead.Non-sleeping pillsWhen we looked at the mice after giving them zolpidem, we saw they all fell asleep very quickly. That was expectedwe take zolpidem because it makes it easier for us to sleep, Hauglund says. But then we saw those slow fluctuations in norepinephrine, blood volume, and cerebrospinal fluid almost completely stopped.No fluctuations meant the glymphatic system didnt remove any waste. This was a serious issue, because one of the cellular waste products it is supposed to remove is amyloid beta, found in the brains of patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease.Hauglund speculates it could be possible zolpidem induces a state very similar to sleep but at the same time it shuts down important processes that happen during sleep. While heavy zolpidem use has been associated with increased risk of the Alzheimer disease, it is not clear if this increased risk was there because the drug was inhibiting oscillatory norepinephrine release in the brain. To better understand this, Hauglund wants to get a closer look into how the glymphatic system works in humans.We know we have the same wave-like fluid dynamics in the brain, so this could also drive the brain clearance in humans, Haugland told Ars. Still, its very hard to look at norepinephrine in the human brain because we need an invasive technique to get to the tissue.But she said norepinephrine levels in people can be estimated based on indirect clues. One of them is pupil dilation and contraction, which work in in synchrony with the norepinephrine levels. Another other clue may lay in microarousalsvery brief, imperceivable awakenings which, Hauglund thinks, can be correlated with the brain clearing mechanism. I am currently interested in this phenomenon []. Right now we have no idea why microarousals are there or what function they have Hauglund says.But the last step she has on her roadmap is making better sleeping pills. We need sleeping drugs that dont have this inhibitory effect on the norepinephrine waves. If we can have a sleeping pill that helps people sleep without disrupting their sleep at the same time it will be very important, Hauglund concludes.Cell, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.11.027Jacek KrywkoAssociate WriterJacek KrywkoAssociate Writer Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry. 30 Comments

go with the flow Peeing is contagious among chimps Physical proximity, social dominance are primary factors involved in "contagious urination" behavior. Jennifer Ouellette Jan 20, 2025 11:00 am | 5 "Well, if you're gonna pee, I might as well too." Credit: Onishi et al., 2025/CC BY-SA "Well, if you're gonna pee, I might as well too." Credit: Onishi et al., 2025/CC BY-SA Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWhen ya gotta go, ya gotta go, and if it sometimes seems like the urge to pee seems more pressing when others nearby are letting loosewell, there's now a bit of science to back that up. It turns out that humans may not be the only species to experience "contagious urination," according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. Chimpanzees living at the Kumamoto Sanctuary in Japan are also more likely to relieve themselves when others are doing so nearby, and the behavior seems to be hierarchical, "flowing down" from dominant chimps to more passive ones.In humans, urinating together can be seen as a social phenomenon, said coauthor Ena Onishi of Kyoto University. An Italian proverb states, Whoever doesnt pee in company is either a thief or a spy (Chi non piscia in compagnia o un ladro o una spia), while in Japanese, the act of urinating with others is referred to as 'Tsureshon' (). This behavior is represented in art across centuries and cultures and continues to appear in modern social contexts. Our research suggests that this phenomenon may have deep evolutionary roots.Onishi, et al decided to study the phenomenon after noticing that many chimps in the sanctuary seemed to synchronize when they peed, and they wondered whether the phenomenon might be similar to how one person yawning can trigger others to follow suitanother "semi-voluntary physiological behavior." There had been no prior research into contagious peeing. So they filmed the 20 captive chimps over 600 hours, documenting over 1,300 "urination events."Those results supported the initial hypothesis that chimps tended to urinate in sync rather than randomly. Further analysis showed that the closer a chimp was to another peeing chimp, the more likely the probability of that chimp peeing as wellevidence of social contagion. Finally, Onishi et al. wanted to explore whether social relationships (like socially close pairs, evidenced by mutual grooming and similar behaviors) influenced contagious urination. The only social factor that proved relevant was dominance, with less-dominant chimps being more prone to contagious urination.There may still be other factors influencing the behavior, and more experimental research is needed on potential sensory cues and social triggers in order to identify possible underlying mechanisms for the phenomenon. Furthermore, this study was conducted with a captive chimp population; to better understand potential evolutionary roots, there should be research on wild chimp populations, looking at possible links between contagious urination and factors like ranging patterns, territory use, and so forth.This was an unexpected and fascinating result, as it opens up multiple possibilities for interpretation, said coauthor Shinya Yamamoto, also of Kyoto University. For instance, it could reflect hidden leadership in synchronizing group activities, the reinforcement of social bonds, or attention bias among lower-ranking individuals. These findings raise intriguing questions about the social functions of this behavior.DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2024.11.052 (About DOIs).Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 5 Comments

still learning iOS 18.3 beta disables news notification summaries after high-stakes errors Summaries are often incorrect or strange; Apple is working on improvements. Andrew Cunningham Jan 17, 2025 11:37 am | 88 iPhones running iOS 18. Credit: Apple iPhones running iOS 18. Credit: Apple Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreApple released new beta versions of iOS 18.3 to developers and the public yesterday, and one of the changes coming with the new software update will (at least temporarily) disable Apple Intelligence notification summaries for all apps in the App Store's News and Entertainment category, at least temporarily.Apple said earlier this month that it would be instituting updates to how these notifications are handled after complaints from news organizations, and the company has apparently decided to turn them off entirely while it decides what those updates will look like. Most prominently, one user's notification summary from the BBC suggested that Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had died of suicide; this was not true. Other examples have been cropping up since then.For the notification summaries that remain, Apple is instituting changes to make it clearer when users are reading summaries and to make it easier to turn those summaries off. Notification summaries in iOS 18.3 will be italicized to help further distinguish them from individual non-summarized notificationsbefore, there was a small icon next to the text to indicate you were looking at a summary. Apple is also making it possible to turn off summaries on a per-app basis directly from the lock screen without diving into the Settings app to do it.In our own extensive testing with Apple Intelligence notification summaries in iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1, we observed many instances of summaries that were inaccurate or just plain weird. When you're just getting updates from your Discords or group text threads, errors tend to be pretty low-stakes, at least. But when you're getting notifications about war, murder, and politics, these kinds of errors have the potential to mislead and misinform.The iOS 18.1 and 18.2 updates (along with iPadOS 18.2 and macOS Sequoia 15.2) enabled most of Apple's promised Intelligence features across all the hardware that supports them. For the iPhone, that's still only 2023's iPhone 15 Pro and 2024's iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro.The iOS 18.3 update is currently in its third beta release. The iOS 17.3, 16.3, and 15.3 updates have all been released in late January, so it's likely that we'll see the 18.3 update (and corresponding updates for iPadOS, macOS, and other Apple software) released at some point in the next few weeks.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 88 Comments

coal comeback Has Trump changed the retirement plans for the countrys largest coal plants? A growth in electricity demand is leading to talk of delayed closures. Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News Jan 18, 2025 7:04 am | 1 A house is seen near the Gavin Power Plant in Cheshire, Ohio. Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images A house is seen near the Gavin Power Plant in Cheshire, Ohio. Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThis article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.There is renewed talk of a coal power comeback in the United States, inspired by Donald Trumps return to the presidency and forecasts of soaring electricity demand.The evidence so far only shows that some plants are getting small extensions on their retirement dates. This means a slowdown in coals rate of decline, which is bad for the environment, but it does little to change the long-term trajectory for the domestic coal industry.In October, I wrote about how five of the countrys 10 largest coal-fired power plants had retirement dates. Today, Im revisiting the list, providing some updates and then taking a few steps back to look at US coal plants as a whole. Consider this the before picture that can be judged against the after in four years.Some coal plant owners have already pushed back retirement timetables. The largest example, this one from just before the election, is the Gibson plant in Indiana, the second-largest coal plant in the country. Its set to close in 2038 instead of 2035, following an announcement in October from the owner, Duke Energy.But the changes do not constitute a coal comeback in this country. For that to happen, power companies would need to be building new plants to replace the many that are closing, and there is almost no development of new coal plants.That said, there have been some changes since October.As recently as a few months ago, Southern Co. was saying it intended to close Plant Bowen in Georgia by 2035 at the latest. Bowen is the largest coal plant in the country, with a summer capacity of 3,200 megawatts.Southern has since said it may extend the plants life in response to forecasts of rising electricity demand. Chris Womack, Southerns CEO, confirmed this possibility when speaking at a utility industry conference in November, saying that the plant may need to operate for longer than previously planned because of demand from data centers.Southern has not yet made regulatory filings that spell out its plans, but this will likely occur in the next few weeks, according to a company spokesman.In October, I reported that the Gavin plant in Ohio was likely to get a 2031 date to retire or switch to a different fuel once the plants pending sale was completed. The person who shared that information with me was involved with the plans and spoke on condition of anonymity because the sale was not final.Since then, the prospective buyer of the plant has said in federal regulatory filings that it has no timetable for closing the plant or switching to a different fuel. The plant is changing hands as part of a larger deal between investment firms, with Lightstone Holdco selling to Energy Capital Partners, or ECP. Another company, coal exporter Javelin Global Commodities, is buying a minority share of the Gavin plant.I went back to the person who told me about the 2031 retirement date. They said forecasts of rising electricity demand, as well as the election of Trump, have created enough uncertainty about power prices and regulations that it makes sense to not specify a date.The 2031 timeline, and its abandonment, makes some sense once you understand that the Biden administration finalized power plant regulations last spring that gave coal plant operators an incentive to announce a retirement date: Plants closing before 2032 faced no new requirements. That incentive is likely to go away as Trump plans to roll back power plant pollution regulations.Gavins sale is still pending. Several parties have filed objections to the transaction with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, arguing that the sellers have not been clear enough about their plans.An ECP spokesman said the company has no comment beyond its filings.Other than the changes to plans for Bowen and Gavin, the outlook has not shifted for the rest of the plants among the 10 largest. The Gibson and Rockport plants in Indiana still have retirement dates, as do Cumberland in Tennessee and Monroe in Michigan, according to the plants owners.The Amos plant in West Virginia, Miller in Alabama, Scherer in Georgia, and Parish in Texas didnt have retirement dates a few months ago, and they still dont.But the largest coal plants are only part of the story. Several dozen smaller plants are getting extensions of retirement plans, as Emma Foehringer Merchant reported last week for Floodlight News.One example is the 1,157-megawatt Baldwin plant in Illinois, which was scheduled to close this year. Now the owner, Vistra Corp., has pushed back the retirement to 2027.A few extra years of a coal plant is more of a stopgap than a long-term solution. When it comes to building new power plants to meet demand, developers are talking about natural gas, solar, nuclear, and other resources, but I have yet to see a substantial discussion of building a new coal plant.In Alaska, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has said the state may build two coal plants to provide power in remote mining areas, as reported by Taylor Kuykendall of S&P Global Commodity Insights. Flatlands Energy, a Canadian company, has also talked about building a 400-megawatt coal plant in Alaska, as Nathaniel Herz reported for Alaska Beacon. These appear to be early-stage plans.The lack of development activity underscores how coal power is fading in this country, and has been for a while.Coal was used to generate 16 percent of US electricity in 2023, down by more than half from 2014. In that time, coal went from the countrys leading fuel for electricity to trailing natural gas, renewables, and nuclear. (These and all the figures that follow are from the US Energy Information Administration.)The United States had about 176,000 megawatts of coal plant capacity as of October, down from about 300,000 megawatts in 2014.The coal plants that do remain are being used less. In 2023, the average capacity factor for a coal plant was 42 percent. Capacity factor is a measure of how much electricity a plant has generated relative to the maximum possible if it was running all the time. In 2014, the average capacity factor was 61 percent.Power companies are burning less coal because of the availability of less expensive alternatives, such as natural gas, wind, and solar, among others. The think tank Energy Innovation issued a report in 2023 finding that 99 percent of US coal-fired power plants cost more to operate than the cost of replacement with a combination of wind, solar, and batteries.The Trump administration will arrive in Washington with promises to help fossil fuels. It could extend the lives of some coal plants by weakening environmental regulations, which may reduce the plants operational costs. It also could repeal or revise subsidies that help to reduce the costs of renewables and batteries, making those resources more expensive.I dont want to minimize the damage that could be caused by those policies. But even in extreme scenarios, its difficult to imagine investors wanting to spend billions of dollars to develop a new coal plant, much less a fleet of them.Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News 1 Comments

Will Trump save TikTok? TikTok loses Supreme Court fight, prepares to shut down Sunday TikTok has said it's preparing to shut down Sunday. Ashley Belanger Jan 17, 2025 10:15 am | 95 A TikTok influencer holds a sign that reads "Keep TikTok" outside the US Supreme Court Building as the court hears oral arguments on whether to overturn or delay a law that could lead to a ban of TikTok in the U.S., on January 10, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Kayla Bartkowski / Stringer | Getty Images News A TikTok influencer holds a sign that reads "Keep TikTok" outside the US Supreme Court Building as the court hears oral arguments on whether to overturn or delay a law that could lead to a ban of TikTok in the U.S., on January 10, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Kayla Bartkowski / Stringer | Getty Images News Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreTikTok has lost its Supreme Court appeal in a 90 decision and will likely shut down on January 19, a day before Donald Trump's inauguration, unless the app can be sold before the deadline, which TikTok has said is impossible.During the trial last Friday, TikTok lawyer Noel Francisco warned SCOTUS that upholding the Biden administration's divest-or-sell law would likely cause TikTok to go darkessentially the platform shuts down" and "essentially... stop operating." On Wednesday, TikTok reportedly began preparing to shut down the app for all US users, anticipating the loss.But TikTok's claims that the divest-or-sell law violated Americans' free speech rights did not supersede the government's compelling national security interest in blocking a foreign adversary like China from potentially using the app to spy on or influence Americans, SCOTUS ruled."We conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners First Amendment rights," the SCOTUS opinion said, while acknowledging that "there is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community."Late last year, TikTok and its owner, the Chinese-owned company ByteDance, urgently pushed SCOTUS to intervene before the law's January 19 enforcement date. Ahead of SCOTUS' decision, TikTok warned it would have no choice but to abruptly shut down a thriving platform where many Americans get their news, express their views, and make a living.The US had argued the law was necessary to protect national security interests as the US-China trade war intensifies, alleging that China could use the app to track and influence TikTok's 170 million American users. A lower court had agreed that the US had a compelling national security interest and rejected arguments that the law violated the First Amendment, triggering TikTok's appeal to SCOTUS. Today, the Supreme Court upheld that ruling.According to SCOTUS, the divest-or-sell law is "content-neutral" and only triggers intermediate scrutiny. That requires that the law doesn't burden "substantially more speech than necessary" to serve the government's national security interests, rather than strict scrutiny which would force the government to protect those interests through the least restrictive means.Further, the government was right to single TikTok out, SCOTUS wrote, due to its "scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects.""Preventing China from collecting vast amounts of sensitive data from 170 million US TikTok users" is a "decidedly content agnostic" rationale, justices wrote."The Government had good reason to single out TikTok for special treatment," the opinion said.Momentum to ban TikTok has shiftedFirst Amendment advocates condemned the SCOTUS ruling. The American Civil Liberties Union called it a "major blow to freedom of expression online," and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's civil liberties director David Greene accused justices of sweeping "past the undisputed content-based justification for the law" to "rule only based on the shaky data privacy concerns."While the SCOTUS ruling was unanimous, justice Sonia Sotomayor said that "precedent leaves no doubt" that the law implicated the First Amendment and "plainly" imposed a burden on any US company that distributes TikTok's speech and any content creator who preferred TikTok as a publisher of their speech.Similarly concerned was justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote in his concurring opinion that he harbors "serious reservations about whether the law before us is 'content neutral' and thus escapes 'strict scrutiny.'" Gorsuch also said he didn't know "whether this law will succeed in achieving its ends.""But the question we face today is not the laws wisdom, only its constitutionality," Gorsuch wrote. "Given just a handful of days after oral argument to issue an opinion, I cannot profess the kind of certainty I would like to have about the arguments and record before us. All I can say is that, at this time and under these constraints, the problem appears real and the response to it not unconstitutional."For TikTok and content creators defending the app, the stakes were incredibly high. TikTok repeatedly denied there was any evidence of spying and warned that enforcing the law would allow the government to unlawfully impose "a massive and unprecedented speech restriction." But the Supreme Court declined to order a preliminary injunction to block the law until Trump took office, instead deciding to rush through oral arguments and reach a decision prior to the law's enforcement deadline. Now TikTok has little recourse if it wishes to maintain US operations, as justices suggested during the trial that even if a president chose to not enforce the law, providing access to TikTok or enabling updates could be viewed as too risky for app stores or other distributors.The law at the center of the casethe Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Acthad strong bipartisan support under the Biden administration.But President-elect Donald Trump said he opposed a TikTok ban, despite agreeing that US national security interests in preventing TikTok spying on or manipulating Americans were compelling. And this week, Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has introduced a bill to extend the deadline ahead of a potential TikTok ban, and a top Trump adviser, Congressman Mike Waltz, has said that Trump plans to stop the ban and "keep TikTok from going dark," the BBC reported. Even the Biden administration, whose justice department just finished arguing why the US needed to enforce the law to SCOTUS, "is considering ways to keep TikTok available," sources told NBC News."What might happen next to TikTok remains unclear," Gorsuch noted in the opinion.Will Trump save TikTok?It will likely soon be clear whether Trump will intervene. Trump filed a brief in December, requesting that the Supreme Court stay enforcement of the law until after he takes office because allegedly only he could make a deal to save TikTok. He criticized SCOTUS for rushing the decision and suggested that Congress' passage of the law may have been "legislative encroachment" that potentially "binds his hands" as president."As the incoming Chief Executive, President Trump has a particularly powerful interest in and responsibility for those national-security and foreign-policy questions, and he is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means," Trump's brief said.Trump seemingly has limited options to save TikTok, Forbes suggested. At trial, justices disagreed on whether Trump could legally decide to simply not enforce the law. And efforts to pause enforcement or claim compliance without evidence that ByteDance is working on selling off TikTok could be blocked by the court, analysts said. And while ByteDance has repeatedly said it's unwilling to sell TikTok US, it's possible, one analyst suggested to Forbes, that ByteDance might be more willing to divest "in exchange for Trump backing off his threat of high tariffs on Chinese imports."On Tuesday, a Bloomberg report suggested that China was considering whether selling TikTok to Elon Musk might be a good bargaining chip to de-escalate Trump's attacks in the US-China trade war.Ashley BelangerSenior Policy ReporterAshley BelangerSenior Policy Reporter Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. 95 Comments

Selling your data GM faces ban on selling driver data that can be used to raise insurance rates GM sold geolocation and other driving data without adequate consent, FTC says. Jon Brodkin Jan 17, 2025 1:51 pm | 44 OnStar and SOS buttons in a Chevrolet vehicle on May 3, 2024. Credit: Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado OnStar and SOS buttons in a Chevrolet vehicle on May 3, 2024. Credit: Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreGeneral Motors and its subsidiary OnStar agreed to a settlement that prohibits them from sharing driver location and behavior data with third parties, the Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday. The proposed settlement comes less than a year after GM responded to public backlash by announcing that it stopped sharing driving data from its connected cars with companies such as LexisNexis.The FTC said it "is taking action against General Motors (GM) and OnStar over allegations they collected, used, and sold drivers' precise geolocation data and driving behavior information from millions of vehiclesdata that can be used to set insurance rateswithout adequately notifying consumers and obtaining their affirmative consent." GM did not admit to or deny the allegations.GM and OnStar "will be banned for five years from disclosing consumers' sensitive geolocation and driver behavior data to consumer reporting agencies," the FTC said. Under the settlement, "consumer reporting agency" means a firm that collects or evaluates "consumer credit information or other information on consumers for the purpose of furnishing consumer reports to other parties and which uses any means or facility of interstate commerce for the purpose of preparing or furnishing consumer reports."A New York Times report last year described how the data sharing works. "After LexisNexis and Verisk [a data broker that works with the insurance industry] get data from consumers' cars, they sell information about how people are driving to insurance companies," the NYT report said. "To access it, the insurance companies must get consent from the driverssay, when they go out shopping for car insurance and sign off on boilerplate language that gives insurance companies the right to pull third-party reports."A pending class-action lawsuit against GM, OnStar, and LexisNexis alleges that the defendants deceived and harmed consumers.The FTC said its complaint alleged that "GM used a misleading enrollment process to get consumers to sign up for its OnStar connected vehicle service and the OnStar Smart Driver feature." Lina Khan, who is in her final week as FTC chair, said that "GM monitored and sold people's precise geolocation data and driver behavior information, sometimes as often as every three seconds."Settlement not quite finalizedThe proposed settlement was approved in a closed meeting by the FTC's three Democrats, with the two Republicans recorded as absent. The pending agreement will be subject to public comment for 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, and a final FTC decision will be made under the Trump administration.In addition to location data, the GM/FTC settlement covers "radio listening data regarding specific content, channel, or station; hard braking, hard acceleration, hard cornering, crossing of a designated high-speed threshold, seat belt usage, or late-night driving; and trip time and duration for such events." GM and OnStar agreed to delete data collected before the settlement and ask third parties to delete data previously shared with them.GM also "must allow consumers to disable the collection of Location Data from their Vehicles to the extent the Vehicle is equipped with the necessary technology."GM issued a press release on the settlement. "Last year, we discontinued Smart Driver across all GM vehicles, unenrolled all customers, and ended our third-party telematics relationships with LexisNexis and Verisk," GM said. "In September, we consolidated many of our US privacy statements into a single, simpler statement as part of our broader work to keep raising the bar on privacy... As part of the agreement, GM will obtain affirmative customer consent to collect, use, or disclose certain types of connected vehicle data (with exceptions for certain purposes)."Affirmative consent is not required for purposes such as providing driver data to emergency responders, responding to customer-initiated communications, complying with government requests and legal requirements, and investigating product quality or safety problems. While the ban on sharing driving data lasts only five years, the overall settlement would be in place for 20 years.Jon BrodkinSenior IT ReporterJon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 44 Comments

