Author name: Kris Guyer

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FCC lets Starlink provide service to cell phones in areas hit by hurricane

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The Federal Communications Commission gave Starlink and T-Mobile emergency authority to provide satellite-to-phone coverage in areas hit by Hurricane Helene.

“SpaceX and T-Mobile have been given emergency special temporary authority by the FCC to enable Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability to provide coverage for cell phones in the affected areas of Hurricane Helene,” SpaceX said yesterday. “The satellites have already been enabled and started broadcasting emergency alerts to cell phones on all networks in North Carolina. In addition, we may test basic texting (SMS) capabilities for most cell phones on the T-Mobile network in North Carolina.”

SpaceX warned of limits since the service isn’t ready for a commercial rollout. “SpaceX’s direct-to-cell constellation has not been fully deployed, so all services will be delivered on a best-effort basis,” the company said.

Starlink is being used to provide wireless emergency alerts to cell phones from all carriers in North Carolina, according to Ben Longmier, senior director of satellite engineering for SpaceX. “We are also closely monitoring Hurricane Milton and standing by ready to take action in Florida,” he wrote.

Temporary spectrum authority

The FCC said the approval “enabl[es] SpaceX to operate Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) in the 1910–1915 MHz and 1990–1995 MHz frequency bands leased from T-Mobile in areas affected by the Hurricane Helene.” An FCC spokesperson told Ars that the approval is for all areas affected by Hurricane Helene, although it’s only active in North Carolina so far.

The FCC also said that it is granting “special temporary authorities to licensees and issuing rule waivers to help communications providers maintain and restore service, support emergency operations, and assist public safety, including search and rescue efforts.” Separately, the FCC last week waived certain Lifeline program eligibility rules to help people in disaster areas apply for discounted phone and broadband service.

SpaceX began launching satellites with direct-to-cell capabilities in January 2024 and showed a demo of text messages sent between T-Mobile phones via one of Starlink’s low-Earth orbit satellites. T-Mobile has said the Starlink service for phones will help cover gaps in areas where it has no coverage “due to terrain limitations, land-use restrictions,” and other factors.

FCC lets Starlink provide service to cell phones in areas hit by hurricane Read More »

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Why trolls, extremists, and others spread conspiracy theories they don’t believe

conspiracy theories, misinformation, Policy, Science, syndication, trolling / /

Some just want to promote conflict, cause chaos, or even just get attention.

Picture of a person using an old Mac with a paper bag over his head. The bag has the face of a troll drawn on it.

There has been a lot of research on the types of people who believe conspiracy theories, and their reasons for doing so. But there’s a wrinkle: My colleagues and I have found that there are a number of people sharing conspiracies online who don’t believe their own content.

They are opportunists. These people share conspiracy theories to promote conflict, cause chaos, recruit and radicalize potential followers, make money, harass, or even just to get attention.

There are several types of this sort of conspiracy-spreader trying to influence you.

Coaxing conspiracists—the extremists

In our chapter of a new book on extremism and conspiracies, my colleagues and I discuss evidence that certain extremist groups intentionally use conspiracy theories to entice adherents. They are looking for a so-called “gateway conspiracy” that will lure someone into talking to them, and then be vulnerable to radicalization. They try out multiple conspiracies to see what sticks.

Research shows that people with positive feelings for extremist groups are significantly more likely to knowingly share false content online. For instance, the disinformation-monitoring company Blackbird.AI tracked over 119 million COVID-19 conspiracy posts from May 2020, when activists were protesting pandemic restrictions and lockdowns in the United States. Of these, over 32 million tweets were identified as high on their manipulation index. Those posted by various extremist groups were particularly likely to carry markers of insincerity. For instance, one group, the Boogaloo Bois, generated over 610,000 tweets, of which 58 percent were intent on incitement and radicalization.

You can also just take the word of the extremists themselves. When the Boogaloo Bois militia group showed up at the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, for example, members stated they didn’t actually endorse the stolen election conspiracy but were there to “mess with the federal government.” Aron McKillips, a Boogaloo member arrested in 2022 as part of an FBI sting, is another example of an opportunistic conspiracist. In his own words: “I don’t believe in anything. I’m only here for the violence.”

Combative conspiracists—the disinformants

Governments love conspiracy theories. The classic example of this is the 1903 document known as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” in which Russia constructed an enduring myth about Jewish plans for world domination. More recently, China used artificial intelligence to construct a fake conspiracy theory about the August 2023 Maui wildfire.

Often the behavior of the conspiracists gives them away. Years later, Russia eventually confessed to lying about AIDS in the 1980s. But even before admitting to the campaign, its agents had forged documents to support the conspiracy. Forgeries aren’t created by accident. They knew they were lying.

As for other conspiracies it hawks, Russia is famous for taking both sides in any contentious issue, spreading lies online to foment conflict and polarization. People who actually believe in a conspiracy tend to stick to a side. Meanwhile, Russians knowingly deploy what one analyst has called a “fire hose of falsehoods.”

Likewise, while Chinese officials were spreading conspiracies about American roots of the coronavirus in 2020, China’s National Health Commission was circulating internal reports tracing the source to a pangolin.

Chaos conspiracists—the trolls

In general, research has found that individuals with what scholars call a high “need for chaos” are more likely to indiscriminately share conspiracies, regardless of belief. These are the everyday trolls who share false content for a variety of reasons, none of which are benevolent. Dark personalities and dark motives are prevalent.

For instance, in the wake of the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump, a false accusation arose online about the identity of the shooter and his motivations. The person who first posted this claim knew he was making up a name and stealing a photo. The intent was apparently to harass the Italian sports blogger whose photo was stolen. This fake conspiracy was seen over 300,000 times on the social platform X and picked up by multiple other conspiracists eager to fill the information gap about the assassination attempt.

