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Today β€” 14 January 2025Latest Tech News from Ars Technica

SpaceX is superb at reusing boosters, but how about building upper stages?

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 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.

The rocket's nine kerosene-fueled Merlin 1D engines powered the 21 Starlink satellites into space, then separated from the Falcon 9's upper stage, which accelerated the payload stack into orbit. The 15-story-tall booster returned to a vertical propulsive landing on one of SpaceX's offshore drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles downrange from Cape Canaveral.

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Β© SpaceX

Not just heat death: Here are five ways the Universe could end

14 January 2025 at 04:00

If you’re having trouble sleeping at night, have you tried to induce total existential dread by contemplating the end of the entire Universe?

If not, here’s a rundown of five ideas exploring how β€œall there is” might become β€œnothing at all.”

Enjoy.

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Β© DrPixel/Getty Images

Yesterday β€” 13 January 2025Latest Tech News from Ars Technica

New Glenn to make another launch attempt early Thursday

13 January 2025 at 17:50

Blue Origin announced late on Monday afternoon that it planned to make a second attempt to launch the New Glenn rocket at 1 am ET (06:00 UTC) on Tuesday. But then, a couple of hours later, the company said it would move the launch to Thursday.

Although the company provided no information about why it was slipping the launch two more days, it likely involved both technical work after an initial launch scrub on Monday morning and concerns about weather early on Tuesday.

In its short update on Monday afternoon, Blue Origin confirmed earlier reporting by Ars that the first launch attempt on Monday morning was scrubbed due to ice buildup on a vent line. "This morning’s scrub was due to ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit that powers some of our hydraulic systems," the company said.

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Β© Blue Origin

Biofilms, unwashed hands: FDA found violations at McDonald’s ex-onion supplier

By: Beth Mole
13 January 2025 at 15:44

The onion supplier behind a deadly E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders this past fall had numerous health and sanitation violations, including employees with unwashed hands, dirty equipment, and puddles of Listeria bacteria. That's according to a Food and Drug Administration inspection report that was obtained by CBS News via a Freedom of Information Act request.

On October 22, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the outbreak investigation, which at that time had only been linked to 48 illnesses across 10 states, including one death. The slivered onions on the fast-food giant's popular Quarter Pounder burgers were an immediate suspect. McDonald's temporarily pulled the burgers from the menu in affected states, and the supplier of the suspect onions, Taylor Farms of Colorado, swiftly recalled thousands of cases. Ultimately, 104 were sickened across 14 states, with 34 people hospitalized and one dead.

On October 28, the FDA began a multi-day inspection of Taylor Farms' facility in Colorado Springs, in which inspectors found numerous violations. The facility processes "ready-to-eat" (RTE) produce, like the cut onions, that do not go through a lethal treatment step for any environmental pathogens before being sold to consumers. This makes any unsanitary conditions in the facility particularly risky for food safety.

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Β© Getty | Scott Olson

Mastodon’s founder cedes control, refuses to become next Musk or Zuckerberg

Mastodon announced Monday that it's shifting its structure over the next six months to become wholly owned by a European nonprofit organizationβ€”"affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual."

This takes control of the social network away from its previous "ultimate decision-maker," Eugen Rochko. As founder, Rochko initially took the reins to ensure the decentralized platform would never be for sale and "would be free of the control of a single wealthy individual." His grand vision remains to leave Mastodon users in control of the social network, making their own decisions about what content is allowed or what appears in their timelines.

The news comes after leaders of other social networks, like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, have sparked backlash over sudden changes to popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). For years, Musk has drawn criticism for changing Twitter's hate speech policies through his X rebranding. And more recently, Zuckerberg this month defended Meta's decision to relax hate speech policies (permitting women to be called "property" and gay people to be called "mentally ill") by calling bans on such speech "out of touch with mainstream discourse."

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Β© SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket

2002’s Neverwinter Nights gets a patch in 2025 from β€œunpaid software engineers”

13 January 2025 at 11:55

Neverwinter Nights came out in 2002 and received an enhanced edition in 2018. In 2025, that should really be it, but there's something special about Bioware's second dip into the Dungeons & Dragons universe. The energy from the game's community is strong enough that, based largely on the work of "unpaid software engineers," the game received a new patch last week.