an exquisite storyteller Hollywood mourns the loss of David Lynch What better way to honor the visionary director than with a watchfest of some of his greatest work? Jennifer Ouellette Jan 17, 2025 1:52 pm | 66 David Lynch played legendary director John Ford in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2023). Credit: Universal Pictures David Lynch played legendary director John Ford in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2023). Credit: Universal Pictures Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreVisionary filmmaker David Lynchwhose work spanned midnight movie staples like Eraserhead (1977), neo-noir psychological thrillers like Mulholland Drive (2001), and beyondhas died at 78. According to Deadline Hollywood, the director had to evacuate his home due to the LA wildfires. He had been diagnosed with severe emphysema a few years ago and rarely left his house due to COVID-19 fears. Following the evacuation, his health deteriorated, and he died at his daughter's house.It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch, the director's family said in a statement. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. Theres a big hole in the world now that hes no longer with us. But, as he would say, Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole. Its a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.Reactions from Hollywood were swift and heartfelt. Kyle MacLachlan, who became a star when Lynch cast him as Paul Atreides in 1984's Dune, Blue Velvet (1986), and the TV series Twin Peaks, described the director as "the most authentically alive person I'd ever met":What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean bursting inside him. He was in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to... David was in tune with the universe and his own imagination on a level that seemed to be the best version of human. He was not interested in answers because he understood that questions are the drive that make us who we are. They are our breath... I will miss him more than the limits of my language can tell and my heart can bear. My world is that much fuller because I knew him and that much emptier now that he's gone.Lynch began making short films in the late 1960s and graduated from the American Film Institute in 1970. His first feature film was the cult classic Eraserhead, and that early success led to the critically acclaimed The Elephant Man in 1980. The verdict is more mixed on Lynch's adaptation of Dune; I personally found it unwatchable, but it has its diehard fans. It was a box office bomb (although still the director's highest-grossing film), and Lynch himself said in an interview last June that it "wasn't the film I wanted to make because I didn't have final say," adding, "I died a death. And it was all my fault for not knowing to put that in the contract.The success of Lynch's next film, Blue Velvet, helped assuage his disappointment, as did his move to television with the bizarrely surreal and influential series Twin Peakspart detective story, part soap opera, with dashes of sci-fi and horror. The series spawned a spin-off prequel movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and a 2017 revival series, Twin Peaks: The Return, that picks up the storyline 25 years later. Many other TV series were influenced by Lynch's show, including The X-Files, Lost, The Sopranos, Bates Motel, Fargo, Riverdale, Atlanta, and the animated series Gravity Falls.His final feature films were an LA-centric trilogyLost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire (2006)and 1999's biographical road drama, The Straight Story, based on the true story of a man named Alvin Straight who drove across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawn mower. It was acquired by Walt Disney Pictures and was Lynch's only G-rated film.A singular visionary dreamer Lynch launched Kyle MacLachlan's career when he cast him as Paul Atreides in 1984's Dune. Universal Pictures Lynch launched Kyle MacLachlan's career when he cast him as Paul Atreides in 1984's Dune. Universal Pictures One can never un-see a stripped-down Sting in a codpiece. Universal Pictures One can never un-see a stripped-down Sting in a codpiece. Universal Pictures Lynch launched Kyle MacLachlan's career when he cast him as Paul Atreides in 1984's Dune. Universal Pictures One can never un-see a stripped-down Sting in a codpiece. Universal Pictures The director's filmography also includes an assortment of short films, all bearing his eccentric stamp, including a surrealist short, Absurda, shown at Cannes in 2007, as well as Premonition Following an Evil Deed (NSFW YouTube link), Lynch's contribution to the 1995 anthology film Lumire and Company. All 41 featured directors used the original Cinmatographe camera invented by the Lumire brothers. Lynch was also an avid painter, cartoonist, and musician and directed several music videos for such artists as Moby and Nine Inch Nails. Until his death, he hosted quirky online "weather reports" and a web series, What Is David Lynch Working on Today? He even racked up the occasional acting credit.Lynch received an Honorary Oscar in 2000 for lifetime achievement at the Governors Awards after three prior nominations for The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive. Deadline's Pete Hammond called Lynch's speech "probably one of the shortest for any Oscar acceptance." Lynch briefly thanked the Academy, the other honorees, wished everyone a great night, then pointed to the statuette and said, "You have a very interesting figure. Good night." At Cannes, he won the Palme d'Or in 1990 for Wild at Heart and won Best Director in 2001 for Mulholland Drive.Naomi Watts, who played a dual role as doppelgngers Betty Elms and Diane Selwyn in Mulholland Drive, said that Lynch put her "on the map" as an actor by casting her. It wasnt just his art that impacted mehis wisdom, humor, and love gave me a special sense of belief in myself Id never accessed before," she said in a statement. "Every moment together felt charged with a presence Ive rarely seen or known. Probably because, yes, he seemed to live in an altered world, one that I feel beyond lucky to have been a small part of. And David invited all to glimpse into that world through his exquisite storytelling, which elevated cinema and inspired generations of filmmakers across the globe.""I loved Davids films, director Steven Spielberg said in a statement. Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Elephant Man defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade. I got to know David when he played John Ford in The Fabelmans.Here was one of my heroes, David Lynch, playing one of my heroes. It was surreal and seemed like a scene out of one of Davids own movies. The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time and they always will.What better way to honor Lynch's passing than with a watchfest over the three-day weekend of our favorite Lynch creations?Eraserhead Credit: Libra Films How does one even begin to describe the surrealist oddity that is Lynch's first feature film? A young man named Henry (Jack Nance), living in a dank industrial neighborhood, finds out his girlfriend, Mary (Charlotte Stewart), is pregnant; when the baby is born, it is deformed with a snake-like face. Mary abandons them, and Henry, the reluctant father, begins experiencing strange visions about the Man in the Planet, a lady living in the radiator, and his own head popping off and being turned into erasers at a pencil factory.It's less a straightforward plot and more a collection of increasingly bizarre imagery. The finale combines sheer body horror with hints of sci-fi and the supernatural. Frankly, the film won't be to everyone's taste; at least one critic found the finale "unwatchable" when it was first released. But that boundary-pushing vision, plus Lynch's eerie black-and-white cinematography and ingenious sound design, combine to make it a cult favorite among film connoisseurs.The Elephant Man Credit: Paramount Pictures Lynch kept the black-and-white cinematography for his next film, The Elephant Man, which was much more mainstream than Eraserhead, although it also deals with physical deformityin this case, a tale loosely based on the late 19th-century life of John Merrick (John Hurt), a severely disfigured man with a skull so deformed that he would asphyxiate if he were to lie down. Merrick is forced to earn his keep as part of a Victorian freak show in London, where he is habitually abused and kept hooded by his "owner."Merrick is rescued by a surgeon named Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins), who learns that Merrick is quite intelligent and makes him a permanent hospital resident, but Merrick still encounters those who see him as a horror. His climactic cry, "I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!" before collapsing, is a cinematic moment for the ages. Both Hopkins and Hurt give exquisite performances, with Hurt's portrayal being all the more impressive because he had to do so through elaborate prosthetics and makeup. (There is now an Oscar for Best Make-Up because of The Elephant Man.)Blue Velvet Credit: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group Blue Velvet combines classic Hitchcockian elements with Lynch's distinctive visual style and edgy sensibility. A young man named Jeffrey (MacLachlan) finds a severed human ear on a lawn while visiting his ailing father and gets drawn into a mystery involving a sexy lounge singer named Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) and an abusive drug-huffing gangster named Frank (Dennis Hopper), who keeps Dorothy as a sex slave after kidnapping her young son. He will also only drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.It's a frequently violent, disturbing, and unnerving film with overt sadomasochistic themes, but it's also a quite brilliant ode to 1950s film noir that has a way of getting under your skin. The scene where Franks creepy associate Ben (Dean Stockwell) lip-syncs to Roy Orbisons In Dreams, while smearing lipstick on his face and kissing a restrained Jeffrey, is one that will linger well after the film's conclusion.Wild at Heart Credit: Samuel Goldwyn Company[1] Based on Barry Gifford's novel of the same name, Wild at Heart is Lynch's take on the star-crossed lovers-on-the-run trope, weaving elements from The Wizard of Oz and the songs of Elvis Presley into Lula's (Laura Dern) and Sailor's (Nicolas Cage) bloody rampage across the country. They are fleeing a private detective and a hitman, both hired by Lula's mother, who objects to their relationship. While the film polarized viewers and critics upon its release, it has since become a critical favorite.Just how violent is Wild at Heart? About 80 people walked out of a test screening during a graphic torture scene; 100 walked out during a second screening. Lynch realized the scene would kill his film, so he made some cuts to make it more palatable. He had to make further cuts to get a contractually obligated R-rating for the film's US release, using smoke to blur a moment where a character shoots off his own head with a shotgun. "But that was part of what Wild at Heart was really about," he later said. "Really insane and sick and twisted stuff going on." As for Gifford, he thought Lynch's adaptation of his book was "fantasticit's like a big, dark, musical comedy." If that's your jam, this is the film for you.Mulholland Drive Credit: Universal Pictures Mulholland Drive is arguably Lynch's masterpiece, widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. It's certainly a compelling and singular film, with double doppelgngers and a dream-like plot so convoluted and ambiguous that the director included a card with the original DVD release outlining 10 "clues" to unlock his psychological thriller. Other than that, he steadfastly refused to offer any insight over the ensuing years into how the film's events should be interpreted.The film opens with a woman (Laura Harring) nearly being shot by her chauffeur on the titular Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, saved when another car crashes into them. Having lost her memory, she takes refuge in an apartment and is befriended by its tenant, aspiring actress Betty (Naomi Watts). The two set out to discover who the woman is and why she has so much cash and a blue key in her purse. There are decomposing corpses, a lesbian sex scene, a bungling hitman, a director being threatened by mobsters, Spanish crooners in a venue called Club Silence, and a heartbreaking finale. What does it all mean? Lynch is happy to let you speculate.Twin Peaks Credit: ABC If you're feeling super ambitious, the long weekend is the perfect opportunity to binge Twin Peaks. It begins with the discovery of a young woman's body on the beach, wrapped in plastichigh school homecoming queen Laura Palmer. FBI agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) comes to the quirky Pacific Northwest town to help solve the murder. It's the deftly drawn characterswho can forget the Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson)?and quirky local touches that make the show unique. It's all anchored by MacLachlan's wide-eyed appreciation of the region's Douglas firs, good coffee, and cherry pieall dictated in great detail to his offscreen secretary, Diana.Sure, the acting is sometimes hilariously over the topwe're looking at you, Bobby (Dana Ashbrook)but that was par for the course in nighttime soaps of that decade. Twin Peaks takes creative risks that defied conventional industry wisdom at the time, and the first season's short eight-episode run is more typical of today's streaming model. (The second season had the full 22 episodes more typical of broadcast TV.) The unofficial third season, Twin Peaks: The Return, is even more strangely compelling, right down to the unforgettable finale.Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 66 Comments

csam meets ai Under new law, cops bust famous cartoonist for AI-generated child sex abuse images Darrin Bell won a major cartooning award in 2019. Nate Anderson Jan 17, 2025 4:08 pm | 44 Darrin Bell in happier times. Credit: Andri Tambunan | Getty Images Darrin Bell in happier times. Credit: Andri Tambunan | Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreLate last year, California passed a law against the possession or distribution of child sex abuse material (CSAM) that has been generated by AI. The law went into effect on January 1, and Sacramento police announced yesterday that they have already arrested their first suspecta 49-year-old Pulitzer-prize-winning cartoonist named Darrin Bell.The new law, which you can read here, declares that AI-generated CSAM is harmful, even without an actual victim. In part, says the law, this is because all kinds of CSAM can be used to groom children into thinking sexual activity with adults is normal. But the law singles out AI-generated CSAM for special criticism due to the way that generative AI systems work."The creation of CSAM using AI is inherently harmful to children because the machine-learning models utilized by AI have been trained on datasets containing thousands of depictions of known CSAM victims," it says, "revictimizing these real children by using their likeness to generate AI CSAM images into perpetuity."The law defines "artificial intelligence" as "an engineered or machine-based system that varies in its level of autonomy and that can, for explicit or implicit objectives, infer from the input it receives how to generate outputs that can influence physical or virtual environments."Acting on a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Sacramento Valley Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force recently opened an investigation into 18 CSAM files being shared online. Further investigation revealed that the sharer was actually offering 134 CSAM videos, and police claim they were able to trace those files to the account of local resident and well-known cartoonist Darrin Bell.On Wednesday, police executed a warrant on Bell's home; they claim to have recovered "evidence related to the case, as well as computer-generated/AI CSAM." Bell was arrested and is being held on $1 million bail. In a statement, police noted that "this case was the first arrest by Sacramento Valley ICAC where possession of computer-generated/AI CSAM was charged against a suspect."Bell has long been a cartoonist. In 2019, he won a Pulitzer prize "for beautiful and daring editorial cartoons that took on issues affecting disenfranchised communities, calling out lies, hypocrisy and fraud in the political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration."According to local coverage of the case from NBC, Bell "has said the goal of his work is for people to be more respectful of human dignity."Nate AndersonDeputy EditorNate AndersonDeputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 44 Comments

Ownership, now that's a tricky word Camera owner asks Canon, skies: Why is it $5/month for webcam software? Just because it's a good rig doesn't mean you can use it on Zoom. Kevin Purdy Jan 17, 2025 2:36 pm | 31 The Canon PowerShot G5 X II, which is either less valuable than a $50 USB webcam or far better, depending on your Canon subscription software. Credit: Canon The Canon PowerShot G5 X II, which is either less valuable than a $50 USB webcam or far better, depending on your Canon subscription software. Credit: Canon Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn morePhotography enthusiasts pay a lot for their very powerful cameras. How much more should they pay to put them to much, much easier work as a webcam? However many hundreds of dollars you paid, Canon thinks you should pay $5 per monthor, heck, just $50 per yearto do that.Roman Zipp detailed his journey from incredulousness to grim resignation in a blog post. He bought his Canon PowerShot G5 X Mark II for something like $900 last year. The compact model gave him the right match of focal length and sensor size for concert pics. What it did not give him was the ability to change anything at all about his webcam feed using Canon's software. (The "$6,299 camera" referenced in Zipp's blog post title is his indication that all models of Canon's cameras face this conundrum, regardless of price point.)Ah, but that's because Zipp did not pay. If you head to Canon's site, provide a name and email, and manage to grab the EOS Webcam utility when Canon's servers are not failing, you can connect one camera, with one default scene, at 720p, 30 frames per second and adjust everything on the camera itself if you need to. Should you pay $5 per month, or $50 per year, you can unlock EOS Webcam Utility Pro (PDF link), which provides full 60 fps video and most of the features you'd expect out of a webcam that cost hundreds fewer dollars. Comparison of webcam software features available to Canon's "PRO" and "Free" users. Credit: Roman Zipp/Canon Comparison of webcam software features available to Canon's "PRO" and "Free" users. Credit: Roman Zipp/Canon "Software development isnt free, and Im happy to pay for software I use regularly," Zipp writes. "However, Canon is a hardware company, not a software company, and they shoulddue to the lack of standardsprovide software that allows you to use their cameras as intended. Aside from development costs, theres no justification for a subscription model, particularly from a company earning nearly $3 billion in profit."Zipp's pointed complaint made the front page of Hacker News, where commenters immediately got sidetracked into a discussion of UK tariff laws on video equipment, sneakers, cookies, and ethanol. But further in, recommendations appear for the open source Magic Lantern camera add-on software, or possibly CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) firmware. Whether or not Zipp can better use his camera as a webcam is somewhat beside the point, or at least the point he's making.Many higher-end (or at least better-than-smartphone) cameras output video in formats that computers and web conferencing software cannot natively accept. HDMI output is an option, but using that typically requires a capture device and specialty software to mix and use it and that the camera provide "clean" HDMI out, with no overlays. The G5 X Mark II does seem to offer that and has a USB-C port. It also seems to work fine once the software is paid for. It's an open question whether Canon should provide this as part of the cost of the camera, one for which Zipp and many commenters have an answer.Ars has reached out to Canon for comment and will update this post if the company responds.Kevin PurdySenior Technology ReporterKevin PurdySenior Technology Reporter Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch. 31 Comments

