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Last Updated: 2022-06-03 7:00:01 PM
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 22:36:10 +0000
Enlarge / A negative stain electron micrograph of a monkeypox virus virion in human vesicular fluid. (credit: Getty | BSIP)
Health officials in the US have confirmed 21 cases of monkeypox across 11 states amid a multinational outbreak that has grown to more than 800 cases in over two dozen countries.
In a press briefing Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discussed details of the 17 US cases that officials have clinical data. The officials noted that genetic sequencing from some of the cases revealed two distinct lineages of the monkeypox virus, which may indicate that monkeypox has been quietly spreading among humans for much longer than previously known. It also deepens concern over whether the current outbreak can be contained entirely.
Low risk overall
So far, there have been no deaths reported in the US or multinational outbreak. Among the 17 well-documented US cases, all patients are reported to be doing well and are isolating.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 20:26:26 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Andriy Onufriyenko)
New York's state legislature approved a bill that would prevent fossil fuel power plants from being revived to power cryptocurrency mining operations. If signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the proposed law would prevent new permits from being issued for two years.
It's a "first-in-the-nation cryptocurrency mining moratorium bill," advocacy group Earthjustice said Friday. "While the bill would not cover fossil fuel burning crypto mining operations that have already applied for new or renewed air permits, it would ensure that any future facilities could not receive air permits for two years, while the State Department of Environmental Conservation conducts a thorough study on proof-of-work crypto mining," the group said.
The bill's prospects looked dim earlier this week but was passed by the state Senate in a 36-27 vote after 12 am on Friday morning. It was previously approved by the Assembly with a 95-52 vote in April.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 20:04:19 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Getty)
The fight for the right to repair scored a huge win Friday with New York state passing a bill that requires digital electronics manufacturers, like laptop and smartphone manufacturers, to make diagnostic and repair information available to consumers and independent repair shops.
The bill, which passed in the New York Senate (49 to 14) on Wednesday and in the Assembly (145 to 1) today, enacts the Digital Fair Repair Act. Governor Kathy Hochul has to sign the bill before it is law, but advocates, like iFixit, said they don't expect obstacles there.
Notably, the bill doesn't pertain to medical devices, home appliances, agricultural and off-road equipment, or public safety communications equipment. However, right-to-repair advocates have their eye on those areas as well. The bill also doesn't cover motor vehicles.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 19:11:44 +0000
Enlarge / The image Apple shared alongside the WWDC 2022 announcement. (credit: Apple)
Liveblog starts in: View Liveblog
CUPERTINO, Calif.—At 10 am Pacific Time (1 pm EDT) this Monday, June 6, Apple will host the keynote presentation at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The streaming/in-person hybrid event will include new announcements about iOS, macOS, and much more, and we'll be liveblogging all the updates as they happen right here.
We recently published a list of predictions and expectations for the event, so you can get caught up there if you haven't been following the rumor mill closely up to this point. We're sure to see major new versions of every Apple operating system, plus various announcements that will be relevant to developers for Apple's platforms.
We might also see new hardware and consumer products. It has been two years since the M1 chip was announced, and this would be the ideal event to reveal the first details about its successor, the M2—as well as any Macs that might include it. Leaks have suggested that it includes a redesigned MacBook Air, but that might not be all.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 18:43:07 +0000
Enlarge / New movie, same T-shirts.
Years after announcing a deal to bring back MTV's most popular cartoon characters of all time, Paramount+ finally took the wraps off its first major Beavis and Butt-Head production this week. And, honestly, this is about as "Ars Technica" as the '90s cartoon duo might ever get.
Warning: this preview includes spoilers based on the recently released trailer. If you want to go into this film as clueless as its lead characters, consider yourself warned.
24 years later and he still hasn't found TP for his bunghole?! (credit: Paramount+)
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe will premiere exclusively on Paramount+ on June 23, and its handlers at MTV are already calling this feature-length treatment "the dumbest science-fiction film ever made." The film appears to resurrect the polished-yet-childish animation style established in their previous feature-length adventure, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America—only this time with CGI flourishes that you might expect from dumb teenagers flying not only through space but also time.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 18:13:23 +0000
Enlarge / The image Apple shared alongside the WWDC 2022 announcement. (credit: Apple)
June 6 marks the beginning of Apple's annual developer conference, WWDC. The weeklong event will kick off with a keynote at 10 am PST on Monday loaded with announcements about new software features across Apple's various platforms.
For the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic started, there will be a significant in-person audience for WWDC, too. And there will be countless sessions during the week on programming APIs, Swift features, and so on. But for most people around the world, new operating systems and hardware announcements are the main draw—and we'll see a few of those during the keynote on Monday.