Neverwinter Nights (NN) Enhanced Edition (on Steam and GOG) now has anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering built in, major improvements to its networking code and performance, and more than 100 other improvements. As noted by PC GamerNN was originally built for single-core CPUs, so while it may seem odd to seek "major" improvements to performance for a 23-year-old RPG, it is far from optimized for modern systems.

NN received a similar fan-led patch, described as "a year-long love effort" by community developers, in 2023.

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How GM’s Super Cruise went from limo driving to lane changes and towing

When we first tested Super Cruise in 2018, the partially automated driver's assist impressed us enough that we wanted to see it rolled out across as much of General Motors' lineup as possible. Seven years later, our attitude toward such driver assists is a little more sober. Drivers are often more confident about such systems than they ought to be, and that's when they even care about such features in the first place.

That said, Super Cruise remains one of the better implementations of what the industry has inelegantly labeled "level 2+" driver assists: in plain English, a system that lets the driver go hands-free for long stretches, as long as they're paying attention to the road. Which, in Super Cruise's case, is achieved via an infrared camera that faces the driver and follows their gaze, even if they're wearing sunglasses.

Better yet, it's also tightly geofenced, as it's only meant to be used on restricted access, divided-lane highways.

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Β© General Motors

New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill

13 January 2025 at 11:27

The New York law requiring Internet providers to offer cheap plans to people with low incomes will take effect on Wednesday this week following a multi-year court battle in which the state defeated broadband industry lobby groups.

A US appeals court upheld the law in April 2024, reversing the ruling of a district judge who blocked it in 2021. The Supreme Court last month decided not to hear the broadband industry's challenge, leaving the appeals court ruling in place. The state law requires Internet providers to offer $15- or $20-per-month service to people with low incomes.

As we've written, the battle between New York and ISPs was an important test case for how states can regulate broadband providers when the Federal Communications Commission isn't doing so. The Biden-era FCC's attempt to reinstate net neutrality rules and regulate broadband providers as common carriers was blocked in court, but ISPs lost the fight against the New York affordability law and an earlier fight against California's net neutrality law.

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Β© Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino

Skull long thought to be Cleopatra’s sister’s was actually a young boy

Scientists have demonstrated that an ancient human skull excavated from a tomb at Ephesos was not that of ArsinoΓ« IV, half-sister to Cleopatra VII. Rather, it's the skull of a young male between the ages of 11 and 14 from Italy or Sardinia, who may have suffered from one or more developmental disorders, according to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. ArsinoΓ« IV's remains are thus still missing.

ArsinoΓ« IV led quite an adventurous short life. She was either the third or fourth daughter of Ptolemy XII, who left the throne to Cleopatra and his son, Ptolemy XIII, to rule together. Ptolemy XIII didn't care for this decision and dethroned Cleopatra in a civil warβ€”until Julius Caesar intervened to enforce their father's original plan of co-rulership. As for ArsinoΓ«, Caesar returned Cyprus to Egyptian rule and named her and her youngest brother (Ptolemy XIV) co-rulers. This time, it was ArsinoΓ« who rebelled, taking command of the Egyptian army and declaring herself queen.

She was fairly successful at first in battling the Romans, conducting a siege against Alexandria and Cleopatra, until her disillusioned officers decided they'd had enough and secretly negotiated with Caesar to turn her over to him. Caesar agreed, and after a bit of public humiliation, he granted ArsinoΓ« sanctuary in the temple of Artemis in Ephesus. She lived in relative peace for a few years, until Cleopatra and Mark Antony ordered her execution on the steps of the templeβ€”a scandalous violation of the temple as a place of sanctuary. Historians disagree about ArsinoΓ«'s age when she died: Estimates range from 22 to 27.

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Β© Gerhard Weber, University of Vienna/CC BY

Report: After many leaks, Switch 2 announcement could come β€œthis week”

Nintendo may be getting ready to make its Switch 2 console official. According to "industry whispers" collected by Eurogamer, as well as reporting from The Verge's Tom Warren, the Switch 2 could be formally announced sometime this week. Eurogamer suggests the reveal is scheduled for this Thursday, January 16.

The reporting also suggests that the reveal will focus mostly on the console's hardware design, with another game-centered announcement coming later. Eurogamer reports that the console won't be ready to launch until April; this would be similar to Nintendo's strategy for the original Switch, which was announced in mid-January 2017 but not launched until March.

