Author name: Kris Guyer

spacex’s-most-flown-reusable-rocket-will-go-for-its-20th-launch-tonight

SpaceX’s most-flown reusable rocket will go for its 20th launch tonight

b1062, cape canaveral, Commercial space, falcon 9, launch, reusable rocket, Science, Space, spacex, starlink / /
File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket rolling out of its hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket rolling out of its hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

For the first time, SpaceX will launch one of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters for a 20th time Friday night on a flight to deliver 23 more Starlink Internet satellites to orbit.

This milestone mission is scheduled to lift off at 9: 22 pm EDT Friday (01: 22 UTC Saturday) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Forecasters from the US Space Force predict “excellent” weather for the primetime launch.

Falcon 9 will blaze a familiar trail into space, following the same profile as dozens of past Starlink missions.

The rocket’s first-stage booster will shut off its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, reaching a top speed of more than 5,000 mph (8,000 km per hour). The first stage will detach from the Falcon 9’s upper stage, which will continue firing into orbit. The 15-story-tall Falcon 9 booster, meanwhile, will follow an arcing trajectory before braking for a vertical landing on a drone ship floating in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas.

The 23 flat-packed Starlink spacecraft will deploy from the upper stage a little more than an hour after liftoff, bringing the total number of Starlinks in low-Earth orbit to more than 5,800 spacecraft.

A hunger for launch

Pretty much every day, SpaceX is either launching a rocket or rolling one out of the hangar to the launch pad. At this pace, SpaceX is redefining what is routine in the space industry, but the rapid-fire launch rate also means the company is continually breaking records, mostly its own.

Friday night’s launch will break another one of those records. This first-stage booster, designated by the tail number B1062, has flown 19 times since its first flight in November 2020. The booster will now be the first in SpaceX’s inventory to go for a 20th flight, breaking a tie with three other rockets as the company’s fleet leader.

When SpaceX debuted the latest version of its Falcon 9 rocket, the Falcon 9 Block 5, officials said the reusable first stage could fly 10 times with minimal refurbishment and perhaps additional flights with a more extensive overhaul. Now, SpaceX is certifying Falcon 9 boosters for 40 flights.

This particular rocket has not undergone any extended maintenance or long-term grounding. It has flown an average of once every two months since debuting three-and-a-half years ago. So the 20-flight milestone SpaceX will achieve Friday night means this rocket has doubled its original design life and, at the same time, has reached the halfway point of its extended service life.

In its career, this booster has launched eight people and 530 spacecraft, mostly Starlinks. The rocket’s first two flights launched GPS navigation satellites for the US military, then it launched two commercial human spaceflight missions with Dragon crew capsules. These were the all-private Inspiration4 mission and Axiom Mission 1, the first fully commercial crew flight to the International Space Station.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Sunday, April 7, on the Bandwagon 1 rideshare mission.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Sunday, April 7, on the Bandwagon 1 rideshare mission.

Remarkably, this will be the sixth Falcon 9 launch in less than eight days, more flights than SpaceX’s main US rival, United Launch Alliance, has launched in 17 months.

It will be the 38th Falcon 9 launch of the year and the 111th flight of a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket—the 114th launch by SpaceX overall—in the last 365 days. More than a third of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy missions, a number that will stand at 332 after Friday night’s flight, have launched in the past year.

This month, for the first time, SpaceX demonstrated it could launch two Falcon 9 rockets in less than five days from the company’s launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. SpaceX has also cut the turnaround time between Falcon 9 rockets at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The company’s most-used launch pad, SLC-40, can handle two Falcon 9 flights in less than four days.

It’s not just launch pad turnaround. SpaceX uses its drone ships—two based in Florida and one in California—for most Falcon 9 landings. In order to meet the appetite for Falcon 9 launches, SpaceX is getting rockets back to port and re-deploying drone ships back to sea at a faster rate.

SpaceX’s most-flown reusable rocket will go for its 20th launch tonight Read More »

google-kills-“one”-vpn-service,-says-“people-simply-weren’t-using-it”

Google kills “One” VPN service, says “people simply weren’t using it”

Google, google one, Tech / /

The Venn diagram of “I want a VPN” and “I trust Google” has no overlap —

Did anyone want a VPN from the Internet’s largest data collector?

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Google kills “One” VPN service, says “people simply weren’t using it”

Aurich Lawson

Another day, another dead Google product. The Google One VPN service we complained about last week is headed to the chopping block. Google’s support documents haven’t been updated yet, but Android Authority reported on an email going out to Google One users informing them of the shutdown. 9to5Google also got confirmation of the shutdown from Google.

The Google One VPN launched in 2020 as a bonus feature for paying Google One subscribers. Google One is Google’s cloud storage subscription plan that allows users to buy extra storage for Gmail, Drive, and Google Photos. In 2020, the plan was exclusive to the expensive 2TB tier for $10 a month, but later, it was brought down to all Google One tiers, including the entry-level $2-per-month option.

By our count, Google has three VPN products, though “products” might be too strong a word since they are all essentially the same thing—VPN market segments? There’s the general Google One VPN for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac—this is the one that’s dying. There’s also the “Pixel VPN by Google One,” which came with Pixel phones (the “Google One” branding here makes no sense since you didn’t have to subscribe to Google One) and the Google Fi VPN that’s exclusive to Google Fi Android and iOS customers.

The Google One VPN settings.

Enlarge / The Google One VPN settings.

Google

The Google One VPN that’s shutting down was by far the most flexible, with the widest platform support, and its shutdown represents Google ending VPN support for Windows and Mac. The Pixel and Fi VPNs will keep running, possibly with new branding.