It's important to note that WWDC isn't typically focused on product announcements for consumers. It's a place where Apple introduces new technologies and tools to developers.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 17:49:56 +0000
Making our climate solutions equitable. Click here for transcript. (video link)
Human beings have made tremendous scientific and technological breakthroughs, but our continued social and cultural advancement has come at the expense of our planet's ecosystems, endangered by human-driven global climate change. Ars Science Editor John Timmer joined climatologist Michael Mann of Penn State University (moving to the University of Pennsylvania this fall) and Sally Benson, deputy director for energy and chief strategist for the energy transition at the White House of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), for a spirited discussion about the existential threat of climate change; viable—and ethical—solutions to that threat; and the need to face the grim reality the planet faces without giving in to so-called climate "doom-ism."
The discussion took place in the wake of the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—technically the third and final section of the 6th Assessment Report—concluding that the next few years are a critical window of opportunity if we hope to limit global warming to the benchmarks of 1.5° C or 2° C. The good news: There are signs of clear progress, most notably an acceleration in the growth of the clean energy sector. The bad news: We are at the peak of the so-called emissions curve, so emissions must begin declining now. Jim Skea (co-chair of the group behind the report), described it as a "now or never" scenario.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 17:25:24 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)
Google is stirring the pot again and removing helpful features from users for no discernible reason. Through various channels, the company announced that reminders for Google Assistant will soon be a lot less useful.
First up, Google Assistant is losing the ability to create location-based reminders. These were incredibly useful commands you could tell Google Assistant, like, "remind me to take the trash out when I get home," and your phone, which is always tracking your location, would ping you when you walked in the door. You could also say things like, "remind me to buy milk next time I'm at Walmart," and it would just work.
Google is sending out notifications telling users the feature is dead. A message on a Google support page says: "The option to create reminders for a certain location is going away soon. You can still create reminders at a certain time and set routines for a location." Suggesting routines as a replacement is a ludicrous suggestion, since routines are, well, routine, and want to repeat after a set period of time. They also are meant to trigger smart-home automation or alarm clocks; they aren't simple notifications.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:55:14 +0000
Enlarge / Sega's Mega Drive Mini 2 includes Sega CD games and, for a little extra, an adorable recreation of the Sega CD attachment. But it has only been announced for Japan, at least for now. (credit: Sega)
Sega's Genesis Mini console was one of the only officially licensed retro emulation boxes that came close to the NES and SNES Classics' combination of software quality and hardware authenticity, even if its emulation wasn't quite perfect and its game selection was missing some heavy hitters. The company's mini-Game Gear was also the first officially licensed device to make the mini-console fad portable.
Sega is going back to the well one more time with the Mega Drive Mini 2, which will be released in Japan this October (the Mega Drive was what the Genesis was called outside of the US). The console will cost 9,980 yen before tax; at just under $80, this is in line with the pricing of earlier mini-consoles.
The Mega Drive Mini 2 will include an entirely different 50-game lineup, anchored by Sega CD titles like Sonic the Hedgehog CD and Shining Force CD. New Mega Drive games have also made the cut, including Virtua Racing and Thunder Force IV, and a version of the Sega arcade game Fantasy Zone has also been thrown in for good measure (the original Genesis Mini includes Super Fantasy Zone, the Genesis-native entry in the franchise).
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:46:41 +0000
Enlarge (credit: MSI)
MSI refreshed its Titan laptops on Thursday. Coming in at $6,000 for a maxed-out configuration, the 17.3-inch Titan GT77 represents one of the most expensive and power-hungry consumer laptops available.
MSI's Titan laptops are built to be powerful enough to replace your desktop. In the case of the GT77, the first new Titan since 2019, that means offering Intel's Core HX-series CPUs, which have the same dies as Intel's 12th Gen desktop CPUs.
The Titan GT77 is 6.82 lbs and 0.9 inch thick. (credit: MSI)
MSI's GT77 comes with an i7-12800HX and starts at $3,200. The top-end model has an i9-12900HX with eight performance cores (2.3–5 GHz) and eight efficiency cores (up to 3.6 GHz). The chip is supported by up to 150 W of max turbo power and is paired with an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti (16GB GDDR6) laptop graphics card. With MSI's "Overboost" feature, the clamshell supports up to 250 W of power delivery to the CPU and GPU. The GPU gets 175 W, MSI said.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:18:03 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Dyllan Furness)
As solar and wind energy ramps up in the United States, the industries have gotten better at installing and operating their facilities. This experience can be seen in how the facilities are financed. According to new research, people working in the fields—and adjacent ones—have learned to be more efficient, reducing the overall cost of power. Further, according to Mark Bolinger, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the paper's authors, this so-called learning rate can be extrapolated into the future, and it spells good news for the two renewable sources of energy.