Commercial conspiracists—the profiteers

Often when I encounter a conspiracy theory I ask: “What does the sharer have to gain? Are they telling me this because they have an evidence-backed concern, or are they trying to sell me something?”

When researchers tracked down the 12 people primarily responsible for the vast majority of anti-vaccine conspiracies online, most of them had a financial investment in perpetuating these misleading narratives.

Some people who fall into this category might truly believe their conspiracy, but their first priority is finding a way to make money from it. For instance, conspiracist Alex Jones bragged that his fans would “buy anything.” Fox News and its on-air personality Tucker Carlson publicized lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election to keep viewers engaged, while behind-the-scenes communications revealed they did not endorse what they espoused.

Profit doesn’t just mean money. People can also profit from spreading conspiracies if it garners them influence or followers, or protects their reputation. Even social media companies are reluctant to combat conspiracies because they know they attract more clicks.

Common conspiracists—the attention-getters

You don’t have to be a profiteer to like some attention. Plenty of regular people share content where they doubt the veracity or know it is false.

These posts are common: Friends, family, and acquaintances share the latest conspiracy theory with “could this be true?” queries or “seems close enough to the truth” taglines. Their accompanying comments show that sharers are, at minimum, unsure about the truthfulness of the content, but they share nonetheless. Many share without even reading past a headline. Still others, approximately 7 percent to 20 percent of social media users, share despite knowing the content is false. Why?

Some claim to be sharing to inform people “just in case” it is true. But this sort of “sound the alarm” reason actually isn’t that common.

Often, folks are just looking for attention or other personal benefit. They don’t want to miss out on a hot-topic conversation. They want the likes and shares. They want to “stir the pot.” Or they just like the message and want to signal to others that they share a common belief system.

For frequent sharers, it just becomes a habit.

The dangers of spreading lies

Over time, the opportunists may end up convincing themselves. After all, they will eventually have to come to terms with why they are engaging in unethical and deceptive, if not destructive, behavior. They may have a rationale for why lying is good. Or they may convince themselves that they aren’t lying by claiming they thought the conspiracy was true all along.

It’s important to be cautious and not believe everything you read. These opportunists don’t even believe everything they write—and share. But they want you to. So be aware that the next time you share an unfounded conspiracy theory, online or offline, you could be helping an opportunist. They don’t buy it, so neither should you. Be aware before you share. Don’t be what these opportunists derogatorily refer to as “a useful idiot.”

H. Colleen Sinclair is Associate Research Professor of Social Psychology at Louisiana State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community. Our team of editors work with these experts to share their knowledge with the wider public. Our aim is to allow for better understanding of current affairs and complex issues, and hopefully improve the quality of public discourse on them.

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Halls of Torment is Diablo cranked up to 50,000 kills/hour

gaming / /

Your first Halls of Torment run starts with a basic warrior, but new classes quickly unlock, each with their own distinct weapons and gameplay rhythms. My favorite ended up being the exterminator class, which uses a flamethrower to simply turn everything around him into a wall of flame. If that’s not your speed, you can choose from defensive shieldbearers with extremely slow attacks, melee axe-wielders that swing quickly with wild abandon, ranged archers that can deal damage from afar, magic-users that make heavy use of area-of-effect spells, a class with a semi-autonomous dog that goes after nearby enemies, and more.

Diablo, but also not Diablo

Just from glancing at Halls of Torment screenshots, it’s easy to glean the heavy visual influence the game owes to the grainy, isometric sprites of old-school Diablo. That throwback, nostalgic appeal extends to little touches like the menu system and low-fi voiceovers for NPCs as well, which comes across as a deliberate if cheesy design choice.

The game’s old-school sprites also make it easier for your graphics card to handle literally hundreds of moving objects and flashy attack effects on screen at once, too. Despite this, my relatively high-end system started struggling to maintain a consistent frame rate by the end of the more difficult dungeons.

The visual frenzy of all these old-school sprites can get a bit overwhelming, especially when some of your own summon attacks end up difficult to distinguish at a glance from enemy threats. Overall, though, the use of distinct colors makes it easy enough to quickly evaluate a screen full of information and extrapolate what it will look like over the coming seconds. I especially appreciated the big, purple lines and circles that telegraph where projectile attacks are going to appear just moments before they do.

Halls of Torment is Diablo cranked up to 50,000 kills/hour Read More »

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ULA’s second Vulcan rocket lost part of its booster and kept going

launch, military space, Science, Space, united launch alliance, vulcan / /

The US Space Force says this test flight was critical for certifying Vulcan for military missions.

United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, under contract for dozens of flights for the US military and Amazon’s Kuiper broadband network, lifted off from Florida on its second test flight Friday, suffered an anomaly with one of its strap-on boosters, and still achieved a successful mission, the company said in a statement.

This test flight, known as Cert-2, is the second certification mission for the new Vulcan rocket, a milestone that paves the way for the Space Force to clear ULA’s new rocket to begin launching national security satellites in the coming months.

While ULA said the Vulcan rocket continued to hit its marks during the climb into orbit Friday, engineers are investigating what happened with one of its solid rocket boosters shortly after liftoff.

After a last-minute aborted countdown earlier in the morning, the 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan rocket lit its twin methane-fueled BE-4 engines and two side-mounted solid rocket boosters to climb away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 7: 25 am EDT (11: 25 UTC) Friday.

A little tilt

As the rocket arced east from Cape Canaveral, a shower of sparks suddenly appeared at the base of the Vulcan rocket around 37 seconds into the mission. The exhaust plume from one of the strap-on boosters, made by Northrop Grumman, changed significantly, and the rocket slightly tilted on its axis before the guidance system and main engines made a steering correction.

Videos from the launch show the booster’s nozzle, the bell-shaped exhaust exit cone at the bottom of the booster, fall away from the rocket.

“It looks dramatic, like all things on a rocket,” Bruno wrote on X. “But it’s just the release of the nozzle. No explosions occurred.”

During the ascent of the Vulcan rocket on the #Cert2 mission, there appeared to be an issue with the solid rocket booster on the right side of the vehicle as seen from the KSC Press Site. However, the Centaur was able to reach orbit.https://t.co/3iwWLVWZHp

📹: @ABernNYC pic.twitter.com/5h06ffNMXr

— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) October 4, 2024

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial space launches in the United States, said in a statement that it assessed the booster anomaly and “determined no investigation is warranted at this time.” The FAA is not responsible for regulating launch vehicle anomalies unless they impact public safety.

The Vulcan rocket comes in several configurations, with zero, two, four, or six solid-fueled boosters clustered around the liquid-fueled core stage. ULA can tailor the configuration based on the parameters of each mission, such as payload mass and target orbit.

The boosters, which Northrop Grumman calls graphite epoxy motors, are 63 inches (1.6 meters) in diameter and 72 feet (22 meters) long. Their nozzles are made of a composite heat-resistant carbon-phenolic material.

Bruno added that the rest of the damaged booster’s composite casing held up fine during its roughly 90-second burn, but the anomaly caused “reduced, asymmetric thrust” that the rocket compensated for during the rest of its ascent into space.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial space launches, is not immediately requiring an investigation into the booster anomaly. The FAA said it is “assessing the operation and will issue an updated statement if the agency determines an investigation is warranted.”

Remarkably, the Vulcan rocket soldiered on and jettisoned both strap-on boosters to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. They’re not designed for recovery, so ULA and Northrop Grumman engineers will have to piece together what happened from imagery and performance data beamed down from the rocket in flight.

The BE-4 main engines, supplied by Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin, appeared to work flawlessly for the first five minutes of the flight. The core stage shut down its engines and separated from Vulcan’s Centaur upper stage, which ignited two Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10 engines to propel the rocket into orbit.

The second Vulcan rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, powered by two methane-fueled BE-4 engines and two solid rocket boosters.

Credit: United Launch Alliance

The second Vulcan rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, powered by two methane-fueled BE-4 engines and two solid rocket boosters. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Live data displayed on ULA’s webcast of the launch suggested the RL10 engines fired for approximately 20 seconds longer than planned, apparently to compensate for the lower thrust from the damaged booster during the first phase of the flight. The Centaur upper stage completed a second burn about a half-hour into the mission.

The rocket did not carry a real satellite. Earlier this year, ULA decided to launch a dummy payload to simulate the mass of a spacecraft, when it became clear the original payload for Vulcan’s second flight—Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane—would not be ready to fly this fall. ULA says it self-funded most of the cost of the Cert-2 test flight, which Bruno suggested was somewhere below $100 million.

Bullseye insertion

“Orbital insertion was perfect,” Bruno wrote on X.

The Centaur engines were supposed to fire a third time later Friday to send the rocket on a trajectory to escape Earth orbit and head into the Solar System. ULA also planned to perform experiments with the Centaur upper stage to demonstrate technologies and capabilities for longer-duration missions that could eventually last days, weeks, or months. The company did not provide an update on the results of these experiments.

Friday morning’s launch follows the debut test flight of the Vulcan rocket on January 8, which sent a commercial lunar lander from Astrobotic on a trajectory toward the Moon. The launch in January was nearly perfect.

ULA is a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which merged their rocket divisions to form a single company in 2006. SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, is ULA’s main competitor in the market for launching large US military satellites into orbit.

In 2020, the Pentagon awarded ULA and SpaceX multibillion-dollar “Phase 2” contracts to share responsibilities for launching dozens of national security space missions through 2027. Defense officials selected ULA’s Vulcan rocket to launch 25 national security missions, the majority of the launches up for competition. The rest went to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which started delivering on its Phase 2 contract in January 2023.

Later this year, the Space Force is expected to select up to three companies—almost certainly ULA, SpaceX, and perhaps Blue Origin with its soon-to-debut New Glenn rocket—in a fresh competition to be eligible for contracts to launch the military’s largest spacecraft through 2029.

The Space Force required ULA to complete two successful Vulcan test flights before clearing the new rocket for launching military satellites. Despite the booster malfunction, ULA officials clearly believe the Vulcan rocket did enough Friday for the Space Force to certify it.

“The success of Vulcan’s second certification flight heralds a new age of forward-looking technology committed to meeting the ever-growing requirements of space launch and supporting our nation’s assured access to space,” Bruno said in a statement. “We had an observation on one of our solid rocket boosters (SRBs) that we are reviewing, but we are overall pleased with the rocket’s performance and had a bullseye insertion.”

A closer view of the Vulcan rocket’s BE-4 main engines and twin solid-fueled boosters.

Credit: United Launch Alliance

A closer view of the Vulcan rocket’s BE-4 main engines and twin solid-fueled boosters. Credit: United Launch Alliance

In a press release after Friday’s launch, the Space Force hailed the test flight as a “certification milestone.”

“This is a significant achievement for both ULA and an important milestone for the nation’s strategic space lift capability,” said Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, Space Systems Command’s program executive officer for assured access to space. “The Space Force’s partnership with launch companies, such as ULA, are absolutely critical in deploying on-orbit capabilities that protect our national interests.

“We are already starting to review the performance data from this launch, and we look forward to Vulcan meeting the certification requirements for a range of national security space missions,” Panzenhagen said in a statement.

The Space Force is eager for Vulcan to become operational. Some of the military’s most critical reconnaissance, communications, and missile warning satellites are slated to fly on Vulcan rockets.

Ramping up

Going into Friday’s test flight, ULA and the Space Force hoped to launch one or two more Vulcan rockets by the end of the year, both with US Space Force payloads. The timing of the next Vulcan launch, assuming the Space Force certifies the new rocket, will likely hinge on the outcome of the investigation into the booster anomaly.

ULA has already transported all major components of the next Vulcan rocket from its factory in Alabama to Cape Canaveral for final launch preparations. The company has a backlog of 69 Vulcan flights, counting missions for the Space Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, Amazon’s Kuiper network, and Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane to resupply the International Space Station.

In a prelaunch briefing with reporters, Bruno said ULA aims to launch up to 20 times next year. Roughly half of that number will be Vulcan flights, and the rest will be Atlas V rockets, which ULA is retiring in favor of Vulcan.

There are 15 Atlas V rockets left to fly, primarily for Amazon and Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule. The nozzle failure Friday may also affect the schedule for Atlas V launches because the soon-to-retire rocket uses a similar booster design from Northrop Grumman.

ULA eventually wants to launch up to 25 Vulcan rockets per year from its launch pads at Cape Canaveral and at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The launch provider is outfitting a second assembly building in Florida to stack Vulcan rockets, a capability that will shorten the time between liftoffs. ULA is modifying its Atlas V launch pad in California to support Vulcan flights there next year.

ULA announced the Vulcan rocket in 2015 to replace the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, which had stellar success records but were not cost-competitive with SpaceX’s partially reusable Falcon 9. The Atlas V also uses a Russian main engine, a situation that became politically untenable after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and more so after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The final Russian engines for the Atlas V arrived in the United States in 2021.

The Vulcan rocket is somewhat less expensive than the Atlas V, and significantly cheaper than the Delta IV, but still more costly than SpaceX’s Falcon 9. There is a closer price parity between Vulcan and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.

Bruno hinted at the cost of developing the rocket in his roundtable discussion with reporters earlier this week.

“Developing a rocket, and then the infrastructure to develop a new space launch vehicle, the rule of thumb is it costs you somewhere between $5 billion and $7 billion,” Bruno said. “Vulcan is not outside the rule of thumb.”

Updated at 5: 15 pm EDT (21: 15 UTC) with new FAA statement.

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Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Popular gut probiotic completely craps out in randomized controlled trial

activia, B. lactis, Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis, constipation, digestive disorder, digestive system, functional constipation, health, probiotic, Science, yogurt / /

Any striking marketing claims in companies’ ads about the gut benefits of a popular probiotic may be full of, well, the same thing that has their target audience backed up.

In a randomized controlled trial, the probiotic Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis—used in many probiotic products, including Dannon’s Activia yogurts—did nothing to improve bowel health in people with constipation, according to data from a randomized triple-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.

The study adds to a mixed and mostly unconvincing body of scientific literature on the bowel benefits of the bacterium, substrains of which are sometimes sold with faux scientific-sounding names in products. Dannon, for instance, previously marketed its substrain, DN-173 010, as “Bifidus regularis.”

Digested data

For the new study, researchers in China recruited 228 middle-aged adults, 85 percent of whom were women. The participants, all from Shanghai, were considered healthy based on medical testing and records, except for reporting functional constipation. This is a condition defined by having two or more signs of difficulty evacuating the bowels, such as frequent straining and having rock-like stool. For the study, the researchers included the additional criterion that participants have three or fewer complete, spontaneous bowel movements (CSBMs) per week.

The participants were randomized to take either a placebo (117 participants) or the probiotic (112 participants) every day for eight weeks. Both groups got packets of sweetened powder that participants added to a glass of water taken before breakfast each morning. In addition to a sweetener, the daily probiotic packets contained freeze-dried Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis substrain HN019, which is used in some commercial probiotic products. The first dose had a concentration of 7 × 109 colony-forming units (CFUs), then participants shifted to a daily dose of 4.69 × 109 CFUs. Many probiotic products have doses of B. lactis in ranges from 1 × 109 to 17 × 109.

Popular gut probiotic completely craps out in randomized controlled trial Read More »

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ULA hasn’t given up on developing a long-lived cryogenic space tug

Centaur, Commercial space, launch, military space, Science, Space, united launch alliance, vulcan / /

On Friday’s launch, United Launch Alliance will test the limits of its Centaur upper stage.

United Launch Alliance’s second Vulcan rocket underwent a countdown dress rehearsal Tuesday. Credit: United Launch Alliance

The second flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, planned for Friday morning, has a primary goal of validating the launcher’s reliability for delivering critical US military satellites to orbit.

Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, told reporters Wednesday that he is “supremely confident” the Vulcan rocket will succeed in accomplishing that objective. The Vulcan’s second test flight, known as Cert-2, follows a near-flawless debut launch of ULA’s new rocket on January 8.

“As I come up on Cert-2, I’m pretty darn confident I’m going to have a good day on Friday, knock on wood,” Bruno said. “These are very powerful, complicated machines.”

The Vulcan launcher, a replacement for ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, is on contract to haul the majority of the US military’s most expensive national security satellites into orbit over the next several years. The Space Force is eager to certify Vulcan to launch these payloads, but military officials want to see two successful test flights before committing one of its satellites to flying on the new rocket.

If Friday’s test flight goes well, ULA is on track to launch at least one—and perhaps two—operational missions for the Space Force by the end of this year. The Space Force has already booked 25 launches on ULA’s Vulcan rocket for military payloads and spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. Including the launch Friday, ULA has 70 Vulcan rockets in its backlog, mostly for the Space Force, the NRO, and Amazon’s Kuiper satellite broadband network.