A Google spokesperson told 9to5Google the Google One VPN is shutting down because “people simply weren’t using it.” The Windows client was also super buggy, and it’s probably easier to shut it down rather than fix it. There’s no shutdown date yet, but a message on this page says the VPN will be phased out “later in 2024.”

Google kills “One” VPN service, says “people simply weren’t using it” Read More »

“ban-chinese-electric-vehicles-now,”-demands-us-senator

“Ban Chinese electric vehicles now,” demands US senator

BYD, Cars, Chinese EVs / /

BYD in the crosshairs —

China’s EV industry benefits from billions of dollars in government subsidies.

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A row of BYD vehicles on a dealer lot in Berlin.

Enlarge / BYD electric cars stand at a BYD dealership on April 05, 2024, in Berlin, Germany. BYD, which stands for Build Your Dreams, is a Chinese manufacturer that went from making solar panels to electric cars. The company is seeking to gain a foothold in the German auto market.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Influential US Senator Sherrod Brown (D–Ohio) has called on US President Joe Biden to ban electric vehicles from Chinese brands. Brown calls Chinese EVs “an existential threat” to the US automotive industry and says that allowing imports of cheap EVs from Chinese brands “is inconsistent with a pro-worker industrial policy.”

Brown’s letter to the president is the most recent to sound alarms about the threat of heavily subsidized Chinese EVs moving into established markets. Brands like BYD and MG have been on sale in the European Union for some years now, and last October, the EU launched an anti-subsidy investigation into whether the Chinese government is giving Chinese brands an unfair advantage.

The EU probe won’t wrap until November, but another report published this week found that government subsidies for green technology companies are prevalent in China. BYD, which now sells more EVs than Tesla, has benefited from almost $4 billion (3.7 billion euro) in direct help from the Chinese government in 2022, according to a study by the Kiel Institute.

Last month, the EU even started paying extra attention to imports of Chinese EVs, issuing a threat of retroactive tariffs that could start being imposed this summer.

Chinese EV imports to the EU have increased by 14 percent since the start of its investigation, but they have yet to really begin in the US, where there are a few barriers in their way. Chinese batteries make an EV ineligible for the IRS’s clean vehicle tax credit, for one thing. And Chinese-made vehicles (like the Lincoln Nautilus, Buick Envision, and Polestar 2) are already subject to a 27.5 percent import tax.

An existential threat?

But Chinese EVs are on sale in Mexico already, and that has American automakers worried. Last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley said he saw Chinese automakers “as the main competitors, not GM or Toyota.” And in January, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he believed that “if there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world.”

BYD, which recently debuted a sub-$10,000 EV called the Seagull, is reportedly looking for a factory in Mexico. That would allow it to build cars for the US market that aren’t subject to the 27.5 percent tax.

But not if Congress gets its way. A few weeks ago, Joshua Hawley (R-Mo.)—using very similar language to Brown—called for a tax increase on Chinese EVs. Hawley wanted to raise the base tariff from 2.5 percent to 100 percent, which would result in Chinese EVs being subject to an overall 125 percent import tax, up from today’s 27.5 percent. Hawley also wanted to apply those rates to Chinese EVs assembled in Mexico.

“A surge in Chinese EV sales would cripple the domestic manufacturing base, including critical inputs from parts suppliers to steel, tires, and glass producers,” wrote Brown, noting also that Chinese EVs could “undermine efforts to reshore semiconductor production.” Brown is similarly down on allowing made-in-Mexico EVs from Chinese brands.

It’s not just the potential damage to the US auto industry that has prompted this letter. Brown wrote that he is concerned about the risk of China having access to data collected by connected cars, “whether it be information about traffic patterns, critical infrastructure, or the lives of Americans,” pointing out that “China does not allow American-made electric vehicles near their official buildings.”

At the end of February, the Commerce Department also warned of the security risk from Chinese-connected cars and revealed it has launched an investigation into the matter.

Brown doesn’t just want a tariff on Chinese EVs, though. “When the goal is to dominate a sector, tariffs are insufficient to stop their attack on American manufacturing,” Brown wrote. “Instead, the Administration should act now to ban Chinese EVs before they destroy the potential for the US EV market. For this reason, no solution should be left off the table, including the use of Section 421 (China Safeguard) of the Trade Act of 1974, or some other authority.”

“Ban Chinese electric vehicles now,” demands US senator Read More »

after-a-fiery-finale,-the-delta-rocket-family-now-belongs-to-history

After a fiery finale, the Delta rocket family now belongs to history

delta iv, delta iv heavy, launch, military space, National Reconnaissance Office, nrol-70, Science, Space, united launch alliance / /

Delta 389 —

“It is bittersweet to see the last one, but there are great things ahead.”

–

In this video frame from ULA's live broadcast, three RS-68A engines power the Delta IV Heavy rocket into the sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Enlarge / In this video frame from ULA’s live broadcast, three RS-68A engines power the Delta IV Heavy rocket into the sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida.

United Launch Alliance

The final flight of United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket took off Tuesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a classified spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The Delta IV Heavy, one of the world’s most powerful rockets, launched for the 16th and final time Tuesday. It was the 45th and last flight of a Delta IV launcher and the final rocket named Delta to ever launch, ending a string of 389 missions dating back to 1960.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) tried to launch this rocket on March 28 but aborted the countdown about four minutes prior to liftoff due to trouble with nitrogen pumps at an off-site facility at Cape Canaveral. The nitrogen is necessary for purging parts inside the Delta IV rocket before launch, reducing the risk of a fire or explosion during the countdown.

The pumps, operated by Air Liquide, are part of a network that distributes nitrogen to different launch pads at the Florida spaceport. The nitrogen network has caused problems before, most notably during the first launch campaign for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket in 2022. Air Liquide did not respond to questions from Ars.