Many things about the Switch 2's physical hardware design have been thoroughly leaked at this point, thanks mostly to accessory makers who have been showing off their upcoming cases. Accessory maker Genki was at CES last week with a 3D-printed replica of the console based on the real thing, suggesting a much larger but still familiar-looking console with a design and button layout similar to the current Switch.

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Β© Nintendo

Sonos CEO behind disastrous app exits with $1.9 million severance

After an app update rollout that can best be described as disastrous, Sonos is seeking a new CEO. The company announced today that Patrick Spence, who had been CEO for eight years, is stepping down.

In its announcement, Sonos said its board of directors and Spence "agreed" on the decision while saying it was unrelated to the company's fiscal Q1 2025 earnings, which it will report next month.

Spence joined Sonos as chief commercial officer in 2012 after leaving Blackberry. Under his tenure, Sonos branched into new categories, including portable speakers and spatial audio. But in May, Sonos issued an app update that broke basic and critical features. Sonos employees said the update was built on outdated code and infrastructure, impacting users' ability to do things like access and manage local libraries, set sleep timers, and edit song queues and playlists.

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Β© Sonos

Supreme Court lets Hawaii sue oil companies over climate change effects

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to decide whether to block lawsuits that Honolulu filed to seek billions in damages from oil and gas companies over allegedly deceptive marketing campaigns that hid the effects of climate change.

Now those lawsuits can proceed, surely frustrating the fossil fuel industry, which felt that SCOTUS should have weighed in on this key "recurring question of extraordinary importance to the energy industry" raised in lawsuits seeking similarly high damages in several states, CBS News reported.

Defendants Sunoco and Shell, along with 15 other energy companies, had asked the court to intervene and stop the Hawaii lawsuits from proceeding. They had hoped to move the cases out of Hawaii state courts by arguing that interstate pollution is governed by federal law and the Clean Air Act.

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Β© SkyHighStudios | RooM

US splits world into three tiers for AI chip access

On Monday, the US government announced a new round of regulations on global AI chip exports, dividing the world into roughly three tiers of access. The rules create quotas for about 120 countries and allow unrestricted access for 18 close US allies while maintaining existing bans on China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

AI-accelerating GPU chips, like those manufactured by Nvidia, currently serve as the backbone for a wide variety of AI model deployments, such as chatbots like ChatGPT, AI video generators, self-driving cars, weapons targeting systems, and much more. The Biden administration fears that those chips could be used to undermine US national security.

According to the White House, "In the wrong hands, powerful AI systems have the potential to exacerbate significant national security risks, including by enabling the development of weapons of mass destruction, supporting powerful offensive cyber operations, and aiding human rights abuses."

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Β© SEAN GLADWELL via Getty Images

An icy vent line may have caused Blue Origin to scrub debut launch of New Glenn

13 January 2025 at 00:45

COCOA BEACH, Fla.β€”With 45 minutes left in a three-hour launch window, Blue Origin scrubbed its first attempt to launch the massive New Glenn rocket early on Monday morning.

Throughout the window, which opened at 1 am ET (06:00 UTC), the company continued to reset the countdown clock as launch engineers worked out technical issues with the rocket.

Officially, both on its live webcast as well as on social media following the scrub, Blue Origin was vague about the cause of the delayed launch attempt.

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Β© Blue Origin

Before yesterdayLatest Tech News from Ars Technica

Although it’s β€œinsane” to try to land New Glenn, Bezos says it’s important to try

12 January 2025 at 16:30

MERRITT ISLAND, Fla.β€”Understandably, the main building of Blue Origin's sprawling campus in Florida buzzed with activity on Sunday evening as the final hours ticked down toward the company's historic first orbital launch. The time had come to celebrate a moment long-awaited.

On one side of the large foyer hung a multi-story print of the New Glenn rocket lit up on its launch pad. The striking image had been taken a day after Christmas and put up in the lobby two days earlier. On the other side, a massive replica of the company's "Mk. 1" lunar lander towered over caterers bustling through.

My escort and I took the elevators to the upper floor, where a walkway overlooks the factory where Blue Origin builds the first and second stages of its New Glenn rocket. There I met the chief executive of the company, Dave Limp, as well as the person responsible for all of this activity.

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Β© Blue Origin

The 8 most interesting PC monitors from CES 2025

Plenty of computer monitors made debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year, but many of the updates at this year's event were pretty minor. Many could have easily been a part of 2024's show.

But some brought new and interesting features to the table for 2025β€”in this article, we'll tell you all about them.

LG’s 6K monitor

Pixel addicts are always right at home at CES, and the most interesting high-resolution computer monitor to come out of this year's show is the LG UltraFine 6K Monitor (model 32U990A).

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Getting an all-optical AI to handle non-linear math

A standard digital camera used in a car for stuff like emergency braking has a perceptual latency of a hair above 20 milliseconds. That’s just the time needed for a camera to transform the photons hitting its aperture into electrical charges using either CMOS or CCD sensors. It doesn’t count the further milliseconds needed to send that information to an onboard computer or process it there.

A team of MIT researchers figured that if you had a chip that could process photons directly, you could skip the entire digitization step and perform calculations with the photons themselves, which has the potential to be mind-bogglingly faster.

β€œWe’re focused on a very specific metric here, which is latency. We aim for applications where what matters the most is how fast you can produce a solution. That’s why we are interested in systems where we’re able to do all the computations optically,” says Saumil Bandyopadhyay, an MIT researcher. The team implemented a complete deep neural network on a photonic chip, achieving a latency of 410 picoseconds. To put that in perspective, Bandyopadhyay’s chip could process the entire neural net it had onboard around 58 times within a single tick of the 4 GHz clock on a standard CPU.

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Β© MIT

New Glenn rocket is at the launch pad waiting for calm seas to land

11 January 2025 at 09:31

COCOA BEACH, Fla.β€”As it so often does in the final days before the debut of a new rocket, it all comes down to weather. Accordingly, Blue Origin is only awaiting clear skies and fair seas for its massive New Glenn vehicle to lift off from Florida.

After the company completed integration of the rocket this week and rolled the super heavy lift rocket to its launch site at Cape Canaveral, the focus turned toward the weather. Conditions at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base have been favorable during the early morning launch windows available to the rocket, but there have been complications offshore.

That's because Blue Origin aims to recover the first stage of the New Glenn rocket, and sea states in the Atlantic Ocean have been unsuitable for an initial attempt to catch the first stage booster on a drone ship. The company has already waived one launch attempt set for 1 am ET (06:00 UTC) on Friday, January 10.

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Β© Blue Origin

Three bizarre home devices and a couple good things at CES 2025

11 January 2025 at 04:30

Every year, thousands of product vendors, journalists, and gadget enthusiasts gather in an unreasonable city to gawk at mostly unrealistic products.

To be of service to our readers, Ars has done the work of looking through hundreds of such items presented at the 2025 Consumer Electronic Show, pulling out the most bizarre, unnecessary, and head-scratching items. Andrew Cunningham swept across PC and gaming accessories. This writer stuck to goods related to the home.

It's a lie to say it's all a prank, so I snuck in a couple of actually good things announced during CES for human domiciles. But the stuff you'll want to tell your family and friends about in mock disbelief? Plenty of that, still.

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Β© Verity Burns/WIRED UK

161 years ago, a New Zealand sheep farmer predicted AI doom

While worrying about AI takeover might seem like a modern idea that sprung from War Games or The Terminator, it turns out that a similar concern about machine dominance dates back to the time of the American Civil War, albeit from an English sheep farmer living in New Zealand. Theoretically, Abraham Lincoln could have read about AI takeover during his lifetime.

On June 13, 1863, a letter published in The Press newspaper of Christchurch warned about the potential dangers of mechanical evolution and called for the destruction of machines, foreshadowing the development of what we now call artificial intelligenceβ€”and the backlash against it from people who fear it may threaten humanity with extinction. It presented what may be the first published argument for stopping technological progress to prevent machines from dominating humanity.

Titled "Darwin among the Machines," the letter recently popped up again on social media thanks to Peter Wildeford of the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy. The author of the letter, Samuel Butler, submitted it under the pseudonym Cellarius, but later came to publicly embrace his position. The letter drew direct parallels between Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the rapid development of machinery, suggesting that machines could evolve consciousness and eventually supplant humans as Earth's dominant species.

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Β© Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

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