The Vulcan rocket is powered by two methane-fueled BE-4 engines produced by Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin, and ULA can mount zero, two, four, or six strap-on solid rocket boosters from Northrop Grumman around the Vulcan’s first stage to propel heavier payloads to space. The rocket’s Centaur V upper stage is fitted with a pair of hydrogen-burning RL10 engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne.

The second Vulcan rocket will fly in the same configuration as the first launch earlier this year, with two strap-on solid-fueled boosters. The only noticeable modification to the rocket is the addition of some spray-on foam insulation around the outside of the first stage methane tank, which will keep the cryogenic fuel at the proper temperature as Vulcan encounters aerodynamic heating on its ascent through the atmosphere.

“This will give us just over one second more usable propellant,” Bruno wrote on X.

There is one more change from Vulcan’s first launch, which boosted a commercial lunar lander for Astrobotic on a trajectory toward the Moon. This time, there are no real spacecraft on the Vulcan rocket. Instead, ULA mounted a dummy payload to the Centaur V upper stage to simulate the mass of a functioning satellite.

ULA originally planned to launch Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane on the second Vulcan rocket. But the Dream Chaser won’t be ready to fly its first mission to resupply the International Space Station until next year. Under pressure from the Pentagon, ULA decided to move ahead with the second Vulcan launch without a payload at the company’s own expense, which Bruno tallied in the “high tens of millions of dollars.”

Heliocentricity

The test flight will begin with liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, during a three-hour launch window opening at 6 am EDT (10: 00 UTC). The 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan rocket will head east over the Atlantic Ocean, shedding its boosters, first stage, and payload fairing in the first few minutes of flight.

The Centaur upper stage will fire its RL10 engines two times, completing the primary mission within about 35 minutes of launch. The rocket will then continue on for a series of technical demonstrations before ending up on an Earth escape trajectory into a heliocentric orbit around the Sun.

“We have a number of experiments that we’re conducting that are really technology demonstrations and measurements that are associated with our high-performance, longer-duration version of Centaur V that we’ll be introducing in the future,” Bruno said. “And these will help us go a little bit faster on that development. And, of course, because we don’t have an active spacecraft as a payload, we also have more instrumentation that we’re able to use for just characterizing the vehicle.”

The Centaur V upper stage for the Vulcan rocket.

The Centaur V upper stage for the Vulcan rocket. Credit: United Launch Alliance

ULA engineers have worked on the design of a long-lived upper stage for more than a decade. Their vision was to develop an upper stage fed by super-efficient cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants that could generate its own power and operate in space for days, weeks, or longer rather than an upper stage’s usual endurance limit of several hours. This would allow the rocket to not only deliver satellites into bespoke high-altitude orbits but also continue on to release more payloads at different altitudes or provide longer-term propulsion in support of other missions.

The concept was called the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES). ULA’s corporate owners, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, never authorized the full development of ACES, and the company said in 2020 that it was no longer pursuing the ACES concept.

The Centaur V upper stage currently used on the Vulcan rocket is a larger version of the thin-walled, pressure-stabilized Centaur upper stage that has been flying since the 1960s. Bruno said the Centaur V design, as it is today, offers as much as 12 hours of operating life in space. This is longer than any other existing rocket using cryogenic propellants, which can boil off over time.

ULA’s chief executive still harbors an ambition for regaining some of the same capabilities promised by ACES.

“What we are looking to do is to extend that by orders of magnitude,” Bruno said. “And what that would allow us to do is have a in-space transportation capability for in-space mobility and servicing and things like that.”

Space Force leaders have voiced a desire for future spacecraft to freely maneuver between different orbits, a concept the military calls “dynamic space operations.” This would untether spacecraft operations from fuel limitations and eventually require the development of in-orbit refueling, propellant depots, or novel propulsion technologies.

No one has tried to store large amounts of super-cold propellants in space for weeks or longer. Accomplishing this is a non-trivial thermal problem, requiring insulation to keep heat from the Sun from reaching the liquid cryogenic propellant, stored at temperatures of several hundred degrees below zero.

Bruno hesitated to share details of the experiments ULA plans for the Centaur V upper stage on Friday’s test flight, citing proprietary concerns. He said the experiments will confirm analytical models about how the upper stage performs in space.

“Some of these are devices, some of these are maneuvers because maneuvers make a difference, and some are related to performance in a way,” he said. “In some cases, those maneuvers are helping us with the thermal load that tries to come in and boil off the propellants.”

Eventually, ULA would like to eliminate hydrazine attitude control fuel and battery power from the Centaur V upper stage, Bruno said Wednesday. This sounds a lot like what ULA wanted to do with ACES, which would have used an internal combustion engine called Integrated Vehicle Fluids (IVF) to recycle gasified waste propellants to pressurize its propellant tanks, generate electrical power, and feed thrusters for attitude control. This would mean the upper stage wouldn’t need to rely on hydrazine, helium, or batteries.

ULA hasn’t talked much about the IVF system in recent years, but Bruno said the company is still developing it. “It’s part of all of this, but that’s all I will say, or I’ll start revealing what all the gadgets are.”

A comparison between ULA’s legacy Centaur upper stage and the new Centaur V.

A comparison between ULA’s legacy Centaur upper stage and the new Centaur V. Credit: United Launch Alliance

George Sowers, former vice president and chief scientist at ULA, was one of the company’s main advocates for extending the lifetime of upper stages and developing technologies for refueling and propellant depot. He retired from ULA in 2017 and is now a professor at the Colorado School of Mines and an independent aerospace industry consultant.