A flawless liftoff

With a solution in place, ULA gave the go-ahead for another launch attempt Tuesday. After a smooth countdown, the final Delta IV Heavy lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12: 53 pm EDT (16: 53 UTC).

Three hydrogen-fueled RS-68A engines made by Aerojet Rocketdyne flashed to life in the final seconds before launch and throttled up to produce more than 2 million pounds of thrust. The ignition sequence was accompanied by a dramatic hydrogen fireball, a hallmark of Delta IV Heavy launches, that singed the bottom of the 235-foot-tall (71.6-meter) rocket, turning a patch of its orange insulation black. Then, 12 hold-down bolts fired and freed the Delta IV Heavy for its climb into space with a top-secret payload for the US government’s spy satellite agency.

Heading east from Florida’s Space Coast, the Delta IV Heavy appeared to perform well in the early phases of its mission. After fading from view from ground-based cameras, the rocket’s two liquid-fueled side boosters jettisoned around four minutes into the flight, a moment captured by onboard video cameras. The core stage engine increased power to fire for a couple more minutes. Nearly six minutes after liftoff, the core stage was released, and the Delta IV upper stage took over for a series of burns with its RL10 engine.

At that point, ULA cut the public video and audio feeds from the launch control center, and the mission flew into a news blackout. The final portions of rocket launches carrying National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellites are usually performed in secret.

In all likelihood, the Delta IV Heavy’s upper stage was expected to fire its engine at least three times to place the classified NRO satellite into a circular geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. In this orbit, the spacecraft will move in lock-step with the planet’s rotation, giving the NRO’s newest spy satellite constant coverage over a portion of the Earth.

It will take about six hours for the rocket’s upper stage to deploy its payload into this high-altitude orbit and only then will ULA and the NRO declare the launch a success.

Eavesdropping from space

While the payload is classified, experts can glean a few insights from the circumstances of its launch. Only the largest NRO spy satellites require a launch on a Delta IV Heavy, and the payload on this mission is “almost certainly” a type of satellite known publicly as an “Advanced Orion” or “Mentor” spacecraft, according to Marco Langbroek, an expert Dutch satellite tracker.

The Advanced Orion satellites require the combination of the Delta IV Heavy rocket’s lift capability, long-duration upper stage, and huge, 65-foot-long (19.8-meter) trisector payload fairing, the largest payload enclosure of any operational rocket. In 2010, Bruce Carlson, then-director of the NRO, referred to the Advanced Orion platform as the “largest satellite in the world.”

When viewed from Earth, these satellites shine with the brightness of an eighth-magnitude star, making them easily visible with small binoculars despite their distant orbits, according to Ted Molczan, a skywatcher who tracks satellite activity.

“The satellites feature a very large parabolic unfoldable mesh antenna, with estimates of the size of this antenna ranging from 20 to 100 (!) meters,” Langbroek writes on his website, citing information leaked by Edward Snowden.

The purpose of these Advanced Orion satellites, each with mesh antennas that unfurl to a diameter of up to 330 feet (100 meters), is to listen in on communications and radio transmissions from US adversaries, and perhaps allies. Six previous Delta IV Heavy missions also likely launched Advanced Orion or Mentor satellites, giving the NRO a global web of listening posts parked high above the planet.

With the last Delta IV Heavy off the launch pad, ULA has achieved a goal of its corporate strategy sent into motion a decade ago, when the company decided to retire the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets in favor of a new-generation rocket named Vulcan. The first Vulcan rocket successfully launched in January, so the last few months have been a time of transition for ULA, a 50-50 joint venture owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

“This is such an amazing piece of technology: 23 stories tall, half a million gallons of propellant, two and a quarter million pounds of thrust, and the most metal of all rockets, setting itself on fire before it goes to space,” Bruno said of the Delta IV Heavy before its final launch. “Retiring it is (key to) the future, moving to Vulcan, a less expensive, higher-performance rocket. But it’s still sad.”

“Everything that Delta has done … is being done better on Vulcan, so this is a great evolutionary step,” said Bill Cullen, ULA’s launch systems director. “It is bittersweet to see the last one, but there are great things ahead.”

After a fiery finale, the Delta rocket family now belongs to history Read More »

rip-peter-higgs,-who-laid-foundation-for-the-higgs-boson-in-the-1960s

RIP Peter Higgs, who laid foundation for the Higgs boson in the 1960s

CERN, Higgs boson, Large Hadron Collider, Obituaries, particle physics, Peter Higgs, Physics, Science, the standard model / /

A particle physics hero —

Higgs shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics with François Englert.

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Smiling Peter Higgs, seated in front of microphone with Edinburgh logo in the background

Enlarge / A visibly emotional Peter Higgs was present when CERN announced Higgs boson discovery in July 2012.

University of Edinburgh

Peter Higgs, the shy, somewhat reclusive physicist who won a Nobel Prize for his theoretical work on how the Higgs boson gives elementary particles their mass, has died at the age of 94. According to a statement from the University of Edinburgh, the physicist passed “peacefully at home on Monday 8 April following a short illness.”

“Besides his outstanding contributions to particle physics, Peter was a very special person, a man of rare modesty, a great teacher and someone who explained physics in a very simple and profound way,” Fabiola Gianotti, director general at CERN and former leader of one of the experiments that helped discover the Higgs particle in 2012, told The Guardian. “An important piece of CERN’s history and accomplishments is linked to him. I am very saddened, and I will miss him sorely.”