ditch the car for solo commutes Trek FX+ 7S e-bike is a premium city commuter The FX+ 7S improves just about everything from the FX+ 2, but doubles its price tag. Jacob May Jan 17, 2025 12:53 pm | 1 The Trek FX+ 7. Credit: Chris DeGraw The Trek FX+ 7. Credit: Chris DeGraw Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn morePost-pandemic, my creed became "Bicycles deliver the freedom that auto ads promise." That belief is why Ive almost exclusively used a bike to move myself around Portland, Oregon since (yes, I have become a Portlandia stereotype).However, that lifestyle is a lot more challenging without some pedal assistance. For a few summers, I showed up sweaty to appointments after pedaling on a $200 single-speed. So in 2024, I purchased the FX+ 2, based primarily on my managing editors review. Its since been a workhorse for my daily transportation needs for the past year; I've put more than 1,000 miles on it in eight months.So given my experience with that bike, I was the natural choice to review Treks upgraded version, the FX+ 7S.A premium pedalerFirst off, my time with the FX+ 2 has been greatno regrets about that purchase. But my one quibble is with the battery. Due to the frequency and length of my rides, I need to charge the bike more often than not, and I sometimes experience range anxiety riding to the opposite side of town. Even though both e-bikes are considered lightweight at 40 pounds, theyre still not the easiest things to pedal sans assist, and Im reliant on their built-in lighting systems after dark.But I didn't have to worry about my remaining charge with the FX+ 7 and its 360 Wh battery. Its extra capacity gives me much less range anxiety, as I can ride without fear of losing juice on the route home. And the LCD on the frame gives you a clear indicator of how much distance and time you have left in your ride, which is always handy. I would caution, however, about relying too much on your estimated distance remaining. The LCD provides some useful info. You can see how much charge is left on the battery, or you can press that button to see your speed, wattage power, or miles ridden. Credit: Chris DeGraw During a 15-mile, hour-long ride while fluctuating between the first two assist levels I had modified, I drained 61 percent of the battery. While the estimated time remaining on my ride was consistent and accurate, the predicted mileage dropped occasionally, although thats probably because I was changing the assist level frequently.There were also a couple of occasions where I was trying to drain the battery completely on a ride home, and after switching the assist level, the motor gave out at around 1015 percent charge remaining, according to the LCD info (the lights, however, stayed on). It wasnt a terrible inconvenience since I was close to home, but its not ideal for anyone hoping to ride consistently with some level of assist.(Trek offers a 160 Wh range extender for $550. I doubt youll need it, considering the range on the bikewhich can be around 60 miles on an unmodified eco settingbut its available if you want the extra juice.)The TQ-HPR50 motor is also a big improvement over my bike's Hyena Gen 2 (50 Nm versus 40 Nm of torque). The timing for the FX+ 2 pedal assist was unadjustable and always a bit slow to kick in, but after tweaking the settings through the Trek Central App, the extra power on the FX+ 7S was evident in all aspects of my ride.I no longer experienced a lengthy lurch as I began pedaling from a full stop, and using a Level 3 assist made any uphill climb a breeze. The bike is also remarkably quiet; on one occasion, I was riding alongside a friend who was riding a different manufacturers e-bike, and the noise coming from his ride was noticeable; mine wasnt. Its also a Class 3 e-bike, which means it can offer pedal-assisted speeds of up to 28 mph (45 kph), but it doesnt provide any throttle. Portland city streets are full of gunk during the winter, but that didn't affect my pedaling too much. Chris DeGraw Portland city streets are full of gunk during the winter, but that didn't affect my pedaling too much. Chris DeGraw The 120-lumen front light. Chris DeGraw The 120-lumen front light. Chris DeGraw Portland city streets are full of gunk during the winter, but that didn't affect my pedaling too much. Chris DeGraw The 120-lumen front light. Chris DeGraw The Trek's backlight curves around to offer illumination from the side, too. Chris DeGraw The Trek's backlight curves around to offer illumination from the side, too. Chris DeGraw You can switch your assist level with this handlebar toggle. Chris DeGraw You can switch your assist level with this handlebar toggle. Chris DeGraw The Trek's backlight curves around to offer illumination from the side, too. Chris DeGraw You can switch your assist level with this handlebar toggle. Chris DeGraw Trek markets this bike as the ultimate city commuter, and can I see why. Ive ridden it for several weeks during a dreary Pacific Northwest winter, where the roads are constantly slick and full of debris. Did any of that affect the bikes performance? Not that I can tell. Despite the gunky roads (and panniers filled with groceries), the aluminum-frame bike performed great, and the hydraulic disc brakes provided plenty of stopping power in wet conditions. The Shimano CUES U6000 drivetrain with a 10-speed shifter never experienced a hiccup.Even riding through the foliage muck and with extra cargo weight, I experienced smoother pedaling and was less impacted by all the bumps and debris in the road, making it even more comfortable to ride than the already-pleasant FX+ 2. The only rough spot I experienced was getting a punctured tube due to a shard of glass in the road, but thats not the tires fault (and its typical of Portland).Trek also added other upgraded commuter considerations:A Quad Lock in the middle of the handlebars that keeps your phone charged and functions as a nice secondary display in case you need turn-by-turn directionsContoured Bontrager handlebars, which are the most comfortable grip Ive felt on any bikeA better lighting system, which includes a 120-lumen front light and a backlight that also slightly wraps around to offer illumination from the sideA grip near the bottom of the frame that makes carrying the bike up stairs much easierA MIK cargo rack that was also accommodating to my Ortlieb panniers Attaching my Pixel 8a to the Quad Lock was handy when I needed some turn-by-turn directions. Credit: Chris DeGraw The price of the FX+ 2 ($2,500 at the time; its now being sold at $1,850) was a downside we noted in our review, and it's the main gripe I have with the FX+ 7S, which sells for $4,000. While its a better bike by every measure, is the advanced model worth more than twice the price? Your budget and feature wish list for a commuter bike will have to answer that question.If price isnt a concern and youre looking for a bike that is built to last longer, opt for the FX+ 7S. Its better in every regard (except it looks more like an e-bike than its predecessor due to the LCD screen; I did appreciate how often people were surprised to hear the FX+ 2 was electric). If youre mostly concerned about the range and are unwilling to spend $4,000, opt for the FX+ 2 and get the range extender.In either case, youre getting a quality bike that will perform well and give you the freedom to ditch the car for many of your daily commutes.Jacob MayCopy EditorJacob MayCopy Editor Jacob is a copy editor at Ars Technica. He resides in Portland, Oregon, where he enjoys typical Portlander things. 1 Comments

Smooth as glass A solid electrolyte gives lithium-sulfur batteries ludicrous endurance Sulfur can store a lot more lithium but is problematically reactive in batteries. John Timmer Jan 17, 2025 10:19 am | 7 If you weren't aware, sulfur is pretty abundant. Credit: P_Wei If you weren't aware, sulfur is pretty abundant. Credit: P_Wei Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreLithium may be the key component in most modern batteries, but it doesn't make up the bulk of the material used in them. Instead, much of the material is in the electrodes, where the lithium gets stored when the battery isn't charging or discharging. So one way to make lighter and more compact lithium-ion batteries is to find electrode materials that can store more lithium. That's one of the reasons that recent generations of batteries are starting to incorporate silicon into the electrode materials.There are materials that can store even more lithium than silicon; a notable example is sulfur. But sulfur has a tendency to react with itself, producing ions that can float off into the electrolyte. Plus, like any electrode material, it tends to expand in proportion to the amount of lithium that gets stored, which can create physical strains on the battery's structure. So while it has been easy to make lithium-sulfur batteries, their performance has tended to degrade rapidly.But this week, researchers described a lithium-sulfur battery that still has over 80 percent of its original capacity after 25,000 charge/discharge cycles. All it took was a solid electrolyte that was more reactive than the sulfur itself.When lithium meets sulfur...Sulfur is an attractive battery material. It's abundant and cheap, and sulfur atoms are relatively lightweight compared to many of the other materials used in battery electrodes. Sodium-sulfur batteries, which rely on two very cheap raw materials, have already been developed, although they only work at temperatures high enough to melt both of these components. Lithium-sulfur batteries, by contrast, could operate more or less the same way that current lithium-ion batteries do.With a few major exceptions, that is. One is that the elemental sulfur used as an electrode is a very poor conductor of electricity, so it has to be dispersed within a mesh of conductive material. (You can contrast that with graphite, which both stores lithium and conducts electricity relatively well, thanks to being composed of countless sheets of graphene.) Lithium is stored there as Li2S, which occupies substantially more space than the elemental sulfur it's replacing.Both of these issues, however, can be solved with careful engineering of the battery's structure. A more severe problem comes from the properties of the lithium-sulfur reactions that occur at the electrode. Elemental sulfur exists as an eight-atom ring, and the reactions with lithium are slow enough that semi-stable intermediates with smaller chains of sulfur end up forming. Unfortunately, these tend to be soluble in most electrolytes, allowing them to travel to the opposite electrode and participate in chemical reactions there.This process essentially discharges the battery without allowing the electrons to be put to use. And it gradually leaves the electrode's sulfur unavailable for participating in future charge/discharge cycles. The net result is that early generations of the technology would discharge themselves while sitting unused and would only survive a few hundred cycles before performance decayed dramatically.But there has been progress on all these fronts, and some lithium-sulfur batteries with performance similar to lithium-ion have been demonstrated. Late last year, a company announced that it had lined up the money needed to build the first large-scale lithium-sulfur battery factory. Still, work on improvements has continued, and the new work seems to suggest ways to boost performance well beyond lithium-ion.The need for speedThe paper describing the new developments, done by a collaboration between Chinese and German researchers, focuses on one aspect of the challenges posed by lithium-sulfur batteries: the relatively slow chemical reaction between lithium ions and elemental sulfur. It presents that aspect as a roadblock to fast charging, something that will be an issue for automotive applications. But at the same time, finding a way to limit the formation of inactive intermediate products during this reaction goes to the root of the relatively short usable life span of lithium-sulfur batteries.As it turns out, the researchers found two.One of the problems with the lithium-sulfur reaction intermediates is that they dissolve in most electrolytes. But that's not a problem if the electrolyte isn't a liquid. Solid electrolytes are materials that have a porous structure at the atomic level, with the environment inside the pores being favorable for ions. This allows ions to diffuse through the solid. If there's a way to trap ions on one side of the electrolyte, such as a chemical reaction that traps or de-ionizes them, then it can enable one-way travel.Critically, pores that favor the transit of lithium ions, which are quite compact, aren't likely to allow the transit of the large ionized chains of sulfur. So a solid electrolyte should help cut down on the problems faced by lithium-sulfur batteries. But it won't necessarily help with fast charging.The researchers began by testing a glass formed from a mixture of boron, sulfur, and lithium (B2S3 and Li2S). But this glass had terrible conductivity, so they started experimenting with related glasses and settled on a combination that substituted in some phosphorus and iodine.The iodine turned out to be a critical component. While the exchange of electrons with sulfur is relatively slow, iodine undergoes electron exchange (technically termed a redox reaction) extremely quickly. So it can act as an intermediate in the transfer of electrons to sulfur, speeding up the reactions that occur at the electrode. In addition, iodine has relatively low melting and boiling points, and the researchers suggest there's some evidence that it moves around within the electrolyte, allowing it to act as an electron shuttle.Successes and caveatsThe result is a far superior electrolyteand one that enables fast charging. It's typical that fast charging cuts into the total capacity that can be stored in a battery. But when charged at an extraordinarily fast rate (50C, meaning a full charge in just over a minute), a battery based on this system still had half the capacity of a battery charged 25 times more slowly (2C, or a half-hour to full charge).But the striking thing was how durable the resulting battery was. Even at an intermediate charging rate (5C), it still had over 80 percent of its initial capacity after over 25,000 charge/discharge cycles. By contrast, lithium-ion batteries tend to hit that level of decay after about 1,000 cycles. If that sort of performance is possible in a mass-produced battery, it's only a slight exaggeration to say it can radically alter our relationships with many battery-powered devices.What's not at all clear, however, is whether this takes full advantage of one of the original promises of lithium-sulfur batteries: more charge in a given weight and volume. The researchers specify the battery being used for testing; one electrode is an indium/lithium metal foil, and the other is a mix of carbon, sulfur, and the glass electrolyte. A layer of the electrolyte sits between them. But when giving numbers for the storage capacity per weight, only the weight of the sulfur is mentioned.Still, even if weight issues would preclude this from being stuffed into a car or cell phone, there are plenty of storage applications that would benefit from something that doesn't wear out even with 65 years of daily cycling.Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08298-9 (About DOIs).John TimmerSenior Science EditorJohn TimmerSenior Science Editor John is Ars Technica's science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots. 7 Comments

Cheers More cancer, less death? New alcohol-risk reviews offer conflicting takeaways Two big, somewhat conflicting studies on alcohol risks will influence new guidelines. Beth Mole Jan 17, 2025 7:30 am | 27 Credit: Getty | Marina Cavusoglu Credit: Getty | Marina Cavusoglu Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreHeavy drinking is clearly bad for your health. But it's long been questioned whether moderate drinking is also riskyand, if so, how risky, exactly.Health researchers have consistently found links between alcohol consumption and several types of cancers (namely mouth, throat, colon, rectal, liver, and breast), as well as liver diseases, injuries, and traffic accidents. But nailing down the health risks from the lower levels of drinking has been tricky. For one, much of the data on moderate drinking are from observational studies in different countries, cultures, and populations. They cannot determine if alcohol is the direct cause of any given association, and they may be swayed by other lifestyle factors. The resulting data can be noisy and inconsistent.Moreover, many studies rely on people to self-report whether they drink and, if so, how much, which is problematic because people may not accurately assess and/or report how much they actually drink. A related problem is that studies in the past often compared drinkers to people who said they didn't drink. But, the trouble is, non-drinking groups are often some mix of people who are lifelong abstainers and people who used to drink but quit for some reasonmaybe because of health effects. This latter group has the potential to have lingering health effects from their drinking days, which could skew any comparisons looking for health differences.Then there's the larger, common problem with any research focused on food or beverages: some have been sponsored or somehow swayed by industry, casting suspicion on the findings, particularly the ones indicating benefits. This has been a clear problem for alcohol research. For instance, in 2018, the National Institutes of Health shut down a $100 million trial aimed at assessing the health effects (and potential benefits) of moderate drinking after it came to light that much of the funding was solicited from the alcohol industry. There was a lot of questionable communication between NIH scientists and alcohol industry representatives.With all of that in the background, there's been clamorous debate about how much risk, if any, people are swallowing with their evening cocktail, gameday beer, or wine with dinner.Currently, the US dietary guidance recommends that if adults drink, they should stick to drinking in moderation, defined as "alcohol intake to two drinks or fewer in a day for men and one drink or fewer in a day for women." But recently, health experts in the US and abroad have started calling for lower limits, noting that more data has poured in that fortify links to cancers and other risks. In 2023, for instance, Canada released recommendations that people limit their alcohol consumption totwo drinks or fewer per weekthat's down significantly from the previously recommended limit of 10 drinks per week for women and 15 drinks per week for men.Two reviewsNow, it's America's turn to decide if they'll also set the bar lower, too. This year, the US will update its dietary guidelines, which are carried out by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture every five years. The federal government has requested two big scientific reviews to assess the current knowledge of the health effects of alcohol, which will both inform any potential revisions to the alcohol guidelines. Now, both studies have been released and open for discussion.One is from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies), which was tasked by Congress to review the current evidence on alcohol with a focus on how moderate drinking potentially affects a specific set of health outcomes. The review compared health outcomes in moderate drinkers with those of lifelong abstainers. For the review, the National Academies set up a committee of 14 experts.The other report is from the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD), which set up a Technical Review Subcommittee on Alcohol Intake and Health. For its report, the subcommittee looked not just at moderate drinking but health outcomes of a range of alcohol consumption compared to lifelong abstainers.Based on top-line takeaways and tone, the two reports seem to have very different findings. While the National Academies review found a mix of benefits and harms from moderate drinking (one drink per day for women, and two per day for men), the ICCPUD review suggested that even the smallest amounts of alcohol (one drink per week) increased risk of death and various diseases. However, a closer look at the data shows they have some common ground.The National Academies reviewFirst, for the National Academies' review, experts found sufficient evidence to assess the effects of moderate drinking on all-cause mortality, certain cancers, and cardiovascular risks. On the other hand, the reviewers found insufficient evidence to assess moderate drinking's impact on weight changes, neurocognition, and lactation-related risks.For all-cause mortality, a meta-analysis of data from eight studies found that moderate drinkers had a 16 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality (death from any cause) compared with lifelong abstainers. A meta-analysis of three studies suggested the risk of all-cause mortality was 23 percent lower for females who drank moderately compared to never-drinking females. Data from four studies indicated that moderate drinking males had a 16 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality than never-drinking males. Additional analyses found that the risk of all-cause mortality was 20 percent lower for moderate drinkers less than age 60 and 18 percent lower for moderate drinkers aged 60 and up."Based on data from the eight eligible studies from 2019 to 2023, the committee concludes that compared with never consuming alcohol, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower all-cause mortality," the review states. The reviewers rated the conclusion as having "moderate certainty."Cancer and cardiovascular diseaseFor a look at cancer risks, a meta-analysis of four studies on breast cancer found that moderate drinkers had an overall 10 percent higher risk than non-drinkers. An additional analysis of seven studies found that for every 10 to 14 grams of alcohol (0.7 to one standard drink) consumed per day, there was a 5 percent higher risk of breast cancer. The data indicated that people who drank higher amounts of alcohol within the moderate range had higher risks than those who drank lower amounts in the moderate range (for instance, one drink a day versus 0.5 drinks a day).For context, the average lifetime risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer in non-drinking females is about 11 to 12 percent. A 10 percent relative increase in risk would raise a person's absolute risk to around 12 to 13 percent. The average lifetime risk of any female dying of breast cancer is 2.5 percent.Overall, the reviewers concluded that "consuming a moderate amount of alcohol was associated with a higher risk of breast cancer," and the conclusion was rated as having moderate certainty.A meta-analysis on colorectal cancer risks found a "statistically nonsignificant higher risk" in moderate drinkers compared to non-drinkers. However, studies looking at alcohol consumption at the highest levels of moderate drinking for males (e.g., two drinks per day) suggested a higher risk compared to males who drank lower amounts of alcohol in the moderate range (one drink per day).The review concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support a link between moderate drinking and oral cavity, pharyngeal, esophageal, and laryngeal cancers.Finally, for cardiovascular risks, meta-analyses found moderate drinking was associated with a 22 percent lower risk of heart attacks and an 11 percent lower risk of stroke (driven by lower risk of ischemic stroke, specifically). The reviewers rated these associations as low certainty, though, after noting that there was some concern for risk of bias in the studies.For cardiovascular disease mortality, meta-analyses of four studies found an 18 percent lower risk of death among moderate drinkers compared with non-drinkers. Broken down, there was a 23 percent lower risk in female drinkers and 18 percent lower risk in male drinkers. The lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality was rated as moderate certainty.The ICCPUD reviewThe ICCPUD subcommittee's report offered a darker outlook on moderate drinking, concluding that "Alcohol use is associated with increased mortality for seven types of cancer (colorectal, female breast, liver, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, esophagus [squamous cell type])," and "Increased risk for these cancers begins with any alcohol use and increases with higher levels of use."The review modeled lifetime risks of cancer and death and relative risks for a long list of problems, including infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, and injuries. Also, it didn't just focus on non- drinkers versus moderate drinkers, but it assessed the relative risk of six levels of drinking: one drink a week; two drinks a week; three drinks a week; seven drinks a week (one a day); 14 drinks a week (two a day) and 21 drinks a week (three a day).Overall, the analysis is very much a rough draft. There are some places where information is missing, and some of the figures are mislabeled and difficult to read. There are two figures labeled Figure 6, for instance and Figure 7 (which may be Figure 8), is a graph that doesn't have a Y-axis, making it difficult to interpret. The study also doesn't discuss the level of potential bias of individual studies in its analyses. It also doesn't make note of statistically insignificant results, nor comment on the certainty of any of its findings.For instance, the top-line summary states that "In the United States, males and females have a 1 in 1,000 risk of dying from alcohol use if they consume more than 7 drinks per week. This risk increases to 1 in 100 if they consume more than 9 drinks per week." But a look at the modeling behind these estimates indicates the cutoffs of when drinkers would reach a 0.1 percent or 1 percent risk of dying from alcohol use are broad. For males, a 0.1 percent lifetime risk of an alcohol-attributed death is reached at 6.5 standard drinks, with a 95 percent confidence interval spanning less than one drink per week and 13.5 drinks per week. "This lifetime risk rose to 1 in 100 people above 8.5 drinks per week," the text reads, but the confidence interval is again between one and 14 drinks per week. So, basically, anywhere between about one and 14 drinks a week, a male's lifetime risk of dying from alcohol may be either 0.1 or 1 percent, according to this modeling.Death risksRegarding risk of death, the study did not look at all-cause mortality, like the National Academies review. Instead, it focused on deaths from causes specifically linked to alcohol. For both males and females, modeling indicated that the total lifetime risk of any alcohol-attributed death for people who consumed one, two, three, or seven drinks per week was statistically non-significant (the confidence intervals for each calculation spanned zero). Among those who have 14 drinks per week, the total lifetime risk of death was about 4 in 100 from all causes, with unintentional injuries being the biggest contributor for males and liver diseases being the biggest contributor for females. Among those who have 21 drinks per week, the risk of death was about 7 in 100 for males and 8 in 100 for females. Unintentional injuries and liver diseases were again the biggest contributors to the risk.Some experts have speculated that the lower risk of all-cause mortality found in the National Academies' analysis (which has been seen in previous studies) may be due to healthy lifestyle patterns among people who drink moderately rather than the protective effects of alcohol. The line of thinking would suggest that healthy lifestyle choices, like regular exercise and a healthy diet, can negate certain risks, including the potential risks of alcohol. However, the ICCPUD emphasizes the reverse argument, noting that poor health choices would likely exacerbate the risks of alcohol. "[A]lcohol would have a greater impact on the health of people who smoke, have poor diets, engage in low physical activity, are obese, have hepatitis infection, or have a family history of specific diseases than it would other individuals."Relative risksIn terms of relative risk of the range of conditions, generally, the ICCPUD study found small, if any, increases in risk at the three lowest levels of drinking, with risks rising with higher levels. The study's finding of breast cancer risk was in line with the National Academies' review. ICCPUD found that pre-menopausal females who drink moderately (one drink per day) had a 6 percent higher risk of breast cancer than non-drinkers, while post-menopausal moderate drinkers had a 17 percent higher risk. (You can see the complete set of relative risk estimates in Table A6 beginning on page 70 of the report.)For some cancers, moderate drinking raised the risk substantially. For instance, males who have two drinks per day see their risk of esophageal cancer more than double. But, it's important to note that the absolute risk for many of these cancers is small to begin with. The average risk of esophageal cancer in men is 0.8 percent, according to the American Cancer Society. With the increased risk from moderate drinking, it would be below 2 percent. Still, alcohol consumption increased the risks of nearly all the cancers examined, with the higher levels of alcohol consumption having the highest risk.As for cardiovascular risks, ICCPUD's review found low risk in several of the categories. The risk of ischemic heart disease was lower than that of nondrinkers at all six drinking levels. The risk of ischemic stroke was lower among drinkers who had one, two, three, or seven drinks per week compared to non-drinkers. At 14 and 21 drinks per week, the risk of ischemic stroke rose by 8 percent.Beth MoleSenior Health ReporterBeth MoleSenior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technicas Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 27 Comments