In an interview with Ars earlier this year, Sowers said ULA solved many of the problems with keeping cryogenic propellants at the right temperature in space.

“We had a lot of data on boil-off, just from flying Centaurs all the way to geosynchronous orbit, which doesn’t involve weeks, but it involves maybe half a day or so, which is plenty of time to get all the temperatures to stabilize at deep space levels,” Sowers said. “So you have to understand the heat transfer very well. Good models are very important.”

ULA experimented with different types of insulation and vapor cooling, which involves taking cold gas that boiled off of cryogenic fuel and blowing it on heat penetration points into the tanks.

“There are tricks to managing boil-off,” he said. “One of the tricks is that you never want to boil oxygen. You always want to boil hydrogen. So you size your propellant tanks and your propellant loads, assuming you’re going to have that extra hydrogen boil-off. Then what you can do is use the hydrogen to keep the oxygen cold to keep it from boiling.

“The amount of heat that you can reject by boiling off one kilogram of hydrogen is about five times what you would reject by boiling off one kilogram of oxygen. So those are some of the thermodynamic tricks,” Sowers said. “The way ULA accomplished that is by having a common bulkhead, so the hydrogen tank and the oxygen tank are in thermal contact. So hydrogen keeps the oxygen cold.”

ULA’s experiments showed it could get the hydrogen boil-off rate down to about 10 percent per year, based on thermodynamic models calibrated by data from flying older versions of the Centaur upper stage on Atlas V rockets, according to Sowers.

“In my mind, that kind of cemented the idea that distribution depots and things like that are very well in hand without having to have exotic cryocoolers, which tend to use a lot of power,” Sowers said. “It’s about efficiency. If you can do it passively, you don’t have to expend energy on cryocoolers.”

“We’re going to go to days, and then we’re going to go to weeks, and then we think it’s possible to take us to months,” Bruno said. “That’s a game changer.”

However, ULA’s corporate owners haven’t yet fully bought into this vision. Bruno said the Vulcan rocket and its supporting manufacturing and launch infrastructure cost between $5 billion and $7 billion to develop. ULA also plans to eventually recover and reuse BE-4 main engines from the Vulcan rocket, but that is still at least several years away.

But ULA is reportedly up for sale, and a well-capitalized buyer might find the company’s long-duration cryogenic upper stage more attractive and worth the investment.

“There’s a whole lot of missions that enables,” Bruno said. “So that’s a big step in capability, both for the United States and also commercially.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

ULA hasn’t given up on developing a long-lived cryogenic space tug Read More »

evgo-gets-$1.05b-loan-to-build-7,500-dc-fast-chargers

EVgo gets $1.05B loan to build 7,500 DC fast chargers

Cars / /

The electric vehicle charging company EVgo has secured conditional approval for a $1.05 billion loan from the US Department of Energy, the company revealed this morning. EVgo has applied to DOE’s Title 17 program, which exists to provide US Treasury-backed loans or loan guarantees for clean energy projects. If the deal is finalized, the money will be used to build around 7,500 DC fast chargers, with powerful 350 kW chargers its priority, EVgo said.

EVgo said the charger build-out will be concentrated in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas and should be completed by 2030.

Since the federal government is already spending billions on a network of DC fast chargers along highway corridors, EVgo is instead focusing on creating community charging stations, particularly in areas with a high density of multifamily developments and other communities where EV drivers have to rely on public chargers.

In fact, the company said 40 percent of the chargers will be deployed “in marginalized areas that have been overburdened by environmental impacts.”

EVgo gets $1.05B loan to build 7,500 DC fast chargers Read More »

backup-to-the-future!

Backup to the Future!

Backup / /

“I finally invented something that works!” This iconic quote from Back to the Future perfectly encapsulates the transformative journey of cloud-native data protection. As organizations increasingly migrate to the cloud, the landscape of data protection is evolving at a breakneck pace, much like Marty McFly’s adventures through time. Let’s take a closer look at the current state of the market, its history, and what the future holds for cloud-native data protection.

A Brief History of Cloud-Native Data Protection

“And in the future, we don’t need horses. We have motorized carriages called automobiles,” explains Doc Brown in Back to the Future III. Similarly, the journey of data protection has been nothing short of revolutionary. Initially, organizations relied on traditional on-premises solutions, which were often cumbersome and expensive. As cloud adoption grew, these legacy systems struggled to keep up with the dynamic and scalable nature of cloud environments. This led to the emergence of cloud-native data protection solutions, designed to leverage the inherent benefits of the cloud.

Cloud-native data protection aligns with the cloud’s operating model, offering pay-as-you-grow pricing, comprehensive workload support, and seamless cloud integration. These solutions are built using modern cloud principles such as microservices, containerization, and serverless architectures, providing greater scalability, resilience, and agility compared to traditional monolithic applications.

The Current State of the Market

“Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine … out of a DeLorean?” Just as Doc Brown’s DeLorean was a game changer, cloud-native data protection solutions have revolutionized how organizations safeguard their data. Today, the market is characterized by a diverse array of solutions that cater to various needs, from backup and disaster recovery to cyber resilience and compliance.

Key players in the market, such as Clumio, Rubrik, Commvault, and Acronis, offer robust solutions that integrate seamlessly with public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. These solutions provide features such as end-to-end encryption, granular recovery options, and advanced threat detection, ensuring that data is protected against both accidental loss and malicious attacks.

