Australia’s first orbital-class rocket stalled seconds after liftoff

“I thought best case was maybe 40 seconds of flight time, but I’ll take 14 as a win.”

Back-to-back engine failures doomed a privately developed Australian rocket moments after liftoff Tuesday, cutting short a long-shot attempt to reach orbit with the country's first homegrown launch vehicle.

The 82-foot-tall (25-meter) Eris rocket ignited its four main engines and took off from its launch pad in northeastern Australia at 6:35 pm EDT (22:35 UTC) Tuesday. Liftoff occurred at 8:35 am local time Wednesday at Bowen Orbital Spaceport, the Eris rocket's launch site in the Australian state of Queensland.

But the rocket quickly lost power from two of its engines and stalled just above the launch pad before coming down in a nearby field. The crash sent a plume of smoke thousands of feet over the launch site, which sits on a remote stretch of coastline on Australia's northeastern frontier.

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Monitoring beendet: Bundesnetzagentur sieht keine Probleme durch FTTH-Überbau

Laut Telekom-Konkurrenten hat die Behörde besonders kritische Fälle nicht untersucht. Informationen seien nicht angefordert worden. Die Telekom sieht eine Scheindebatte. (Bundesnetzagentur, Glasfaser)

Laut Telekom-Konkurrenten hat die Behörde besonders kritische Fälle nicht untersucht. Informationen seien nicht angefordert worden. Die Telekom sieht eine Scheindebatte. (Bundesnetzagentur, Glasfaser)

Google confirms it will sign the EU AI Code of Practice

The company is not looking to make new enemies in Europe.

Big Tech is increasingly addicted to AI, but many companies are allergic to regulation, bucking suggestions that they adhere to copyright law and provide data on training. In a rare move, Google has confirmed it will sign the European Union's AI Code of Practice, a framework it initially opposed for being too harsh. However, Google isn't totally on board with Europe's efforts to rein in the AI explosion. The company's head of global affairs, Kent Walker, noted that the code could stifle innovation if it's not applied carefully, and that's something Google hopes to prevent.

While Google was initially opposed to the Code of Practice, Walker says the input it has provided to the European Commission has been well-received, and the result is a legal framework it believes can provide Europe with access to "secure, first-rate AI tools." The company claims that the expansion of such tools on the continent could boost the economy by 8 percent (about 1.8 trillion euros) annually by 2034.

These supposed economic gains are being dangled like bait to entice business interests in the EU to align with Google on the Code of Practice. While the company is signing the agreement, it appears interested in influencing the way it is implemented. Walker says Google remains concerned that tightening copyright guidelines and forced disclosure of possible trade secrets could slow innovation. Having a seat at the table could make it easier to bend the needle of regulation than if it followed some of its competitors in eschewing voluntary compliance.

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Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable laptop is now available for $3300

The first laptop with a rollable display is now available for purchase. First introduced earlier this year, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 looks like an ordinary laptop with a 14 inch display at first. But at the press of a button that screen unrolls …

The first laptop with a rollable display is now available for purchase. First introduced earlier this year, the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 looks like an ordinary laptop with a 14 inch display at first. But at the press of a button that screen unrolls and extends upward to become a larger 16.7 inch screen […]

The post Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable laptop is now available for $3300 appeared first on Liliputing.

Anzeige: Cloudinfrastrukturen automatisieren mit Terraform

Dieser Workshop vermittelt, wie Cloudumgebungen mit Terraform automatisiert werden – mit Fokus auf Openstack und übertragbaren Konzepten für AWS, Azure und GCP. (Golem Karrierewelt, Cloud Computing)

Dieser Workshop vermittelt, wie Cloudumgebungen mit Terraform automatisiert werden - mit Fokus auf Openstack und übertragbaren Konzepten für AWS, Azure und GCP. (Golem Karrierewelt, Cloud Computing)

Not (just) seeing red: Virtual Boy emulator adds full color support

Red Viper on the 3DS makes Nintendo’s failed ’90s experiment look like new.

Here at Ars, we're big fans of classic console emulators that go beyond providing perfect re-creations to those that actually improve on original hardware with new features we could only dream of as kids. So we were excited when we recently stumbled on a Reddit post that shows a full Super Game Boy-esque color palette added to the usual shades of red and black found in Virtual Boy Wario Land.

After experiencing colorized Virtual Boy emulation for ourselves (and grabbing the sample screenshots you can see in this piece), we were struck by just how much a splash of color adds new life to Nintendo's failed '90s experiment (which Ars' own Benj Edwards has written about extensively). Going beyond the usual red-and-black graphics helps to highlight the artistry in the small selection of official Virtual Boy games and provides a great excuse to check out the system's surprisingly vibrant homebrew scene.

Red in the face

Nintendo famously chose to use a line of (then cheap and abundant) red LEDs for the Virtual Boy's stereoscopic display, leading to its iconic monochromatic color palette. While the handful of '90s Virtual Boy developers did their best under this limitation, the hardware's red-on-black graphics have aged even worse than the often muddy grayscale found on the original Game Boy.

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