The Higgs boson is a manifestation of the Higgs field, an invisible entity that pervades the Universe. Interactions between the Higgs field and particles help provide particles with mass, with particles that interact more strongly having larger masses. The Standard Model of Particle Physics describes the fundamental particles that make up all matter, like quarks and electrons, as well as the particles that mediate their interactions through forces like electromagnetism and the weak force. Back in the 1960s, theorists extended the model to incorporate what has become known as the Higgs mechanism, which provides many of the particles with mass. One consequence of the Standard Model’s version of the Higgs boson is that there should be a force-carrying particle, called a boson, associated with the Higgs field.

Despite its central role in the function of the Universe, the road to predicting the existence of the Higgs boson was bumpy, as was the process of discovering it. As previously reported, the idea of the Higgs boson was a consequence of studies on the weak force, which controls the decay of radioactive elements. The weak force only operates at very short distances, which suggests that the particles that mediate it (the W and Z bosons) are likely to be massive. While it was possible to use existing models of physics to explain some of their properties, these predictions had an awkward feature: just like another force-carrying particle, the photon, the resulting W and Z bosons were massless.

Schematic of the Standard Model of particle physics.

Enlarge / Schematic of the Standard Model of particle physics.

Over time, theoreticians managed to craft models that included massive W and Z bosons, but they invariably came with a hitch: a massless partner, which would imply a longer-range force. In 1964, however, a series of papers was published in rapid succession that described a way to get rid of this problematic particle. If a certain symmetry in the models was broken, the massless partner would go away, leaving only a massive one.

The first of these papers, by François Englert and Robert Brout, proposed the new model in terms of quantum field theory; the second, by Higgs (then 35), noted that a single quantum of the field would be detectable as a particle. A third paper, by Gerald Guralnik, Carl Richard Hagen, and Tom Kibble, provided an independent validation of the general approach, as did a completely independent derivation by students in the Soviet Union.

At that time, “There seemed to be excitement and concern about quantum field theory (the underlying structure of particle physics) back then, with some people beginning to abandon it,” David Kaplan, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, told Ars. “There were new particles being regularly produced at accelerator experiments without any real theoretical structure to explain them. Spin-1 particles could be written down comfortably (the photon is spin-1) as long as they didn’t have a mass, but the massive versions were confusing to people at the time. A bunch of people, including Higgs, found this quantum field theory trick to give spin-1 particles a mass in a consistent way. These little tricks can turn out to be very useful, but also give the landscape of what is possible.”

“It wasn’t clear at the time how it would be applied in particle physics.”

Ironically, Higgs’ seminal paper was rejected by the European journal Physics Letters. He then added a crucial couple of paragraphs noting that his model also predicted the existence of what we now know as the Higgs boson. He submitted the revised paper to Physical Review Letters in the US, where it was accepted. He examined the properties of the boson in more detail in a 1966 follow-up paper.

RIP Peter Higgs, who laid foundation for the Higgs boson in the 1960s Read More »

elon-musk-denies-knowing-who’s-suing-him-to-dodge-defamation-suit

Elon Musk denies knowing who’s suing him to dodge defamation suit

Policy / /
Elon Musk denies knowing who’s suing him to dodge defamation suit

After Elon Musk was accused of defaming Ben Brody—a 22-year-old Jewish man falsely linked to a neo-Nazi brawl in tweets that Musk responded to last year—the owner of X (formerly Twitter) sat for a heated Zoom deposition where he repeatedly denied ever knowing who Brody was.

When Brody’s attorney, Mark Bankston, asked Musk if he thought he ever did anything “wrong” to Brody, Musk replied, “I don’t know Ben Brody.”

“You’re aware that Ben Brody is somebody who’s sued you, right?” Bankston asked.

“I think you’re the one suing,” Musk said, adding that he views “many cases and probably this one too that the real plaintiff is the lawyer seeking money like you.” Continually, Musk emphasized, “what I think” the defamation case is “really about is about you getting a lot of money.”

Musk filed a motion to dismiss Brody’s case in January, accusing Brody of targeting “Musk’s exercise of his freedom of speech for the improper purpose of obtaining a payment ‘exceed[ing] $1,000,000,’ to which Brody is not entitled from Musk.” In the deposition, Musk accused Bankston of attacking his free speech rights, and in the motion to dismiss, Musk argued that “the public’s discussion of the identity of perpetrators of crime would be unduly trampled by the fear of liability for merely negligent speech,” if Brody won his defamation suit.

In that petition, Musk accused Brody of targeting him because he’s a billionaire, repeatedly pointing out that Brody had not sued other X users who had specifically named Brody as an alleged brawler in blogs and on X.

Musk’s tweet, the motion to dismiss argued, only claimed that a picture of one brawler “looks like” a “college student (who wants to join the govt).” Because the photo was not actually of Brody, Musk argued, and because he never names Brody, then Brody cannot claim he was defamed.

“It is not defamatory to say someone looks like someone else—that is not an accusation of a crime,” Musk’s motion to dismiss said.

But Bankston asked Musk in the deposition if “the reason that you’re saying that it looks like one is a college student” was because of other posts that Musk had seen where right-wing influencers had named Brody as involved in the brawl, describing him as a liberal college student studying political science.

“That’s probably why I’m saying this,” Musk confirmed, while arguing that he was obviously “speculating” in the tweet, which is why he tagged Community Notes to “fact-check” his own tweet.

“I can see a picture of my brother and say that looks like my brother, but it might not be my brother,” Musk argued.

Bankston told Musk that his X post garnered more than a million views, asking Musk, “Do you think you owed it to Ben Brody to be accurate as you could?”

Musk told Bankston that he aspires “to be accurate no matter who the person is,” suggesting that while it’s possible to be harmed by people posting false information, he did not think Brody was harmed by his tweet.

“I don’t think he has been meaningfully harmed by this,” Musk said, insisting to Bankston that he could not have defamed Brody because “I have no ill will to Ben Brody. I don’t know Ben Brody.”

Brody’s complaint alleged that Musk boosting a post linking him to the neo-Nazi brawl has caused permanent reputational damage and severe emotional harm. Bankston declined Ars’ request to comment on whether Brody continues to be a target for harassment and death threats.

“People are attacked all the time in the media, online media, social media, but it is rare that that actually has a meaningful negative impact on their life,” Musk said.

Brody has asked Musk to delete his post, but Musk claims he cannot recall ever being asked. In one of the few times when Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, advised Musk not to respond, Musk gave no answer when Bankston asked, “If you knew right now—knowing right now Ben is really upset that this tweet is still up and that he wanted there to be a retraction, how do you feel about that?”

Bankston also confirmed that Musk’s post never got fact-checked by Community Notes and thus appears to still be boosting the misinformation.

Elon Musk denies knowing who’s suing him to dodge defamation suit Read More »

epa-seeks-to-cut-“cancer-alley”-pollutants

EPA seeks to cut “Cancer Alley” pollutants

carcinogens, clean air act, EPA, Policy, pollution, Science, Sustainability, Toxicology / /

Out of the air —

Chemical plants will have to monitor how much is escaping and stop leaks.

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Image of a large industrial facility on the side of a river.

Enlarge / An oil refinery in Louisiana. Facilities such as this have led to a proliferation of petrochemical plants in the area.

On Tuesday, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules that are intended to cut emissions of two chemicals that have been linked to elevated incidence of cancer: ethylene oxide and chloroprene. While production and use of these chemicals takes place in a variety of locations, they’re particularly associated with an area of petrochemical production in Louisiana that has become known as “Cancer Alley.”

The new regulations would require chemical manufacturers to monitor the emissions at their facilities and take steps to repair any problems that result in elevated emissions. Despite extensive evidence linking these chemicals to elevated risk of cancer, industry groups are signaling their opposition to these regulations, and the EPA has seen two previous attempts at regulation set aside by courts.

Dangerous stuff

The two chemicals at issue are primarily used as intermediates in the manufacture of common products. Chloroprene, for example, is used for the production of neoprene, a synthetic rubber-like substance that’s probably familiar from products like insulated sleeves and wetsuits. It’s a four-carbon chain with two double-bonds that allow for polymerization and an attached chlorine that alters its chemical properties.

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), chloroprene “is a mutagen and carcinogen in animals and is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” Given that cancers are driven by DNA damage, any mutagen would be “reasonably anticipated” to drive the development of cancer. Beyond that, it appears to be pretty nasty stuff, with the NCI noting that “exposure to this substance causes damage to the skin, lungs, CNS, kidneys, liver and depression of the immune system.”

The NCI’s take on Ethylene Oxide is even more definitive, with the Institute placing it on its list of cancer-causing substances. The chemical is very simple, with two carbons that are linked to each other directly, and also linked via an oxygen atom, which makes the molecule look a bit like a triangle. This configuration allows the molecule to participate in a broad range of reactions that break one of the oxygen bonds, making it useful in the production of a huge range of chemicals. Its reactivity also makes it useful for sterilizing items such as medical equipment.

Its sterilization function works through causing damage to DNA, which again makes it prone to causing cancers.

In addition to these two chemicals, the EPA’s new regulations will target a number of additional airborne pollutants, including benzene, 1,3-butadiene, ethylene dichloride, and vinyl chloride, all of which have similar entries at the NCI.

Despite the extensive record linking these chemicals to cancer, The New York Times quotes the US Chamber of Commerce, a pro-industry group, as saying that “EPA should not move forward with this rule-making based on the current record because there remains significant scientific uncertainty.”

A history of exposure

The petrochemical industry is the main source of these chemicals, so their release is associated with areas where the oil and gas industry has a major presence; the EPA notes that the regulations will target sources in Delaware, New Jersey, and the Ohio River Valley. But the primary focus will be on chemical plants in Texas and Louisiana. These include the area that has picked up the moniker Cancer Alley due to a high incidence of the disease in a stretch along the Mississippi River with a large concentration of chemical plants.

As is the case with many examples of chemical pollution, the residents of Cancer Alley are largely poor and belong to minority groups. As a result, the EPA had initially attempted to regulate the emissions under a civil rights provision of the Clean Air Act, but that has been bogged down due to lawsuits.

The new regulations simply set limits on permissible levels of release at what’s termed the “fencelines” of the facilities where these chemicals are made, used, or handled. If levels exceed an annual limit, the owners and operators “must find the source of the pollution and make repairs.” This gets rid of previous exemptions for equipment startup, shutdown, and malfunctions; those exemptions had been held to violate the Clean Air Act in a separate lawsuit.

The EPA estimates that the sites subject to regulation will see their collective emissions of these chemicals drop by nearly 80 percent, which works out to be 54 tons of ethylene oxide, 14 tons of chloroprene, and over 6,000 tons of the other pollutants. That in turn will reduce the cancer risk from these toxins by 96 percent among those subjected to elevated exposures. Collectively, the chemicals subject to these regulations also contribute to smog, so these reductions will have an additional health impact by reducing its levels as well.

While the EPA says that “these emission reductions will yield significant reductions in lifetime cancer risk attributable to these air pollutants,” it was unable to come up with an estimate of the financial benefits that will result from that reduction. By contrast, it estimates that the cost of compliance will end up being approximately $150 million annually. “Most of the facilities covered by the final rule are owned by large corporations,” the EPA notes. “The cost of implementing the final rule is less than one percent of their annual national sales.”