Emerging Technologies and Future Trends

“If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious s–t,” said Doc Brown of his invention. The future of cloud-native data protection is also brimming with potential, driven by emerging technologies and evolving market demands. Here are some key trends to watch:

  • AI and ML: AI and ML are set to play a pivotal role in enhancing data protection. These technologies can automate threat detection, predict potential vulnerabilities, and optimize backup and recovery processes. For instance, Commvault’s AI-driven capabilities help organizations detect threats quickly and ensure clean recovery points.
  • Serverless architectures: The adoption of serverless architectures is expected to increase, providing greater scalability and cost efficiency. Solutions like Rubrik’s serverless design simplify deployment and management, allowing organizations to focus on their core business activities.
  • Multicloud and hybrid environments: As organizations continue to adopt multicloud and hybrid strategies, data protection solutions will need to offer seamless integration across different cloud platforms. This will ensure consistent protection and management of data, regardless of where it resides.
  • Cyber resilience: With the rise in cyber threats, the focus on cyber resilience will intensify. Solutions will need to offer advanced features such as data immutability, air-gapped backups, and proactive threat monitoring to safeguard against ransomware and other attacks.

The Next 12-24 Months: Market and Technology Evolution

The next couple of years will see significant advancements in cloud-native data protection, reshaping the market and technology landscape. “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” but here’s what to expect:

  • Increased adoption of SaaS models: The shift toward software-as-a-service (SaaS) models will continue, offering organizations flexible, pay-as-you-go options. This will reduce the need for heavy upfront investments and allow for more agile and scalable data protection strategies.
  • Enhanced integration with cloud-native services: Data protection solutions will increasingly integrate with cloud-native services such as Kubernetes and serverless functions. This will enable more efficient and automated protection of containerized and serverless workloads.
  • Focus on data privacy and compliance: As data privacy regulations become more stringent, solutions will need to offer robust compliance features. This includes capabilities for data discovery, classification, and policy-based management to ensure adherence to regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
  • Expansion of cyber resilience capabilities: The emphasis on cyber resilience will lead to the development of more sophisticated threat detection and response mechanisms. Solutions will leverage AI and ML to provide real-time insights and automated remediation, minimizing the impact of cyber incidents.

Preparing for the Future

“Your future is whatever you make it.” To stay ahead in the evolving landscape of cloud-native data protection, organizations should take proactive steps to position themselves for success.

  • Embrace automation: Leverage AI and ML to automate data protection processes, from threat detection to backup and recovery. This will enhance efficiency and reduce the risk of human error.
  • Adopt a multicloud strategy: Ensure your data protection solution supports multicloud and hybrid environments. This will provide flexibility and resilience, allowing you to protect data across different platforms.
  • Focus on cyber resilience: Implement advanced cyber resilience features such as data immutability, air-gapped backups, and proactive threat monitoring. This will safeguard your data against evolving cyber threats.
  • Stay compliant: Keep abreast of data privacy regulations and ensure your data protection solution offers robust compliance features. This will help you avoid costly fines and protect your organization’s reputation.
  • Invest in training: Equip your IT teams with the skills and knowledge needed to manage modern data protection solutions. This will ensure they can effectively leverage the latest technologies and best practices.

Next Steps

“Great Scott!” The future of cloud-native data protection is bright, with emerging technologies and evolving market demands driving innovation. By embracing these advancements and preparing for the future, organizations can ensure their data is protected, resilient, and compliant. As Doc Brown wisely said, “Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one.”

To learn more, take a look at GigaOm’s cloud-native data protection Sonar report. This report provides a comprehensive overview of the market, outlines the criteria you’ll want to consider in a purchase decision, and evaluates how a number of vendors perform against those decision criteria.

If you’re not yet a GigaOm subscriber, sign up here.

Backup to the Future! Read More »

meta-smart-glasses-can-be-used-to-dox-anyone-in-seconds,-study-finds

Meta smart glasses can be used to dox anyone in seconds, study finds

clearview.ai, dox, doxxing, face search engine, large language models, LLMs, Meta, meta ray bans 2, Online Privacy, pimeyes, Policy, smart glasses / /

To prevent anyone from being doxxed, the co-creators are not releasing the code, Nguyen said on social media site X. They did, however, outline how their disturbing tech works and how shocked random strangers used as test subjects were to discover how easily identifiable they are just from accessing with the smart glasses information posted publicly online.

Nguyen and Ardayfio tested out their technology at a subway station “on unsuspecting people in the real world,” 404 Media noted. To demonstrate how the tech could be abused to trick people, the students even claimed to know some of the test subjects, seemingly using information gleaned from the glasses to make resonant references and fake an acquaintance.

Dozens of test subjects were identified, the students claimed, although some results have been contested, 404 Media reported. To keep their face-scanning under the radar, the students covered up a light that automatically comes on when the Meta Ray Bans 2 are recording, Ardayfio said on X.

Opt out of PimEyes now, students warn

For Nguyen and Ardayfio, the point of the project was to persuade people to opt out of invasive search engines to protect their privacy online. An attempt to use I-XRAY to identify 404 Media reporter Joseph Cox, for example, didn’t work because he’d opted out of PimEyes.

But while privacy is clearly important to the students and their demo video strove to remove identifying information, at least one test subject was “easily” identified anyway, 404 Media reported. That test subject couldn’t be reached for comment, 404 Media reported.

So far, neither Facebook nor Google has chosen to release similar technologies that they developed linking smart glasses to face search engines, The New York Times reported.

Meta smart glasses can be used to dox anyone in seconds, study finds Read More »

microsoft-releases-office-2024,-the-latest-buy-once-own-forever-version-of-office

Microsoft releases Office 2024, the latest buy-once-own-forever version of Office

microsoft 365, Microsoft office, office 2024, Tech / /

Microsoft’s push to get Windows and Office users to buy Microsoft 365 subscriptions can be irritating, but to the company’s credit, it’s one of the few that has continued to sell buy-once, use-forever versions of its flagship software after launching a subscription model. This week the company has officially launched Microsoft Office 2024, a new “locked-in-time” update to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other apps for people who don’t want the continuously developed Microsoft 365 versions.