What a day Rocket Report: Starship experiences a RUD; Blue Origin nails its debut launch "The computed numbers below prove that this is quite feasible with margins to spare." Eric Berger Jan 17, 2025 7:00 am | 3 Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station early on Thursday morning. Credit: Blue Origin Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station early on Thursday morning. Credit: Blue Origin Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWelcome to Edition 7.27 of the Rocket Report! Thursday was an eventful day in super heavy lift launch, with Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket having a highly successful debut launch before dawn in Florida, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Then, on Thursday afternoon, an upgraded Starship took flight from South Texas. The first stage performed well, but the Starship upper stage experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent. Ars will, of course, have full and ongoing coverage.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.RFA receives launch license. The UK Civil Aviation Authority has issued Rocket Factory Augsburg a vertical launch license to conduct the inaugural flight of its RFA ONE rocket from SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, European Spaceflight reports. The license is for the launch of the company's RFA One rocket, which has an advertised payload of 1.3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. RFA said it intends to complete the launch sometime this year.A new era for BritSpace... The company might have launched sooner, but last year, a fire during testing destroyed the rockets first stage, forcing RFA to build a replacement before proceeding with the initial launch attempt. An orbital-class rocket has never launched in a vertical configuration before from the United Kingdom, and no rocket has ever successfully reached orbit from there. "This is a new era for aerospace, and granting the first vertical launch license from UK soil builds toward a historic milestone for the nation," said Rob Bishton, chief executive of the civil authority. (submitted by EllPeaTea)Chinese rocket launches from sea platform. China launched a Jielong-3 solid rocket from a mobile sea platform late Sunday, successfully placing 10 Centispace navigation enhancement satellites into orbit, Space News reports. This was the fifth Jielong-3 (or Smart Dragon-3) solid propellant rocket, and it lifted off from a specially converted sea barge off the coast of Haiyang city in the Eastern province of Shandong.Seeking to scale up quickly... The launch was carried out using facilities belonging to the Haiyang Eastern spaceport for sea launches. The spaceport plans more than 10 for 2025, having conducted six sea launches in 2024. The launch was Chinas second orbital launch attempt of 2025 and the second success in as many tries. The Ars Technica Rocket Report The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger's and Stephen Clark's reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We'll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox.Sign Me Up!Utah considering a spaceport. State Sen. Jerry Stevenson has introduced a bill to form a committee that would investigate whether Utah should invest in a spaceport and what benefits it could bring to the state, KUTV Salt Lake City reports. The legislation would provide $500,000 for a committee to study the potential benefits of a launch site. Stevenson said the committee would look into both scientific uses and opportunities to expand Utahs tourism industry, but questions remain over whether such a taxpayer-funded investment makes financial sense.Something to build on... When asked how the state would get a return on its investment, Stevenson said the spaceport would align with Utahs current industries and infrastructure. "We think that this fits very well into whats going on in the state of Utah and whats already here and what we can build on," Stevenson said. Still, critics wondered if the state should focus on space tourism, especially given the potential costs, possibly on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.Stoke Space goes nova in fundraising round. The Washington-based launch company announced Wednesday that it had raised $260 million in Series C funding, a significant capital raise at a time when it has become more difficult for some space companies to attract funding, Ars reports. "The market is tough, but I think what were doing is poised to go straight to the end state of the industry, and I think investors recognize that," said Andy Lapsa, Stoke Space's co-founder and chief executive officer.Full reuse right out of the gate... By "end state of the industry," Lapsa means that Stoke is developing a fully reusable medium-lift rocket named Nova. The vehicle's first stage will land vertically, similar to a Falcon 9 rocket, and the second stage, which has a novel metallic heat shield and engine design, will also land back on Earth. Historically, it is unlikely for a company to move from engine testing to a first orbital launch attempt in the same year, so a Nova debut in 2026 seems more likely. Nevertheless, the new funding from investors signals confidence that Stoke is making credible technical progress on its vehicle development. (submitted by EllPeaTea)The initial launch plan for Neutron. Rocket Lab is closing in on the completion of its Neutron rocket, and the company plans to launch the medium-lift booster for the first time later this year. With a capacity of 13 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, the rocket will be sold at a cost of $50 million to undersell SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for megaconstellation launches. Falcon 9 can launch 17.5 metric tons to LEO in a reusable configuration, which is often a higher capability than the customer needs, Payload reports. So on a price-per-launch basis, if Neutron can deliver, it could provide credible competition.A slow ramp-up... Rocket Lab intends to launch a single Neutron this year, followed by three rockets in 2026 and five in 2027. This may not be as flashy as saying the company will ramp up to a dozen rockets next year, but I appreciate the realism in launch cadence. Companies never increase their launch cadence as quickly as they say they will. However, speaking of realism, it's realistic to question whether Neutron will actually make it to the launch pad this year. I'd bet no, but I'd love to be proven wrong.Two lunar landers launch on Falcon 9. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Wednesday and deployed two commercial lunar landers on separate trajectories to reach the Moon in the next few months, Ars reports. It took about an hour and a half for the Falcon 9 rocket to release both payloads into two slightly different orbits, ranging up to 200,000 and 225,000 miles (322,000 and 362,000 kilometers) from Earth.A lunar double shot... The two robotic lunar landersone from Firefly Aerospace based near Austin, Texas, and another from the Japanese space company ispacewill use their own small engines for the final maneuvers required to enter orbit around the Moon in the coming months. Firefly and ispace reported that their landers, each about the size of an SUV, were healthy as ground teams in Texas and Japan activated the spacecraft soon after their separation from the Falcon 9 launch vehicle.ArianeGroup completes Prometheus engine test. Although it was not revealed until January 9, ArianeGroup completed a successful hot fire test of the Prometheus rocket engine in late December 2024, European Spaceflight reports. European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher referred to the "very important" test during his annual press briefing. Afterward, an ESA spokesperson confirmed that the test had taken place on December 19 on the PF20 test bench at the ArianeGroup facilities in Vernon, France.A nominal test... The test of the liquid oxygen and biomethane engine lasted for 41 seconds, with the engine reaching 100 percent of its thrust. Prometheus is slated to initially power the Themis reusable booster demonstrator, a project also being developed by ArianeGroup under an ESA contract. In addition to its use by Themis, Prometheus will also be utilized by ArianeGroup subsidiary MaiaSpace to power its partially reusable Maia rocket. (submitted by EllPeaTea)The hidden MVP of SpaceX's high cadence. On any given day, SpaceX is probably launching a Falcon 9 rocket, rolling one out to the launch pad, or bringing one back into port. With three active Falcon 9 launch pads and an increasing cadence at the Starbase facility in Texas, SpaceX's teams are often doing all three. The company achieved another milestone last Friday with the 25th successful launch and landing of a single Falcon 9 booster. This rocket, designated B1067, launched a batch of 21 Starlink Internet satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Ars has reported on these rocket reuse milestones before, but SpaceX is breaking its own records so often that we've dialed back our coverage.Building a lot of upper stages... SpaceX's accomplishment of 25 flights offers an opportunity to step back and take in some context. Although everyone focuses on reuse, SpaceX is still building new second stages for every launch. The task of building so many spaceships in a year is a tall order. While SpaceX's competency with reusing Falcon 9 boosters gets a lot of attentionlanding a rocket is still incredible, even after seeing it nearly 400 timesthe high-rate manufacturing of Falcon 9 upper stages is the secret MVP. It also suggests that the company's goal to build 100 Starships a year is not crazy.New Glenn makes a triumphant first flight. For the first time since its founding nearly a quarter of a century ago, Blue Origin has reached orbit. The long-awaited debut launch of the New Glenn rocket, a super-heavy lift vehicle developed largely with private funding, was a smashing success in its debut launch early on Thursday morning, Ars reports. The launch occurred a little more than one hour into the launch window. Liftoff was delayed, at first, by an unspecified issue with properly chilling the BE-4 engines ahead of launch. Then there was a wayward boat.No landing, no problem... Ultimately, the rocket launched at 2:03 am in the morning, local time, at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The first and second stages both appeared to perform nominally, and the Blue Ring pathfinder was put into its intended orbit. The only downer came a bit later when Blue Origin's Ariane Cornell confirmed that the first stage did not successfully return to a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. But no one who really understands the difficulties of launching and landing rockets believed that Blue Origin would succeed in catching its first orbital booster, and the company deserves credit for making the attempt rather than criticism for failing to stick the landing.How to do Artemis without SLS or Starship. There has been a lot of discussion about potential changes to the Artemis Program under the incoming Trump administration, including on Ars. In The Space Review, engineer Ajay Kothari offers an architecture that is based on the Falcon Heavy rocket rather than NASA's Space Launch System or SpaceX's Starship rocket. "The computed numbers below prove that this is quite feasible with margins to spare," Kothari wrote about using Falcon Heavy to get Orion to the Moon. "Although three dockings in LEO would be required for the Orion, there is no refueling need and it is a much smaller number than the Starship HLS refueling estimates."There is a catch... Because there is always a catch, right? Kothari writes: "The lander would have to be built by NASA. It would be like the Apollo 17 Lunar Module, called Challenger, which carried two astronauts to the surface from LLO. It had a mass of 16.5 tons, so the new one here is bookkept at 18 tons wet mass, including higher consumable for a 6.5-day stay." If we're being realistic, if NASA were to put out a call for bids for a lunar lander tomorrow, it would not have one in hand before the end of the decade at the very earliest. So if NASA is going to the lunar surface in the 2020s, it's likely Starship or bust.Upgraded Ariane booster to undergo tests. The European Space Agency will begin testing the P160 solid-fuel booster in March 2025, European Spaceflight reports. The booster, which is to be strapped onto the Ariane 6 rocket, will replace the current P120 booster and will be a key element in enabling Arianespace to deliver on an 18-launch contract for Amazon. For 16 of its 18 missions for Amazon to launch Project Kuiper satellites, the Ariane 6 rocket will launch with four of the more powerful boosters.Don't forget about Vega... The P160 motor will replace the P120 booster currently in service. The upgraded boosters will increase the capacity of the Ariane 6 rocket by about 2 tons to low-Earth orbit. In addition to Ariane 6, the P160 boosters will also be utilized by Avio aboard the upgraded Vega C+ and the companys next-generation Vega E rocket. (submitted by EllPeaTea)Next three launchesJan. 18: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-8 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 15:57 UTCJan. 21:Falcon 9 | Starlink 13-1 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 05:13 UTCJan. 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-6 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 14:38 UTCEric BergerSenior Space EditorEric BergerSenior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 3 Comments

RIP ship Fire destroys Starship on its seventh test flight, raining debris from space The Federal Aviation Administration will likely require an investigation into the accident. Stephen Clark Jan 16, 2025 11:44 pm | 2 This screen grab from SpaceX's live broadcast of Starship Flight 7 shows the view from a rear-facing camera aboard Starship. The Super Heavy booster stage, with its four grid fins extended, is seen moments after separating from the Starship upper stage. Credit: SpaceX This screen grab from SpaceX's live broadcast of Starship Flight 7 shows the view from a rear-facing camera aboard Starship. The Super Heavy booster stage, with its four grid fins extended, is seen moments after separating from the Starship upper stage. Credit: SpaceX Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreSpaceX launched an upgraded version of its massive Starship rocket from South Texas on Thursday, but the flight ended less than nine minutes later after engineers lost contact with the spacecraft.For a few moments, SpaceX officials discussing the launch on the company's live webcast were unsure of the outcome of the test flight. However, within minutes, residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico shared videos showing a shower of debris falling through the atmosphere along Starship's expected flight corridor.The videos confirmed Starshipthe rocket's upper stagebroke apart in space, or experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" in SpaceX-speak. This happened well short of the company's plan of sending the spacecraft halfway around the world and splashing down in the Indian Ocean after more than an hour of flight.There were no people or satellites aboard the rocket Thursday.Flight diversionsThe test flight began with liftoff of the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage from the Texas Gulf Coast at 4:37 pm CST (5:37 pm EST; 22:37 UTC). The world's largest and most powerful launcher climbed off the launch pad with more than twice the thrust of NASA's Apollo-era Saturn V rocket. Heading east, its 33 methane-fueled Raptor booster engines fired more than two-and-a-half minutes to propel Starship toward the edge of space.The booster's engines shut down as planned, followed moments later by ignition of six Raptor engines on the Starship upper stage. The Super Heavy booster separated from the rocket to fly itself back to the launch site. Just shy of seven minutes after liftoff, the booster returned to the launch pad for a mid-air catch by the tower's two mechanical arms, repeating a feat SpaceX accomplished in October.The upper stage, meanwhile, appeared to fly normally until a telemetry display on SpaceX's webcast indicated one of the ship's six engines shut off more than seven minutes after liftoff. Then, the display showed more engines failing, and the data stream froze.In an update posted on SpaceX's website later Thursday evening, officials said ground teams lost contact with the spacecraft approximately eight-and-a-half minutes into the flight. At the time, information on SpaceX's live video stream showed the vehicle was traveling at about 13,246 mph (21,317 km/hr) at an altitude of about 91 miles (146 kilometers)."Initial data indicates a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly with debris falling into the Atlantic Ocean within the predefined hazard areas," SpaceX officials wrote in the update.The falling debris caused air traffic controllers to divert or reroute commercial flights over the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. This map shared by FlightRadar24 shows multiple commercial airplanes in holding patterns outside of closed airspace near Starship's flight path. Credit: FlightRadar24 Air traffic controllers have the ability to activate a "Debris Response Area" if a spacecraft experiences an anomaly with debris falling outside of identified closed aircraft hazard areas, where the FAA notifies pilots in advance about the risk of reentering space junk. Activating a Debris Response Area "allows the FAA to direct aircraft to exit the area and prevent others from entering," the statement read.This is what the FAA did Thursday evening. Air traffic controllers closed a swath of airspace between the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico to commercial air traffic for more than an hour, causing some passenger airline flights to enter a holding pattern, return to their departure airports, land at alternate airfields, or delay their takeoffs.Flight tracking sites and apps showed the extent of the impacts on air traffic. Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale International Airport, both hubs for flights to and from the Caribbean, reported short flight delays due to a "rocket launch anomaly," according to an FAA website.Ars listened to live audio from air traffic control in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as controllers alerted pilots of the airspace restrictions."How long do you think this hold is going to be? We don't have a lot of gas to play with," one pilot asked air traffic control. "The sooner we can get on the ground, the better."A short time later, the airspace reopened, and flights continued on to their destinations or diverted to other airports."That's the coolest sh*t I've ever seen in my life"Some of the videos recorded by residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos appeared to show fiery debris fragments streaking almost directly overhead. Many people speaking in the videos did not realize what they were seeing, but space enthusiasts on social media quickly identified the source of the spectacle.Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, wrote on X that early signs from data suggested there was a propellant leak in a cavity above Starship's engine firewall. The leak was large enough to build pressure in excess of the ship's vent capacity."Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area," Musk wrote. "Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month."Coming into 2025, SpaceX officials hoped to launch as many as 25 Starship test flights this year to experiment with new designs, attempt a recovery of Starship from orbit, and demonstrate orbital refueling, a capability that is critical to NASA and SpaceX's plans to land astronauts on the Moon later this decade.SpaceX designed Starship to be fully reusable, with the ability to deliver more than 100 metric tons (220,000 pounds) of cargo to low-Earth orbit. Future versions of the ship will be suited for travel to the Moon and Mars. NASA has two contracts for SpaceX to develop a derivative of Starship as a human-rated lander for the agency's Artemis lunar program, and Musk views Starship as central to his enabling his vision of creating a human settlement on the red planet.NASA's official public schedule calls for a crew landing at the Moon's south pole in 2027, using the privately-developed Starship alongside the agency's government-managed Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule. Together, the vehicles will transport astronauts from Earth to the Moon, then to the lunar surface and back into space, and finally back to Earth.However, this schedule hinges on the readiness of Starship to accommodate humans, the availability of new lunar spacesuits, and the status of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, both of which have endured lengthy delays. The incoming Trump administration is expected to reevaluate the architecture of the Artemis program to determine if, and how, NASA can return humans to the Moon faster and cheaper. It's possible SpaceX's Starship and other commercial rockets might carve out a more significant role. The Super Heavy booster comes in for the catch Thursday at Starbase, Texas. Credit: SpaceX If SpaceX can fly Starship again as soon as next month, it's possible the company could preserve its aims for the program this year. SpaceX has no shortage of hardware ready or nearly ready to go. There are multiple Starships and Super Heavy boosters undergoing preparations for future test flights at the company's Starbase launch facility near Brownsville, Texas.But schedules often slip in the launch business, and the FAA could ground Starship until SpaceX completes a formal mishap investigation. The federal regulator is responsible for ensuring public safety on commercial space launches. A spokesperson told Ars late Thursday that the FAA is assessing the Starship anomaly and will provide a statement when officials know more.A setback, sure, but is this a big deal?In the hours after Thursday's test flight, Musk took to his social media platform to share and comment on several videos of the Starship debris coming back to Earth. SpaceX has long embraced failures as learning opportunities, and the company's culture is centered on rapidly iterating on designsbuild, test, break, fix.This launch debuted a more advanced, slightly taller version of Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, with larger propellant tanks, a new avionics system, and redesigned feed lines flowing methane and liquid oxygen propellants to the ship's six Raptor engines. SpaceX officials did not say whether any of these changes might have caused the problem on Thursday's launch.SpaceX officials have repeatedly and carefully set expectations for each Starship test flight. They routinely refer to the rocket as experimental, and the primary focus of the rocket's early demo missions is to gather data on the performance of the vehicle. What works, and what doesn't work?Still, the outcome of Thursday's test flight is a clear disappointment for SpaceX. This was the seventh test flight of SpaceX's enormous rocket, and the first time Starship failed to complete its launch sequence since the second flight in November 2023. Until now, SpaceX made steady progress, and each Starship flight achieved more milestones than the one before.On the first flight in April 2023, the rocket lost control a little more than two minutes after liftoff, and the ground-shaking power of the booster's 33 engines shattered the concrete foundation beneath the launch pad. Seven months later, on Flight 2, the rocket made it eight minutes before failing. On that mission, Starship failed at roughly the same point of its ascent, just before cutoff of the vehicle's six methane-fueled Raptor engines.Back then, a handful of photos and images from the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico showed debris in the sky after Starship activated its self-destruct mechanism due to an onboard fire caused by a dump of liquid oxygen propellant. But that flight occurred in the morning, with bright sunlight along the ship's flight path.This time, the ship disintegrated and reentered the atmosphere at dusk, with impeccable lighting conditions accentuating the debris cloud's appearance. These twilight conditions likely contributed to the plethora of videos posted to social media Thursday. Starship and Super Heavy head downrange from SpaceX's launch site near Brownsville, Texas. Credit: SpaceX The third Starship test flight last March saw the spacecraft reach its planned trajectory and fly halfway around the world before succumbing to the scorching heat of atmospheric reentry. In June, the fourth test flight ended with controlled splashdowns of the rocket's Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico and of Starship in the Indian Ocean.Then, in October, SpaceX caught the Super Heavy booster back at the launch pad for the first time using mechanical arms, proving out the company's audacious approach to recovering and reusing the rocket. On this fifth test flight, SpaceX modified the ship's heat shield to better handle the hot temperatures of reentry, and the vehicle again made it to an on-target splashdown in the Indian Ocean.Most recently, Flight 6 on November 19 demonstrated the ship's ability to reignite its Raptor engines in space for the first time, and again concluded with a bullseye splashdown. But SpaceX aborted an attempt to again catch the booster back at Starbase due to a problem with sensors on the launch pad's tower.With Flight 7, SpaceX hoped to test more changes to the heat shield protecting Starship from reentry temperatures up to 2,600 Fahrenheit (1,430 Celsius). Musk has identified the heat shield as one of the most difficult challenges still facing the program. In order for SpaceX to reach its ambition for the ship to become rapidly reusable, with minimal or no refurbishment between flights, the heat shield must be resilient and durable.While the three previous Starship test flights each softly splashed down at sea, onboard camera views showed some of the ship's heat-absorbing ceramic tiles stripping away from the vehicle during reentry. Other changes on Flight 7 included a new tapered edge to the line where the tiles meet the ship's stainless steel skin, and multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, to test alternative heat shield materials.SpaceX also wanted to test the thermal performance of new fittings that will be used to catch Starship back at the launch tower on future flights. Engineers were eager to see how redesigned flaps near the nose of Starship worked during its descent back to Earth. And once the ship reached space, SpaceX intended to release 10 mock-ups of next-generation Starlink internet satellites to test the ship's payload deployment mechanism for the first time.All those objectives will now have to wait until Flight 8. Going into this launch, Musk hoped to attempt to catch the Starship upper stage, similar to the way SpaceX recovered the Super Heavy booster, as soon as the next test flight. Now, that will likely have to wait until a later mission."As always, success comes from what we learn, and this flight test will help us improve Starships reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary," SpaceX said. "Data review is already underway as we seek out root cause. We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests." Listing image: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Stephen ClarkSpace ReporterStephen ClarkSpace Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the worlds space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 2 Comments