This sort of cost-benefit analysis is a required step during the formulation of Clean Air Act regulations, so it’s worth taking a step back and considering what’s at stake here: the EPA is basically saying that companies that work with significant amounts of carcinogens need to take stronger steps to make sure that they don’t use the air people breathe as a dumping ground for them.

Unsurprisingly, The New York Times quotes a neoprene manufacturer that the EPA is currently suing over its chloroprene emissions as claiming the new regulations are “draconian.”

EPA seeks to cut “Cancer Alley” pollutants Read More »

“google-vids”-is-google’s-fourth-big-productivity-app-for-workspace

“Google Vids” is Google’s fourth big productivity app for Workspace

Google, Tech / /

Please don’t bore your co-workers —

Google’s “video editor” feels more like a souped-up version of Google Slides.

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  • Is that Google Slides? Nope it’s Google Vids, the new video editor that seems to just make souped-up slideshows.

    Google

  • Google’s demo starts with an existing slideshow and then generates an outline.

    Google

  • Choose a theme, which all look like PowerPoints.

    Google

  • Write a script, preferably with the help of Google Gemini.

    Google

  • You can record a voiceover, or pick from Google’s robot voices.

    Google

  • This is a Google Workspace app, so there’s lots of realtime collaboration features, like these live mouse cursors that were brought over from Slides.

    Google

  • Comments work too.

    Google

  • It’s interesting you get a “stock media” library while apps like Slides would use generative AI images here.

    Google

  • Record a talk from your webcam.

    Google

  • Embed your video in the slideshow.

    Google

If you had asked me before what Google’s video editor app was, I would say “YouTube Studio,” but now Google Workspace has a new productivity app called “Google Vids.” Normally a video editor is considered a secondary application in many productivity suites, but Google apparently imagines Vids as a major pillar of Workspace, saying Vids is an “all-in-one video creation app for work that will sit alongside Docs, Sheets and Slides.” So, that is an editor for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and videos?

Google’s demo of the new video editor pitches the product not for YouTube videos or films but more as a corporate super slideshow for things like training materials or product demos. Really, this “video editor” almost looks like it could completely replace Google Slides since the interface is just Slides but with a video timeline instead of a slideshow timeline.

Google’s example video creates a “sales training video” that starts with a Slides presentation as the basic outline. You start with an outline editor, where each slideshow page gets its own major section. Google then has video “styles” you can pick from, which all seem very Powerpoint-y with a big title, subheading, and a slot for some kind of video. Google then wants you to write a script and either read it yourself or have a text-to-speech voice read the script. A “stock media” library lets you fill in some of those video slots with generic corporate imagery like a video of a sunset, choose background music, and use a few pictures. You can also fire up your webcam and record something, sort of like a pre-canned Zoom meeting. After that it’s a lot of the usual Google productivity app features: real-time editing collaboration with visible mouse cursors from each participant and a stream of comments.

Like all Google products after the rise of OpenAI, Google pitches Vids as an “AI-powered” video editor, even though there didn’t seem to be many generative AI features in the presentation. The videos, images, and music were “stock” media, not AI-generated inventions (Slides can generate images, but that wasn’t in this demo). There’s nothing in here like OpenAI’s “Sora,” which generates new videos out of its training data. There’s probably a Gemini-powered “help me write” feature for the script, and Google describes the initial outline as “generated” from your starting Slides presentation, but that seemed to be it.

Google says Vids is being released to “Workspace Labs” in June, so you’ll be able to opt in to testing it.

Listing image by Google

“Google Vids” is Google’s fourth big productivity app for Workspace Read More »

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Thousands of LG TVs are vulnerable to takeover—here’s how to ensure yours isn’t one

Biz & IT, hacking, Internet of things, lg, Security, TVs / /
Thousands of LG TVs are vulnerable to takeover—here’s how to ensure yours isn’t one

Getty Images

As many as 91,000 LG TVs face the risk of being commandeered unless they receive a just-released security update patching four critical vulnerabilities discovered late last year.

The vulnerabilities are found in four LG TV models that collectively comprise slightly more than 88,000 units around the world, according to results returned by the Shodan search engine for Internet-connected devices. The vast majority of those units are located in South Korea, followed by Hong Kong, the US, Sweden, and Finland. The models are:

  • LG43UM7000PLA running webOS 4.9.7 – 5.30.40
  • OLED55CXPUA running webOS 5.5.0 – 04.50.51
  • OLED48C1PUB running webOS 6.3.3-442 (kisscurl-kinglake) – 03.36.50
  • OLED55A23LA running webOS 7.3.1-43 (mullet-mebin) – 03.33.85

Starting Wednesday, updates are available through these devices’ settings menu.

Got root?

According to Bitdefender—the security firm that discovered the vulnerabilities—malicious hackers can exploit them to gain root access to the devices and inject commands that run at the OS level. The vulnerabilities, which affect internal services that allow users to control their sets using their phones, make it possible for attackers to bypass authentication measures designed to ensure only authorized devices can make use of the capabilities.

“These vulnerabilities let us gain root access on the TV after bypassing the authorization mechanism,” Bitdefender researchers wrote Tuesday. “Although the vulnerable service is intended for LAN access only, Shodan, the search engine for Internet-connected devices, identified over 91,000 devices that expose this service to the Internet.”

The key vulnerability making these threats possible resides in a service that allows TVs to be controlled using LG’s ThinkQ smartphone app when it’s connected to the same local network. The service is designed to require the user to enter a PIN code to prove authorization, but an error allows someone to skip this verification step and become a privileged user. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2023-6317.