For end users, Office Home 2024 gets you Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for $149.99. Office Home & Business 2024 costs $249.99, which adds Outlook “and the rights to use the apps for commercial purposes.” Both licenses cover a single PC or Mac.

New Office Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) products are also being released for businesses and other organizations; Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 for Windows also includes the Access database management app. Project 2024 and Visio 2024 are also still being offered as standalone products.

The new apps include most changes made since Office 2021 was released three years ago; Microsoft details those updates here and on its Learn documentation site. Unlike the Microsoft 365 versions, the perpetually licensed versions of the apps won’t get ongoing feature updates, they’re missing some real-time collaboration capabilities, and they also won’t get any features related to the Copilot AI assistant.

Microsoft releases Office 2024, the latest buy-once-own-forever version of Office Read More »

directv/dish-merger-has-a-problem-as-debt-holders-object-to-$1.6-billion-loss

DirecTV/Dish merger has a problem as debt holders object to $1.6 billion loss

directv dish merger, Policy / /

DirecTV’s agreement to buy the Dish satellite and streaming TV business from EchoStar is facing opposition from Dish creditors who would be forced to take a loss on the value of their debt.

Dish creditors “plan to block a distressed exchange that’s a key part of its tie-up with rival DirecTV, according to people familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg reported today. “A group of steering committee investors has gained a blocking position in order to negotiate with the company, the people said. They may even explore a better outcome through litigation, said some of the people.” The Bloomberg article was titled, “Dish-DirecTV Deal Sparks Creditor Revolt Over $1.6 Billion Loss.”

As Bloomberg notes, “Dish needs consent from its bondholders to exchange old debts for notes issued out of the new combined entity” in order to complete the deal. A previous Bloomberg article said that “just over two-thirds of [Dish] bondholders in each series of notes have to agree to the exchange, with the deadline set for October 29.” EchoStar executives argue that debt holders will benefit from the merger by “owning debt of a stronger company with lower leverage,” the article said.

Credit-rating firm S&P Global said in a research note that it views “these transactions as tantamount to a default because investors will receive less value than the promise of the original securities,” according to Variety. On the other hand, S&P Global “added that in exchange the new notes will carry a higher rate of 8.875 percent and be secured by assets of the combined businesses of DirecTV and Dish,” Variety wrote.

Debt exchange

DirecTV agreed to buy the Dish satellite TV and Sling TV business for a nominal fee of $1 in exchange for taking on $9.75 billion of Dish debt. But DirecTV’s deal announcement on Monday said the merger needs approval from Dish debt holders, who would see their investments devalued.

Dish notes would be exchanged with “a reduced principal amount of DirecTV debt which will have terms and collateral that mirror DirecTV’s existing secured debt,” DirecTV said. DirecTV’s announcement goes on to say that the principal amount will be reduced by at least $1.568 billion and that the deal can be scrapped if debt holders object:

DirecTV/Dish merger has a problem as debt holders object to $1.6 billion loss Read More »

“obviously-a-failure”:-sonos-execs-not-getting-bonuses-due-to-app-fiasco

“Obviously a failure”: Sonos execs not getting bonuses due to app fiasco

audio, Software, Sonos, Tech / /

Sonos’ controversial app update in May was “obviously a failure,” Sonos CEO Patrick Spence told Reuters today.

When the update launched in May, customers revolted over missing features, like the ability to search music libraries, edit song and playlist queues, and set sleep timers. In addition, some already purchased hardware, especially older models, began having problems.

In a note to investors on Tuesday, Sonos said that “more than 80 percent of the app’s missing features have been reintroduced.” The app should be “almost 100 percent restored in the coming weeks.” Sonos has been updating the app every two weeks in an effort to bring it to parity with the old one.

Speaking to Reuters, Spence took the blame for an app said to be rushed out prematurely ahead of Sonos’ first headphones, Ace. 

“This is obviously a failure of Sonos, but it starts with me in terms of where it started,” he said.

The CEO reportedly admitted to the botched rollout stemming from a lack of proper testing and a desire to push out a lot of features simultaneously:

We underestimated the complexity of the system, and so our testing didn’t capture all of the things that it should. We released it too soon.

Sonos was reportedly eager to get the app out to accommodate Ace, resulting in an overhaul of the app, its player side, and Sonos’ cloud infrastructure. Last month, purported former and current Sonos employees spoke about the app accumulating technical debt before being forced into an update that wasn’t ready and overlooked some workers’ concerns.

No executive bonuses for now

Reuters reported today that Spence and seven other execs “would forgo their bonus in the most recent fiscal year,” which ended on September 30. The publication noted that Spence got a bonus of approximately $72,000 for fiscal year 2023. Reuters reported that the company heads have “certain benchmarks” to meet to receive bonuses for the October 2024 to September 2025 fiscal year.

It’s not hard to understand why the executives aren’t getting their bonuses. In addition to the damage that the botched app redesign has wrought on Sonos’ reputation—aggravating long-time customers and deterring prospective ones—the app has had tangible financial consequences. The Santa Barbara, California company is expecting to pay up to $30 million in the short term to fix the app and try to restore customer and partner trust. The company also delayed two hardware releases, which led it to reduce its fiscal 2024 guidance. Sonos shares have fallen more than 30 percent since before the app update, Reuters noted.

“Obviously a failure”: Sonos execs not getting bonuses due to app fiasco Read More »