Iterate, iterate, and iterate some more Heres what NASA would like to see SpaceX accomplish with Starship this year The seventh test flight of Starship is scheduled for launch Thursday afternoon. Stephen Clark Jan 16, 2025 2:41 pm | 237 SpaceX's upgraded Starship rocket stands on its launch pad at Starbase, Texas. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX's upgraded Starship rocket stands on its launch pad at Starbase, Texas. Credit: SpaceX Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreSpaceX plans to launch the seventh full-scale test flight of its massive Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket Thursday afternoon. It's the first of what might be a dozen or more demonstration flights this year as SpaceX tries new things with the most powerful rocket ever built.There are many things on SpaceX's Starship to-do list in 2025. They include debuting an upgraded, larger Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, on the test flight preparing to launch Thursday. The one-hour launch window opens at 5 pm EST (4 pm CST; 22:00 UTC) at SpaceX's launch base in South Texas. You can watch SpaceX's live webcast of the flight here.SpaceX will again attempt to catch the rocket's Super Heavy boostermore than 20 stories tall and wider than a jumbo jetback at the launch pad using mechanical arms, or "chopsticks," mounted to the launch tower. Read more about the Starship Block 2 upgrades in our story from last week.You might think of next week's Starship test flight as an apritif before the entres to come. Ars recently spoke with Lisa Watson-Morgan, the NASA engineer overseeing the agency's contract with SpaceX to develop a modified version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon. NASA has contracts with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to develop and fly two Starship human landing missions under the umbrella of the agency's Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.We are publishing the entire interview with Watson-Morgan below, but first, let's assess what SpaceX might accomplish with Starship this year.There are many things to watch for on this test flight, including the deployment of 10 satellite simulators to test the ship's payload accommodations and the performance of a beefed-up heat shield as the vehicle blazes through the atmosphere for reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.If this all works, SpaceX may try to launch a ship into low-Earth orbit on the eighth flight, expected to launch in the next couple of months. All of the Starship test flights to date have intentionally flown on suborbital trajectories, bringing the ship back toward reentry over the sea northwest of Australia after traveling halfway around the world.Then, there's an even bigger version of Starship called Block 3 that could begin flying before the end of the year. This version of the ship is the one that SpaceX will use to start experimenting with in-orbit refueling, according to Watson-Morgan.In order to test refueling, two Starships will dock together in orbit, allowing one vehicle to transfer super-cold methane and liquid oxygen into the other. Nothing like this on this scale has ever been attempted before. Future Starship missions to the Moon and Mars may require 10 or more tanker missions to gas up in low-Earth orbit. All of these missions will use different versions of the same basic Starship design: a human-rated lunar lander, a propellant depot, and a refueling tanker. Artist's illustration of Starship on the surface of the Moon. Credit: SpaceX Questions for 2025Catching Starship back at its launch tower and demonstrating orbital propellant transfer are the two most significant milestones on SpaceX's roadmap for 2025.SpaceX officials have said they aim to fly as many as 25 Starship missions this year, allowing engineers to more rapidly iterate on the vehicle's design. SpaceX is constructing a second launch pad at its Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas, to help speed up the launch cadence.Can SpaceX achieve this flight rate in 2025? Will faster Starship manufacturing and reusability help the company fly more often? Will SpaceX fly its first ship-to-ship propellant transfer demonstration this year? When will Starship begin launching large batches of new-generation Starlink Internet satellites?Licensing delays at the Federal Aviation Administration have been a thorn in SpaceX's side for the last couple of years. Will those go away under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who counts SpaceX founder Elon Musk as a key adviser?And will SpaceX gain a larger role in NASA's Artemis lunar program? The Artemis program's architecture is sure to be reviewed by the Trump administration and the nominee for the agency's next administrator, billionaire businessman and astronaut Jared Isaacman.The very expensive Space Launch System rocket, developed by NASA with Boeing and other traditional aerospace contractors, might be canceled. NASA currently envisions the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft as the transportation system to ferry astronauts between Earth and the vicinity of the Moon, where crews would meet up with a landing vehicle provided by commercial partners SpaceX and Blue Origin.Watson-Morgan didn't have answers to all of these questions. Many of them are well outside of her purview as Human Landing System program manager, so Ars didn't ask. Instead, Ars discussed technical and schedule concerns with her during the half-hour interview. Here is one part of the discussion, lightly edited for clarity.Ars: What do you hope to see from Flight 7 of Starship?Lisa Watson-Morgan: One of the exciting parts of working with SpaceX are these test flights. They have a really fast turnaround, where they put in different lessons learned. I think you saw many of the flight objectives that they discussed from Flight 6, which was a great success. I think they mentioned different thermal testing experiments that they put on the ship in order to understand the different heating, the different loads on certain areas of the system. All that was really good with each one of those, in addition to how they configure the tiles. Then, from that, there'll be additional tests that they will put on Flight 7, so you kind of get this iterative improvement and learning that well get to see in Flight 7. So Flight 7 is the first Version 2 of their ship set. When I say that, I mean the ship, the booster, all the systems associated with it. So, from that, it's really more just understanding how the system, how the flaps, how all of that interacts and works as they're coming back in. Hopefully we'll get to see some catches, that's always exciting.Ars: How did the in-space Raptor engine relight go on Flight 6 (on November 19)?Lisa Watson-Morgan: Beautifully. And that's something that's really important to us because when we're sitting on the Moon... well, actually, the whole path to the Moon as we are getting ready to land on the Moon, we'll perform a series of maneuvers, and the Raptors will have an environment that is very, very cold. To that, it's going to be important that they're able to relight for landing purposes. So that was a great first step towards that. In addition, after we land, clearly the Raptors will be off, and it will get very cold, and they will have to relight in a cold environment (to get off the Moon). So that's why that step was critical for the Human Landing System and NASA's return to the Moon. A recent artist's illustration of two Starships docked together in low-Earth orbit. Credit: SpaceX Ars: Which version of the ship is required for the propellant transfer demonstration, and what new features are on that version to enable this test?Lisa Watson-Morgan: We're looking forward to the Version 3, which is what's coming up later on, sometime in 25, in the near term, because that's what we need for propellant transfer and the cryo fluid work that is also important to us... There are different systems in the V3 set that will help us with cryo fluid management. Obviously, with those, we have to have the couplers and the quick-disconnects in order for the two systems to have the right guidance, navigation, trajectory, all the control systems needed to hold their station-keeping in order to dock with each other, and then perform the fluid transfer. So all the fluid lines and all that's associated with that, those systems, which we have seen in tests and held pieces of when we've been working with them at their site, we'll get to see those actually in action on orbit.Ars: Have there been any ground tests of these systems, whether its fluid couplers or docking systems? Can you talk about some of the ground tests that have gone into this development?Lisa Watson-Morgan: Oh, absolutely. Weve been working with them on ground tests for this past year. We've seen the ground testing and reviewed the data. Our team works with them on what we deem necessary for the various milestones. While the milestone contains proprietary (information), we work closely with them to ensure that it's going to meet the intent, safety-wise as well as technically, of what we're going to need to see. So they've done that.Even more exciting, they have recently shipped some of their docking systems to the Johnson Space Center for testing with the Orion Lockheed Martin docking system, and that's for Artemis III. Clearly, that's how we're going to receive the crew. So those are some exciting tests that we've been doing this past year as well that's not just focused on, say, the booster and the ship. There are a lot of crew systems that are being developed now. We're in work with them on how we're going to effectuate the crew manual control requirements that we have, so it's been a great balance to see what the crew needs, given the size of the ship. That's been a great set of work. We have crew office hours where the crew travels to Hawthorne [SpaceX headquarters in California] and works one-on-one with the different responsible engineers in the different technical disciplines to make sure that they understand not just little words on the paper from a requirement, but actually what this means, and then how systems can be operated.Ars: For the docking system, Orion uses the NASA Docking System, and SpaceX brings its own design to bear on Starship?Lisa Watson-Morgan: This is something that I think the Human Landing System has done exceptionally well. When we wrote our high-level set of requirements, we also wrote it with a bigger picture in mindlooked into the overall standards of how things are typically done, and we just said it has to be compliant with it. So it's a docking standard compliance, and SpaceX clearly meets that. They certainly do have the Dragon heritage, of course, with the International Space Station. So, because of that, we have high confidence that they're all going to work very well. Still, it's important to go ahead and perform the ground testing and get as much of that out of the way as we can. Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA's HLS program manager, is based at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Credit: ASA/Aubrey Gemignani Ars: How far along is the development and design of the layout of the crew compartment at the top of Starship? Is it far along, or is it still in the conceptual phase? What can you say about that?Lisa Watson-Morgan: Its much further along there. Weve had our environmental control and life support systems, whether it's carbon dioxide monitoring fans to make sure the air is circulating properly. Weve been in a lot of work with SpaceX on the temperature. Its... a large area (for the crew). The seats, making sure that the crew seats and the loads on that are appropriate. For all of that work, as the analysis work has been performed, the NASA team is reviewing it. They had a mock-up, actually, of some of their life support systems even as far back as eight-plus months ago. So there's been a lot of progress on that.Ars: Is SpaceX planning to use a touchscreen design for crew displays and controls, like they do with the Dragon spacecraft?Lisa Watson-Morgan: Were in talks about that, about what would be the best approach for the crew for the dynamic environment of landing.Ars:I can imagine it is a pretty dynamic environment with those Raptor engines firing. Its almost like a launch in reverse.Lisa Watson-Morgan: Right. Those are some of the topics that get discussed in the crew office hours. That's why it's good to have the crew interacting directly, in addition to the different discipline leads, whether it's structural, mechanical, propulsion, to have all those folks talking guidance and having control to say, "OK, well, when the system does this, here's the mode we expect to see. Here's the impact on the crew. And is this condition, or is the option space that we have on the table, appropriate for the next step, with respect to the displays."Ars: One of the big things SpaceX needs to prove out before going to the Moon with Starship is in-orbit propellant transfer. When do you see the ship-to-ship demonstration occurring?Lisa Watson-Morgan: I see it occurring in 25.Ars: Anything more specific about the schedule for that?Lisa Watson-Morgan: That'd be a question for SpaceX because they do have a number of flights that they're performing commercially, for their maturity. We get the benefit of that. It's actually a great partnership. I'll tell you, it's really good working with them on this, but they'd have to answer that question. I do foresee it happening in 25.Ars: What things do you need to see SpaceX accomplish before they're ready for the refueling demo? I'm thinking of things like the second launch tower, potentially. Do they need to demonstrate a ship catch or anything like that before going for orbital refueling?Lisa Watson-Morgan: I would say none of that's required. You just kind of get down to, what are the basics? What are the basics that you need? So you need to be able to launch rapidly off the same pad, even. They've shown they can launch and catch within a matter of minutes. So that is good confidence there. The catching is part of their reuse strategy, which is more of their commercial approach, and not a NASA requirement. NASA reaps the benefit of it by good pricing as a result of their commercial model, but it is not a requirement that we have. So they could theoretically use the same pad to perform the propellant transfer and the long-duration flight, because all it requires is two launches, really, within a specified time period to where the two systems can meet in a planned trajectory or orbit to do the propellant transfer. So they could launch the first one, and then within a week or two or three, depending on what the concept of operations was that we thought we could achieve at that time, and then have the propellant transfer demo occur that way. So you don't necessarily need two pads, but you do need more thermal characterization of the ship. I would say that is one of the areas (we need to see data on), and that is one of the reasons, I think, why they're working so diligently on that.Ars: You mentioned the long-duration flight demonstration. What does that entail?Lisa Watson-Morgan: The simple objectives are to launch two different tankers or Starships. The Starship will eventually be a crewed system. Clearly, the ones that we're talking about for the propellant transfer are not. Its just to have the booster and Starship system launch, and within a few weeks, have another one launch, and have them rendezvous. They need to be able to find each other with their sensors. They need to be able to come close, very, very close, and they need to be able to dock together, connect, do the quick connect, and make sure they are able, then, to flow propellant and LOX (liquid oxygen) to another system. Then, we need to be able to measure the quantity of how much has gone over. And from that, then they need to safely undock and dispose.Ars: So the long-duration flight demonstration is just part of what SpaceX needs to do in order to be ready for the propellant transfer demonstration?Lisa Watson-Morgan: We call it long duration just because it's not a 45-minute or an hour flight. Long duration, obviously, that's a relative statement, but it's a system that can stay up long enough to be able to find another Starship and perform those maneuvers and flow of fuel and LOX.Ars: How much propellant will you transfer with this demonstration, and do you think youll get all the data you need in one demonstration, or will SpaceX need to try this several times?Lisa Watson-Morgan: Thats something you can ask SpaceX (about how much propellant will be transferred). Clearly, I know, but theres some sensitivity there. Youve seen our requirements in our initial solicitation. We have thresholds and goals, meaning we want you to at least do this, but more is better, and that's typically how we work almost everything. Working with commercial industry in these fixed-price contracts has worked exceptionally well, because when you have providers that are also wanting to explore commercially or trying to make a commercial system, they are interested in pushing more than what we would typically ask for, and so often we get that for an incredibly fair price.Stephen ClarkSpace ReporterStephen ClarkSpace Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the worlds space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 237 Comments