"The people who operate these turbines naturally get better over time as they do more of it. They get more efficient, and it allows them to lower their costs a bit," Bolinger told Ars, adding that the same holds true for the workers manufacturing the facilities. "Some of them have been doing it for a really long time… All things being equal, that should lead to a reduction in manufacturing costs."
There's a large amount of literature on learning rate and learning curve theory, he said. Moore's Law, which pertains to the power of silicon computer chips, says that the number of transistors per silicon chip doubles each year. Bolinger said that the learning rate in these renewable energy operations is similar to that. Learning rate is a measure of how much cost declines for each doubling of cumulative output, he said.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:06:07 +0000
Enlarge / Tesla charging station at the Chesapeake House Travel Plaza off I-95 in Maryland on March 11, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams )
Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to cut 10 percent of jobs at the electric carmaker because he has a "super bad feeling" about the economy, he wrote in an email to executives, according to Reuters.
Musk sent the message on Thursday with the subject line "pause all hiring worldwide," according to the report. Musk "did not elaborate on the reasons for his 'super bad feeling' about the economic outlook in the brief email seen by Reuters," the news organization wrote.
Tesla stock was down more than 8 percent during Friday's trading as of this writing and down more than 40 percent in 2022.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 15:42:04 +0000
Enlarge / More EVs are good, but will the US be in line when battery supplies get scarce? (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)
The past few weeks have taken me to Europe, and it's easy to see just how many new electric vehicles are on the roads over there. For example, in Germany, nearly 14 percent of new cars sold in 2021 were battery EVs, and another 12.5 percent were plug-in hybrids. Even Brexit-beleaguered Britain is having a BEV bonanza at 11.6 percent of new car sales last year.
Here in the US, we're also buying more EVs than ever. But in 2021, BEVs still accounted for just 3 percent of the new car market, and that has me worried about the country's ambitious goals for EVs to make up half of all new car sales in less than a decade.
Transportation and climate change advocates had hoped for a comprehensive plan to decarbonize the way Americans move around the country, but as with so many ambitious (and even meager) plans, that push didn't survive contact with the US Senate. What we did get was a new Federal government policy stating that half of all new cars and light trucks should be zero-emissions vehicles—a mix of BEVs, PHEVs, and fuel cell EVs—by 2030, as well as an extra $7.5 billion for more EV chargers. Add to this the declarations from car companies promising—or aspiring—to go fully electric by 2030, and the future sounds bright.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 11:35:13 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)
We often think of mathematical ability as being uniquely human, but in fact, scientists have found that many animal species—including lions, chimpanzees, birds, bees, ants, and fish—seem to possess at least a rudimentary counting ability or number sense. Crows can understand the concept of zero. And a study published in April found that both stingrays and cichlids can take this rudimentary "numerosity" to the next level, performing simple addition and subtraction for a small number of objects (in the range of 1 to 5).
The latter study's conclusion doesn't surprise cognitive psychologist Brian Butterworth, an emeritus professor at University College London and author of a new book, Can Fish Count? What Animals Reveal About our Uniquely Mathematical Minds.
"There are lots of animals that can do addition and subtraction," Butterworth told Ars. "Bees can. Bees can represent zero as well. So it's not surprising to me that stingrays and cichlids can do it." His book explores how the ability to process mathematical information and extract numerical data from their environment is critical to an animal's ability to survive and thrive. In fact, there might just be an innate understanding of math at its most basic level that was passed down the evolutionary chain from our most distant common ancestors.
Publish Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 11:00:58 +0000
Enlarge / NASA's Space Launch System rocket will be rolling back to the launch pad in early June. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)
Welcome to Edition 4.45 of the Rocket Report! Just as a programming note, I'll be traveling during the second half of next week for a family reunion, so there may or (may not) be a report next week. Thank you for your patience.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Firefly targets July for second Alpha launch attempt. Nine months have passed since Firefly's Alpha rocket launched for the first time, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Unfortunately, one of the rocket's four main engines failed about 15 seconds into the flight, and the rocket was lost about two minutes later. The period since then has been a difficult one for the company and its founder, Tom Markusic. In addition to dissecting the cause of the Alpha failure, Firefly also ran afoul of rules set by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS.
Publish Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2022 23:51:18 +0000
Enlarge / We knew Sony was bullish about PC game launches in 2022, but we didn't think Spider-Man would be included. Great news for PC gamers. (credit: Sony / Insomniac / Nixxes)
On Thursday, Sony's latest game-filled "State of Play" presentation included fantastic news for PC gamers: Its critically acclaimed Marvel's Spider-Man is coming to Windows PCs on August 12. The news arrived shortly after a leak suggesting that Returnal and Sackboy: A Big Adventure are not only coming to PC this year as well but will include toggles to make them look and perform better than they do in the PlayStation 5 versions.
