Month: August 2016

(credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX appears to be betting big on carbon fiber composites, which could increase the capacity of its future rockets to get people and supplies into space—and eventually to the surface of Mars. According to a report in Nikkei Asian Review, SpaceX has signed an agreement with Toray Carbon Fibers estimated to be worth $2 billion to $3 billion. The total price and delivery dates have yet to be finalized.

It is not immediately clear exactly when, and in which launch vehicles, these lightweight composites will be employed by SpaceX. But the company is not alone in its interest—NASA and other aerospace companies have been experimenting with the materials because of their potential to increase the amount of payload that can be carried by a rocket. They could also lower overall manufacturing cost.

The scale of the deal seems telling, however. If the value of the deal as reported is correct, in the billions of dollars, it seems probable that the carbon fiber composites would be used in SpaceX's proposed Mars Colonial Transporter rocket. This is the very large (but still under development) rocket the company plans to use to transport humans to Mars. SpaceX is already far along in the production of its Falcon Heavy rocket, which is based on the Falcon 9 core stage. The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX has successfully been landing this year, has tank walls and domes built from an aluminum lithium alloy. (Ars has reached out to SpaceX for comment on this story and will update accordingly).

(credit: NBCUniversal)

Warning: This piece contains minor spoilers for the most recent episode of Mr. Robot (S2E6)

Last week on Mr. Robot, the intrepid hackers of fsociety went back to command-line school. They didn't need the training, of course. In order to access an FBI system on location at E-Corp headquarters—which currently houses a temporary FBI division after last season's cyber-attacks—the hacker collective needed someone on the inside. Their only option was a relative n00b: Elliot Alderson's family-friend-turned-E-Corp-employee Angela Moss.

The episode ends on a slight cliff-hanger. As Angela continues to execute instructions pumped into her headphones from fsociety, the show's new FBI character, Dom DiPierro, arrives at her side to request a quick interview. Until that point, this newly made hacker had successfully socially engineered her way into an FBI space, executed some code in a bathroom stall, and then dropped a femtocell at an official workstation. For a show that prides itself so much on accuracy in hacking, does having a novice best the FBI go one step too far?

(credit: Intel)

Intel will be opening up its newest chip factories to companies making ARM mobile processors, according to joint press releases from both Intel and ARM. Companies designing chips based on ARM's Artisan Physical IP will be able to manufacture them on Intel's upcoming 10nm FinFET process, giving those chip companies an option aside from the currently dominant Samsung and TSMC. It sounds like ARM licensees who use ARM's off-the-shelf technology will be able to use Intel's fabs to create chips but that licensees like Qualcomm who use a lot of their own custom CPUs and GPUs won't be able to.

"The initial POP IP will be for two future advanced ARM Cortex-A processor cores designed for mobile computing applications in either ARM big.LITTLE™ or stand-alone configurations," according to ARM's press release. Intel's release says that LG will be using the process to "produce a world-class mobile platform based on Intel Custom Foundry's 10nm design platform."

The Intel Custom Foundry business has slowly been expanding since Intel first offered 22nm capacity to Achronix back in 2010, though its list of customers is still fairly small. Initially, Intel mostly offered capacity to chip companies that didn't compete with Intel in any significant markets, and in at least one case, Intel has actually purchased a company it was doing business with. But Intel dramatically scaled back its smartphone SoC plans a few months ago after years of poor sales and few design wins, so letting ARM SoC makers use Intel's factories could now be Intel's best option for making money in the mobile SoC business. The company is also continuing to work on its modems, one of which is rumored to be included in the next-generation iPhones.

(credit: AK Rockefeller)

Two former employees of the National Security Agency—including exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden—are speculating that Monday's leak of what are now confirmed to be advanced hacking tools belonging to the US government is connected to the separate high-profile hacks and subsequent leaks of two Democratic groups.

Private security firms brought in to investigate the breach of the Democratic National Committee and a separate hack of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have said that the software left behind implicates hackers tied to the Russian government. US intelligence officials have privately said they, too, have high confidence of Russian government involvement.

In the weeks following the reports, WikiLeaks and an unknown person using the moniker Guccifer 2.0 have published a steady stream of documents. One batch released just ahead of last month's Democratic National Convention contained embarrassing private conversations that led to the resignation of DNC Chair Debra Wasserman Schultz. A more recent installment included a spreadsheet detailing the cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and other personal information of every Democratic member of the House of Representatives. The Obama administration has signaled that it may impose new economic sanctions on Russia in response to what critics claim is Russian attempts to disrupt or influence the US presidential election.

On Tuesday, the Ford Motor Company became the latest car maker committed to putting a fully autonomous car into production in the next five years. "The world is changing, and it's changing very quickly," Ford CEO Mark Fields said. The company intends to build a high-volume car capable of SAE's level 4 autonomy, but the target customer is not regular consumers—it's ride-sharing services. "Starting in 2021, if you want to get around the city without the hassle of driving or parking, Ford's new fully autonomous vehicle will be there for you," Fields said.

The announcement took place in Palo Alto, outside Ford's Silicon Valley Research and Innovation Center. As part of Ford's future plans, that research center will double in size over the next 16 months. Although Fields cited the safety implications of autonomous cars—90 percent of traffic crashes are attributable to human error, after all—he was also enthusiastic about the possibility of making transportation more accessible to the elderly, disabled, and people too young (or too disinterested) to drive themselves.

Ford has designs on being more than an automaker, too; the company's Smart Mobility pilot programs have been showing the way here. "We know there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all transportation solution," Fields said, adding that ride-sharing would make more efficient use of vehicles, with less time wasted for people and less pollution.