more like co-pay-a-lot Home Microsoft 365 plans use Copilot AI features as pretext for a price hike "Classic" plans without AI or price increases are only for current subscribers. Andrew Cunningham Jan 16, 2025 2:49 pm | 113 Credit: Microsoft Credit: Microsoft Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreMicrosoft has two announcements for subscribers to its Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans today. First, you're getting the Copilot-powered AI features that Microsoft has been rolling out to businesses and Copilot Pro subscribers, like summarizing or generating text in Word, drafting slideshows in PowerPoint based on a handful of criteria, or analyzing data in Excel. Second, you'll be paying more for the privilege of using those features, to the tune of an extra $3 a month or $30 a year.This raises the price of a Microsoft 365 Personal subscription from $7 a month or $70 a year to $10 and $100; a family subscription goes from $10 a month or $100 a year to $13 a month or $130 a year. For current subscribers, these prices go into effect the next time your plan renews.Current subscribers are also being given an escape hatch "for a limited time." "Classic" Personal and Family plans at the old prices with no Copilot features included will still be offered, but you'll need to go to the "services & subscriptions" page of your Microsoft account and attempt to cancel your existing subscription to be offered the discounted pricing.Microsoft hasn't said for how long this "limited time" offer will last, but presumably it will only last for a year or two to help ease the transition between the old pricing and the new pricing. New subscribers won't be offered the option to pay for the Classic plans.Subscribers on the Personal and Family plans can't use Copilot indiscriminately; they get 60 AI credits per month to use across all the Office apps, credits that can also be used to generate images or text in Windows apps like Designer, Paint, and Notepad. It's not clear how these will stack with the 15 credits that Microsoft offers for free for apps like Designer, or the 50 credits per month Microsoft is handing out for Image Cocreator in Paint.Those who want unlimited usage and access to the newest AI models are still asked to pay $20 per month for a Copilot Pro subscription.As Microsoft notes, this is the first price increase it has ever implemented for the personal Microsoft 365 subscriptions in the US, which have stayed at the same levels since being introduced as Office 365 over a decade ago. Pricing for the business plans and pricing in other countries has increased before. Pricing for Office Home 2024 ($150) and Office Home & Business 2024 ($250), which can't access Copilot or other Microsoft 365 features, is also the same as it was before.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 113 Comments

20240424943 GM patents a dual-port charging system for EVs with vehicle-to-load I'm not sure why you'd want to do both at the same time, but this EV could. Jonathan M. Gitlin Jan 16, 2025 3:00 pm | 98 Credit: Chevrolet Credit: Chevrolet Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe battery system on an electric car can either chargefrom regenerative braking or an external power supplyor dischargepowering the EV's motor(s) or supplying that power via so-called vehicle-to-load. As a rule, it can't do both at once, but General Motors has some thoughts about that. The patent analysis site CarMoses spotted a recent GM patent application for a system that is capable of charging and discharging simultaneously.The patent describes a "charging system" with a pair of charging ports. One is for drawing power from an external source, just like every other EV. The second charge port is connected to a bi-directional charger, and the battery management system is able to charge the battery pack from the first port while also supplying power from the second port.That second port could be used to charge another battery, including the battery of another EV, and the patent includes an illustration of three EVs daisy-chained to each other. Credit: USPTO The idea of two charge ports on an EV is not unheard of; Porsche's Taycan (and the related Audi e-tron GT) have one on each side, and it's an option on the newer PPE-based EVs from those brands, if I'm not mistaken. I have no idea whether GM's patent will show up on a production EVcar companies patent many more ideas than they ever get around to building, after all.And I must admit, I'm not entirely sure what the use case is beyond seeing how long of an EV-centipede you could make by plugging one into another into another, and so on. But I am intrigued.Jonathan M. GitlinAutomotive EditorJonathan M. GitlinAutomotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 98 Comments

FCC not the president's speech police (yet) FCC chair makes one last stand against Trumps call to punish news stations Chair: Complaints "seek to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC." Jon Brodkin Jan 16, 2025 4:51 pm | 20 FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel testifies during a House hearing on Thursday, May 16, 2024. Credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel testifies during a House hearing on Thursday, May 16, 2024. Credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreTaking action in the final days of the Biden administration, the Federal Communications Commission dismissed three complaints and a petition filed against broadcast television stations. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the action is important because "the incoming President has called on the Federal Communications Commission to revoke licenses for broadcast television stations because he disagrees with their content and coverage.""Today, I have directed the FCC to take a stand on behalf of the First Amendment," she said. "We draw a bright line at a moment when clarity about government interference with the free press is needed more than ever. The action we take makes clear two things. First, the FCC should not be the president's speech police. Second, the FCC should not be journalism's censor-in-chief."President-elect Donald Trump's chosen replacement for Rosenworcel, Commissioner Brendan Carr, wants the FCC to punish news broadcasters that he perceives as being unfair to Trump or Republicans in general. Backing Trump's various complaints about news stations, Carr has threatened to revoke licenses by wielding the FCC's authority to ensure that broadcasters using public airwaves operate in the public interest.Rosenworcel said the complaints and petition she is dismissing "come from all cornersright and leftbut what they have in common is they ask the FCC to penalize broadcast television stations because they dislike station behavior, content, or coverage." After Trump criticized CBS in October, Rosenworcel said the agency "does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage."Chair: Complaints aim to weaponize FCC authorityThe Center for American Rights filed complaints supporting Trump's claims of bias regarding ABC's fact-checking during a presidential debate, the editing of a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, and NBC putting Harris on a Saturday Night Live episode. Separately, the Media and Democracy Project filed a petition to deny a license renewal for WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, a station owned and operated by Fox, alleging that Fox willfully distorted news with false reports of fraud in the 2020 election that Trump lost.Rejecting all four, Rosenworcel said "the facts and legal circumstances in each of these cases are different. But what they share is that they seek to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment. To do so would set a dangerous precedent. That is why we reject it here."Dismissing complaints isn't likely to end the cases, said Jeffrey Westling, a lawyer at the conservative American Action Forum who has urged Congress to "limit or revoke the FCC's authority to impose content-based restrictions on broadcast television."Westling said he agrees "substantively" with Rosenworcel, but added that "the DC Circuit Court has made clear that the FCC has to consider news distortion complaints (see Serafyn vs FCC) and not just dismiss them outright. If I am the complainants, I challenge these dismissals in court, win, and get more attention."When contacted by Ars today, the Center for American Rights provided a statement criticizing Rosenworcel's decision as "political and self-serving.""We fundamentally believe that several actions taken by the three major networks were partisan, dishonest and designed to support Vice President Harris in her bid to become President," the group said. "We will continue to pursue avenues to ensure the American public is protected from media manipulation of our Republic. The First Amendment does not protect intentional misrepresentation or fraud."The group previously touted the fact that Republican FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington urged FCC leadership to take its complaints seriously.Fox ruling will be challengedThe Media and Democracy Project criticized Rosenworcel's decision to dismiss its complaint against the Fox station in Philadelphia."We look forward to presenting on appeal the multiple court decisions that raise serious questions about the Murdochs' and Fox's character qualifications to remain broadcast licensees," the Media and Democracy Project said in a statement provided to Ars. "As renowned First Amendment scholar Floyd Abrams stated in his filing with the Commission, the First Amendment is no bar to Commission action given the facts of this case. Our petition is clearly distinct from the other politically motivated complaints."The group's petition pointed to a court ruling that found Fox News aired false statements about Dominion Voting Systems. Fox later agreed to pay Dominion $788 million to settle a defamation lawsuit."Our Petition to Deny is based on judicial findings that Fox made repeated false statements that undermined the electoral process and resulted in property damage, injury, and death; that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch engaged in a 'carefully crafted scheme' in 'bad faith' to deprive Lachlan's siblings of the control to which they are entitled under an irrevocable trust; and that 'Murdoch knowingly caused the corporation to violate the law,'" the Media and Democracy Project said today.The FCC order denying the petition also granted the station's application for a license renewal. The order said the allegations regarding "material carried on a cable network under common control with the Licensee that a state court found to be false" aren't grounds to deny the individual station's license renewal. While some "non-FCC-related misconduct" can be considered by the FCC in an evaluation of a licensee's character, the finding in the defamation suit doesn't qualify, the order said.Former FCC official objectsGigi Sohn, a longtime advocate whose nomination to the FCC was rejected by the Senate, also criticized the FCC today. Sohn, who also served as counselor for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler during the Obama administration, called the dismissal of the Fox petition a "failure to lead.""As [Rosenworcel] herself points out, the facts of these petitions are very different," Sohn wrote. "The [Media and Democracy Project] petition seeks a hearing on Fox Philadelphia licenses because they allege that Fox lacks the character to hold them because it lied to the American people about the 2020 election. The conservative complaints are all based on disagreements with editorial judgments of the various broadcast networks.""The decision to lump these filings together and overturn years of FCC precedent that broadcasters' character is central to holding a license is contrary to the Communications Act's mandate that licenses be granted in 'the public interest, convenience and necessity,'" Sohn also wrote. The FCC rationale would mean that "anything and everything a broadcast licensee does or says would be a First Amendment issue that warrants automatic license renewal," she added.Media advocacy group Free Press agreed with the FCC's decision. "We have an incoming administration quite literally threatening to jail journalists for doing their jobs, and an incoming FCC chairman talking about revoking broadcast licenses any time he disagrees with their political coverage," the group said.Free Press sided with the FCC despite noting that the Fox case involved "false information [that] had devastating consequences in the January 6 attack on the peaceful transition of power four years ago.""Lies knowingly aired by Fox News Channel and some Murdoch-owned Fox affiliates present a significantly different challenge to regulators than merely fact-checking, editing or scheduling equal time for candidates in ways that displease the president-elect," Free Press said. "Yet we agree with the urgent need to prevent the weaponization of the government against journalists and media companies on the eve of the inauguration, and in light of the dire threats the new administration poses."Jon BrodkinSenior IT ReporterJon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 20 Comments