The event was jam-packed with impressive-looking new games, though most of them have 2023 release dates (and everything shown on the upcoming PlayStation VR2 platform is thus far undated, as the new peripheral doesn't have a release date). As PC gaming enthusiasts, however, we want to start with the PC-specific news.
Why Sony’s PC bullishness makes us believe today’s leak
Marvel's Spider-Man launched on PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro in September 2018 and landed near the top of our favorite games of that year. Its port, which we are surprised to see given its success at selling PlayStations, will arrive on PC courtesy of Nixxes, a development studio known for some of the best console-to-PC ports of the past decade. Sony acquired Nixxes in early 2021, but up until today, that acquisition hadn't yet borne fruit, as Sony's other recent Windows game releases didn't credit Nixxes in any way.
Publish Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2022 23:11:45 +0000
Enlarge / White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha speaks alongside White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during the daily press briefing at the White House on June 2, 2022, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Kevin Dietsch)
COVID-19 vaccination for children ages 6 months to under 5 years—the only age group yet to be eligible for vaccination—is expected to get underway on June 21, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said in a press briefing Thursday.
The Food and Drug Administration is now reviewing data from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech on their respective vaccines for the young age group. The agency will convene its panel of independent expert advisers to review the data on June 15 and vote on whether the vaccines should be granted emergency use authorization.
If the panel votes in favor of authorization, the FDA will likely grant it quickly. Once that happens, shipments of federal supplies of the vaccines will begin going out to states for distribution. But, before they can go into little arms, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will need to have its own advisory committee meeting to review the data and vote on a recommendation. And for the final step, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will need to endorse the recommendation.
Publish Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2022 23:00:33 +0000
Enlarge (credit: System76)
HP released its Dev One Linux laptop today. Aimed at coders, the 14-inch clamshell comes at a lower price than previous Ubuntu-based HP clamshells.
Starting at $1,099, the Dev One begins to keep costs low by opting for an AMD, rather than Intel, CPU and skipping the discrete graphics card. HP's last Linux laptops, part of its ZBook workstation lineup, went well over $2,000 and offered up to Intel Xeon processors and Nvidia RTX GPUs.
The 14-incher weighs 3.24 lbs. (credit: System76)
Linux roots
The previous workstations used Ubuntu 20.04 preloaded with software packages aimed at data scientists. However, the Dev One runs Pop!_OS, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution from System76.
Publish Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2022 21:37:17 +0000
Enlarge / Tiny samples of the Hypatia stone next to a small coin. Rare type Ia supernovas are some of the most energetic events in the universe. Researchers found a consistent pattern of 15 elements in the Hypatia stone, unlike anything in our solar system or in the Milky Way. (credit: Jan Kramers)
In 1996, an archaeologist named Aly A. Barakat was doing fieldwork in an Egyptian desert and stumbled across an unusual shiny black pebble now known as the Hypatia stone (after Hypatia of Alexandria). Studies conducted over the last several years indicate that the stone is of extraterrestrial origin. And according to a recent paper published in the journal Icarus, the stone's parent body was likely born in the aftermath of a rare type Ia supernova explosion.
The Hypatia stone was found in an area of southwest Egypt known for its Libyan Desert glass, produced by an extreme surface heating event, quite possibly a meteorite. The Hypatia stone may have also come from that impact, although more recent evidence suggests a comet would be a more likely parent body.
The University of Johannesburg's Jan Kramers and several colleagues have investigated the Hypatia stone for many years. Kramers compared the Hypatia stone's internal structure to a fruitcake: a poorly mixed dough forming the bulk of the pebble (mixed matrices), with the mineral grains lurking in the stone's inclusions representing the cherries and nuts. He likened the secondary substances in the stone's cracks to the flour dusting the gaps in a fruitcake.
Publish Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2022 21:02:56 +0000
Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft are ready to launch NASA's Crew-4 mission. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)
NASA said this week that it plans to purchase five additional Crew Dragon missions from SpaceX to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.
Although the space agency's news release does not specifically say so, these may be the final flights NASA needs to keep the space station fully occupied into the year 2030. As of now, there is no signed international agreement to keep the station flying until then, but this new procurement sends a strong signal that the space agency expects the orbital outpost to keep flying that long.
The announcement also suggests that SpaceX will fly more than twice as many crews to the space station than the other partner in NASA's commercial crew program, Boeing. Under the new agreement, SpaceX would fly 14 crewed missions to the station on Crew Dragon, and Boeing would fly six during the lifetime of the station.