Once attackers have gained this level of control, they can go on to exploit three other vulnerabilities, specifically:

  • CVE-2023-6318, which allows the attackers to elevate their access to root
  • CVE-2023-6319, which allows for the injection of OS commands by manipulating a library for showing music lyrics
  • CVE-2023-6320, which lets an attacker inject authenticated commands by manipulating the com.webos.service.connectionmanager/tv/setVlanStaticAddress application interface.

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report-details-how-russia-obtains-starlink-terminals-for-war-in-ukraine

Report details how Russia obtains Starlink terminals for war in Ukraine

Policy, russia starlink, spacex starlink, starlink ukraine / /

Starlink black market —

Russians buy from middlemen and “deliver SpaceX hardware to the front line.”

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A Starlink terminal in front of a sign that says,

Enlarge / A Starlink terminal at the Everything Electric London conference on March 28, 2024 in England.

Getty Images | John Keeble

A report published today describes how Russia obtained Starlink terminals for its war in Ukraine despite US sanctions and SpaceX’s insistence that Russia hasn’t bought the terminals either directly or indirectly.

The Wall Street Journal report describes black market sales to Russians and a Sudanese paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently determined that the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias committed war crimes and are responsible for ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

The WSJ said it “tracked Starlink sales on numerous Russian online retail platforms,” “interviewed Russian and Sudanese middlemen and resellers, and followed Russian volunteer groups that deliver SpaceX hardware to the front line.”

The WSJ described Oleg, a salesman at Moscow-based online retailer shopozz.ru, who “supplemented his usual business of peddling vacuum cleaners and dashboard phone mounts by selling dozens of Starlink internet terminals that wound up with Russians on the front lines in Ukraine.”

Starlink terminals reportedly provide a technical upgrade to Russian troops whose radio communications were being jammed or intercepted by Ukraine troops.

“In Russia, middlemen buy the hardware, sometimes on eBay, in the US and elsewhere, including on the black market in Central Asia, Dubai or Southeast Asia, then smuggle it into Russia,” the report said. “Russian volunteers boast openly on social media about supplying the terminals to troops. They are part of an informal effort to boost Russia’s use of Starlink in Ukraine, where Russian forces are advancing.”

These “middlemen have proliferated in recent months to buy the user terminals and ship them to Russian forces,” the report said.

Lawmakers doubt SpaceX compliance with sanctions

Today’s report came about a month after two Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to SpaceX alleging that Russia’s use of Starlink in Ukraine raises questions about SpaceX’s “compliance with US sanctions and export controls.”

“We are concerned that you may not have appropriate guardrails and policies in place to ensure your technology is neither acquired directly or indirectly, nor used illegally by Russia,” said the letter from US Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.).

In February, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk denied what he called “false news reports [that] claim that SpaceX is selling Starlink terminals to Russia,” saying that, “to the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia.”

We contacted SpaceX today and will update this article if we get a response.

Russia has said it doesn’t allow Starlink use. A spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February that Starlink “is not certified [in Russia], therefore it cannot and is not officially supplied here. It cannot be used in any way.”

The Journal report said that US adversaries have been able to connect to satellites after dealers who sell Starlink terminals “register the hardware in countries where Starlink is allowed.” SpaceX uses geofencing to limit Starlink access, and Musk has said that “Starlink satellites will not close the link in Russia.” But blocking Russian use of Starlink in Ukraine without affecting Ukraine troops’ use of the service would likely be more complicated.

Ukraine, Sudan ask SpaceX for help

Ukraine’s top military-intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, said in an interview that “Russian invasion forces in his country are using thousands of Starlink satellite Internet terminals, and that the network has been active in occupied parts of Ukraine for ‘quite a long time,'” according to a WSJ report in February.

The Journal’s new report states that “Ukrainian officials said they contacted SpaceX about Russian forces using Starlink terminals in Ukraine and that they are working together on a solution.” The report also quotes US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb as saying that the US is “working with Ukraine and we’re working with Starlink” on how to end Russian use of Starlink in Ukraine.

The RSF reportedly uses Starlink in fighting against government forces. “Sudanese military officials and unauthorized Starlink dealers said in interviews that Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF’s deputy commander, has overseen the purchase of hundreds of Starlink terminals from dealers in the United Arab Emirates,” the WSJ report said.

The report also said that “Sudanese authorities have contacted SpaceX and requested help in regulating the use of Starlink, including by allowing the military to turn off service areas where it was helping the RSF. Starlink never responded to the request, Sudanese officials said.”

Report details how Russia obtains Starlink terminals for war in Ukraine Read More »

elon-musk:-ai-will-be-smarter-than-any-human-around-the-end-of-next-year

Elon Musk: AI will be smarter than any human around the end of next year

AI, Biz & IT, elon musk, Grady Booch, machine learning, Social Media, superintelligence, Twitter, X / /

smarter than the average bear —

While Musk says superintelligence is coming soon, one critic says prediction is “batsh*t crazy.”

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Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and the X (formerly Twitter) platform, attends a symposium on fighting antisemitism titled 'Never Again : Lip Service or Deep Conversation' in Krakow, Poland on January 22nd, 2024. Musk, who was invited to Poland by the European Jewish Association (EJA) has visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp earlier that day, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto)

Enlarge / Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and the X (formerly Twitter) platform on January 22, 2024.

On Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted the imminent rise in AI superintelligence during a live interview streamed on the social media platform X. “My guess is we’ll have AI smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year,” Musk said in his conversation with hedge fund manager Nicolai Tangen.

Just prior to that, Tangen had asked Musk, “What’s your take on where we are in the AI race just now?” Musk told Tangen that AI “is the fastest advancing technology I’ve seen of any kind, and I’ve seen a lot of technology.” He described computers dedicated to AI increasing in capability by “a factor of 10 every year, if not every six to nine months.”

