Month: September 2017

Will Elon Musk tell us how he plans to pay for the Mars rocket? (credit: Megan Geuss)

Late Thursday night—Friday in Adelaide, Australia where the speech will occur—Elon Musk will give a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) meeting about his "updated" plans for a rocket system that will take humans to Mars. On Twitter, Musk has promised to discuss the "planetary colonizer design" in detail.

This speech follows a similar talk at last year's IAC meeting, in which Musk unveiled the "Interplanetary Transport System" design, with a massive 42-engine rocket capable of hefting as much as 550 tons to low Earth orbit—or about four times the amount of NASA's Moon rocket, the Saturn V launch vehicle. This reusable launch system, he said, could begin taking humans to Mars by the mid-2020s.

It was an audacious claim. The proposed spaceship would stand 50 meters tall, atop its rocket, with a maximum diameter of 17 meters. Instead of departing Earth orbit at 4.5km/s, its six Raptor engines optimized for the vacuum of space would accelerate it to 6 km/s, cutting the journey to Mars from six months to about three. After launching and being fueled on orbit, the ITS could deliver 100 tons to the surface of Mars. The largest payload NASA—or anyone—has ever safely landed on the Martian surface is the Curiosity rover, which weighs less than a single ton.

Enlarge (credit: Amazon)

It's a sad day for anyone who enjoys watching cooking videos, daily vlogs, or haul videos on YouTube on Amazon's Echo Show. According to a report from The Verge, YouTube is no longer available on Amazon's smart home, touchscreen-toting speaker (or as we like to call such devices, computer). Now, if you ask Alexa to play a video from YouTube, you'll receive a message saying, "Currently, Google is not supporting YouTube on Echo Show."

The reason for the sudden block is somewhat of a mystery. