Heavy drinking is clearly bad for your health. But it's long been questioned whether moderate drinking is also risky—and, 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 reason—maybe 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.

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Welcome 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.

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SpaceX 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 Starship—the rocket's upper stage—broke apart in space, or experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" in SpaceX-speak. This happened well short of the spacecraft's planned trajectory, which would have seen it fly halfway around the world and splash down in the Indian Ocean after more than an hour of flight.

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Cell phones are magnets for our attention, but you can, of course, face significant legal jeopardy for giving them that attention. Just ask the "safety driver" of an Uber self-driving vehicle, which hit and killed a pedestrian in Arizona in 2018. According to authorities, the driver was watching The Voice on Hulu just before the crash—and was then charged with negligent homicide.

These kinds of cases are always tragic because they feel so easily avoidable, but they also happen with enough regularity that it's easy to tune them out. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3,308 people were killed by distracted drivers in 2022 alone—and "texting is the most alarming distraction."

That's why states continue to crack down on cell phone use while driving. A Colorado law that went into effect on January 1, for instance, bans a driver from using any mobile electronic device unless it is hands-free. Thirty US states now have such bans in place.

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Taking 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.

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Google has added AI features to its regular Workspace accounts for business while slightly raising the baseline prices of Workspace plans.

Previously, AI tools in the Gemini Business plan were a $20 per seat add-on to existing Workspace accounts, which had a base cost of $12 per seat without. Now, the AI tools are included for all Workspace users, but the per-seat base price is increasing from $12 to $14.

That means that those who were already paying extra for Gemini are going to pay less than half of what they were—effectively $14 per seat instead of $32. But those who never used or wanted Gemini or any other newer features under the AI umbrella from Workspace are going to pay a little bit more than before.

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The battery system on an electric car can either charge—from regenerative braking or an external power supply—or discharge—powering 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.

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Microsoft 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.

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SpaceX 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 booster—more than 20 stories tall and wider than a jumbo jet—back 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.

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Are superheroes and supervillains the product of their childhood experiences? Not if they belong to the Marvel Cinematic Extended Universe or DC Universe, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. Canadian researchers watched many hours of those movies and looked at which characters suffered considerable childhood trauma. They concluded that those traumatic experiences were not significant factors in whether those characters turned out to be heroes or villains.

Prior studies have looked at the portrayal of trauma in superheroes, most notably the murder of Batman's parents and Spider-Man's uncle, as well as the destruction of Superman's home planet, Krypton. There has also been research on children sustaining injuries while pretending to be superheroes, as well as on the potential for superhero themes to help children overcome trauma and build self-esteem.

According to co-author Jennifer Jackson of the University of Calgary in Canada, two nursing students (since graduated) came up with the idea during a lab meeting to look at adverse childhood experiences and superheroes. It might seem a bit frivolous as a topic, but Jackson pointed out that Marvel and DC films reach audiences of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. "We also know that things we see in films and other media affects life in the real world," she said. "This influence could be used as a positive factor when supporting children's mental health and wellbeing. There may be shame or fear associated with some of the ACEs, and superheroes may be an effective ice breaker when broaching some difficult topics."

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Just a few days after more than 700 million new users flooded RedNote—which Time noted is "the most apolitical social platform in China"—rumors began swirling that RedNote may soon start segregating American users and other foreign IPs from the app's Chinese users.

In the "TikTokCringe" subreddit, a video from a RedNote user with red eyes, presumably swollen from tears, suggested that Americans had possibly ruined the app for Chinese Americans who rely on RedNote to stay current on Chinese news and culture.

"RedNote or Xiaohongshu released an update in the greater China region with the function to separate out foreign IPs, and there are now talks of moving all foreign IPs to a separate server and having a different IP for those who are in the greater China area," the Reddit poster said. "I know through VPNs and other ways, people are still able to access the app, but essentially this is gonna kill the app for Chinese Americans who actually use the app to connect with Chinese content, Chinese language, Chinese culture."

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AT&T has stopped offering its 5G home Internet service in New York instead of complying with a new state law that requires ISPs to offer $15 or $20 plans to people with low incomes.

The decision was reported yesterday by CNET and confirmed by AT&T in a statement provided to Ars today. "While we are committed to providing reliable and affordable Internet service to customers across the country, New York's broadband law imposes harmful rate regulations that make it uneconomical for AT&T to invest in and expand our broadband infrastructure in the state," AT&T said. "As a result, effective January 15, 2025, we will no longer be able to offer AT&T Internet Air, our fixed-wireless Internet service, to New York customers."

New York started enforcing its Affordable Broadband Act yesterday after a legal battle of nearly four years. Broadband lobby groups convinced a federal judge to block the law in 2021, but a US appeals court reversed the ruling in April 2024, and the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case last month.

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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.

The mission began with a middle-of-the-night launch from Kennedy at 1:11 am EST (06:11 UTC) Wednesday. 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.

The two robotic lunar landers—one from Firefly Aerospace based near Austin, Texas, and another from the Japanese space company ispace—will use their own small engines for the final maneuvers required to enter orbit around the Moon in the coming months.

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Pension funds are dipping their toes into buying bitcoin, in a sign that even typically staid corners of finance are finding it hard to ignore the potential outsized returns from cryptocurrencies.

Pension schemes for the states of Wisconsin and Michigan are among the top holders of US stock market funds devoted to crypto, while some pension fund managers in the UK and Australia have also made small allocations in recent months to bitcoin using funds or derivatives.

Advisers say the surge in bitcoin last year, which more than doubled to touch $100,000, has spurred the interest of conservative trustees.

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Intel's Arc B580 graphics cards have been its best-reviewed to date, maintaining the aggressive pricing of the old A-series Arc cards with fewer driver bugs, fewer weird performance outliers, and fewer caveats all around.

And this appears to be translating to retail success—the B580 is sold out across the board and difficult to find at its $249 MSRP. It's hard to tell if this is because demand has been good or supply was low (Intel says it has been restocking "weekly," for what that's worth). But regardless, there's clearly been some pent-up demand for an inexpensive-but-competent entry-level graphics card with decent ray-tracing performance and power efficiency and more than 8GB of RAM.

The Arc B570 is a less-powerful, less-interesting card than the B580, with fewer of Intel's Xe-cores, less memory bandwidth, and 10GB of RAM instead of 12GB. But it offers performance very similar to the RTX 4060 for $80 less—at least, if Intel and its partners can keep it in stock at that price—which makes it a dramatically more interesting budget option than $200-ish cards like the GeForce RTX 3050 or Radeon RX 6600.

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Making the seventh Civilization game is a tall order. With six prior entries, each with a different flavor, it's challenging to create a unique identity to get people to buy it while ensuring it’s familiar enough that it doesn’t drive longtime fans away.

This week, I spent 15 hours playing Civilization VII—which is slated for release next month—through two of its three ages: Antiquity and Exploration. That’s enough time to know that this is the most radical overhaul yet in a single new release without any expansions.

Regardless, my initial impressions are that this is also a return to form for the series. Like many others, I had gripes about Civilization VI. To be clear, VII isn’t a reset to pre-VI times; some concepts introduced in VI (like the hex-based city district system) are revisited and refined here.

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After months and years of rumors and official hints, Nintendo has finally pulled back the curtain on the Switch 2 with a first-look trailer (and sparse promo website) highlighting many small changes from the old Switch.

The short trailer shows off the Switch 2's larger tablet and screen, and a slightly more rounded edge on the top and bottom. The new system also sports an additional USB-C port on the top (next to a headphone jack) and a wider, U-shaped kickstand along the backside that can support the system at a number of wider angles.

The trailer also shows off black Joy-Cons that are significantly larger than those on the original Switch, with colored accents behind the joystick itself. An extended, colored Joy-Con "rail" on the inner edge features wider shoulder buttons and a new connector in the center. Rather than sliding in vertically, like the plastic rail on the Switch Joy-Cons, the controllers on the Switch 2 snap in horizontally with what appears to be a magnetic connection, and disconnects with the aid of a horizontal lever to the side of the shoulder buttons.

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For the past seven months—and likely longer—an industry-wide standard that protects Windows devices from firmware infections could be bypassed using a simple technique. On Tuesday, Microsoft finally patched the vulnerability. The status of Linux systems is still unclear.

Tracked as CVE-2024-7344, the vulnerability made it possible for attackers who had already gained privileged access to a device to run malicious firmware during bootup. These types of attacks can be particularly pernicious because infections hide inside the firmware that runs at an early stage, before even Windows or Linux has loaded. This strategic position allows the malware to evade defenses installed by the OS and gives it the ability to survive even after hard drives have been reformatted. From then on, the resulting "bootkit" controls the operating system start.

In place since 2012, Secure Boot is designed to prevent these types of attacks by creating a chain-of-trust linking each file that gets loaded. Each time a device boots, Secure Boot verifies that each firmware component is digitally signed before it’s allowed to run. It then checks the OS bootloader's digital signature to ensure that it's trusted by the Secure Boot policy and hasn't been tampered with. Secure Boot is built into the UEFI—short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface—the successor to the BIOS that’s responsible for booting modern Windows and Linux devices.

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Electric vehicle chargers are increasingly a target of vandals, often in search of copper. "Even at our headquarter site here in Campbell, in Silicon Valley, we've had our site vandalized twice," said Rick Wilmer, CEO of ChargePoint. His customers are starting to get fed up with the problem, too, and so Wilmer has had the company hard at work on a solution: an uncuttable cable, which should be ready to deploy by early summer.

"I literally got so frustrated ... I was at home in my own workshop, building prototypes and taking all my nastiest tools to them, to try and cut them, to see what we could come up with," Wilmer told me. It's a simple idea, involving hardened steel and "some other polymer materials that are just really hard to cut through," Wilmer said.

As well as making cables for its own chargers, ChargePoint plans to license its invention to others in the industry. "So we've collaborated with a few [cable vendors] to build these cables... and we can refer anyone that's interested to those vendors and give [them] permission to build cables with this technology for someone other than us," Wilmer said.

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Yesterday was Wikipedia Day, celebrating the first edit made to the online encyclopedia on January 15, 2001. It's a tricky kind of celebration because, for many of us, every day is a Wikipedia Day. Scanning a new Wikipedia tab can feel like turning on a faucet, using a resource that has seemingly always been there and dispensed evenly, almost magically, from the Internet pipes.

But that's not where Wikipedia comes from. It comes from editors, who are volunteers that add missing topics, update pages when new things happen, and settle debates ranging from grammar ticks to deep philosophy. Author Stephen Harrison has written about these people for Slate, WIRED, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Now, he's exploring the distinctive lives, interests, and conflicts of this tribe in a fiction tome, The Editors.

The Editors follows Morgan Wentworth, a recently laid-off journalist who scopes out a freelance story at a global conference for the book's Wiki stand-in, Infopendium. Wentworth sees the breadth of ages, personalities, and motivations among the editors and comes to appreciate their dedication. Then, a hacker breaks in, posts a cryptic message, and triggers Wentworth's expanding investigation into a global struggle over truth and information.

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