Musk made the prediction with an asterisk, saying that shortages of AI chips and high AI power demands could limit AI’s capability until those issues are resolved. “Last year, it was chip-constrained,” Musk told Tangen. “People could not get enough Nvidia chips. This year, it’s transitioning to a voltage transformer supply. In a year or two, it’s just electricity supply.”

But not everyone is convinced that Musk’s crystal ball is free of cracks. Grady Booch, a frequent critic of AI hype on social media who is perhaps best known for his work in software architecture, told Ars in an interview, “Keep in mind that Mr. Musk has a profoundly bad record at predicting anything associated with AI; back in 2016, he promised his cars would ship with FSD safety level 5, and here we are, closing on an a decade later, still waiting.”

Creating artificial intelligence at least as smart as a human (frequently called “AGI” for artificial general intelligence) is often seen as inevitable among AI proponents, but there’s no broad consensus on exactly when that milestone will be reached—or on the exact definition of AGI, for that matter.

“If you define AGI as smarter than the smartest human, I think it’s probably next year, within two years,” Musk added in the interview with Tangen while discussing AGI timelines.

Even with uncertainties about AGI, that hasn’t kept companies from trying. ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which launched with Musk as a co-founder in 2015, lists developing AGI as its main goal. Musk has not been directly associated with OpenAI for years (unless you count a recent lawsuit against the company), but last year, he took aim at the business of large language models by forming a new company called xAI. Its main product, Grok, functions similarly to ChatGPT and is integrated into the X social media platform.

Booch gives credit to Musk’s business successes but casts doubt on his forecasting ability. “Albeit a brilliant if not rapacious businessman, Mr. Musk vastly overestimates both the history as well as the present of AI while simultaneously diminishing the exquisite uniqueness of human intelligence,” says Booch. “So in short, his prediction is—to put it in scientific terms—batshit crazy.”

So when will we get AI that’s smarter than a human? Booch says there’s no real way to know at the moment. “I reject the framing of any question that asks when AI will surpass humans in intelligence because it is a question filled with ambiguous terms and considerable emotional and historic baggage,” he says. “We are a long, long way from understanding the design that would lead us there.”

We also asked Hugging Face AI researcher Dr. Margaret Mitchell to weigh in on Musk’s prediction. “Intelligence … is not a single value where you can make these direct comparisons and have them mean something,” she told us in an interview. “There will likely never be agreement on comparisons between human and machine intelligence.”

But even with that uncertainty, she feels there is one aspect of AI she can more reliably predict: “I do agree that neural network models will reach a point where men in positions of power and influence, particularly ones with investments in AI, will declare that AI is smarter than humans. By end of next year, sure. That doesn’t sound far off base to me.”

Elon Musk: AI will be smarter than any human around the end of next year Read More »

intel-is-investigating-game-crashes-on-top-end-core-i9-desktop-cpus

Intel is investigating game crashes on top-end Core i9 desktop CPUs

Alder Lake, CPU, desktop CPU, gaming, gaming PC, intel, intel core, raptor lake, Tech / /

i’m giving her all she’s got —

Crashes may be related to CPUs running above their specified power limits.

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Intel's high-end Core i9-13900K and 14900K are reportedly having crashing problems in some games.

Enlarge / Intel’s high-end Core i9-13900K and 14900K are reportedly having crashing problems in some games.

Andrew Cunningham

If you own a recent high-end Intel desktop CPU and you’ve been running into weird game crashes lately, you’re not alone.

Scattered reports from Core i9-13900K and i9-14900K users over the last couple of months have pointed to processor power usage as a possible source of crashes even in relatively undemanding games like Fortnite. Games like Hogwarts Legacy, Remnant 2, Alan Wake 2, Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part 1, and Outpost: Infinity Siege have also reportedly been affected; the problem primarily seems to affect titles made with Epic’s Unreal Engine. Intel said in a statement to ZDNet Korea (via The Verge) that it’s looking into the problems, escalating it from an “isolated issue” to something that may be more widespread and could require a more systemic fix.

Related CPUs like the i9-13900KF, i9-14900KF, i9-13900KS, and i9-14900KS may be affected, too, since they’re all the same basic silicon. Some user reports have also indicated that the i7-13700K and i7-14700K series may also be affected.

“Intel is aware of reports regarding Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen unlocked desktop processors experiencing issues with certain workloads,” an Intel spokesperson told Ars. “We’re engaged with our partners and are conducting analysis of the reported issues.”

While Intel hasn’t indicated what it thinks could be causing the issue, support documents from Epic Games and other developers have suggested that the processors’ power settings are to blame, recommending that users change their BIOS settings or manually restrict their processors’ speed with tools like Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU). Most enthusiast motherboards will set the power limits on Intel’s processors to be essentially infinite, squeezing out a bit more performance (especially for i7 and i9 chips) at the expense of increased power use and heat.

Epic suggests using a BIOS power setting called “Intel Fail Safe” on Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte motherboards—its name makes it sound like some kind of low-power safe mode, but it’s most likely just setting the processors’ power limits to Intel’s specified defaults. This could result in somewhat reduced performance, particularly when all CPU cores are active at the same time. But we and other reviewers have seen sharply diminishing returns when letting these chips use more power. This can even be a problem with Intel’s stock settings—the recently announced i9-14900KS can use as much as 31 percent more power than the standard i9-14900K while delivering just 1 or 2 percent faster performance.

If power limits are to blame, the good news is that users can adjust these in the short term and that motherboard makers could fix the problem in the long run by tweaking their default settings in future BIOS updates.

Updated April 9, 2024, at 2: 12 pm to add Intel spokesperson statement.

Intel is investigating game crashes on top-end Core i9 desktop CPUs Read More »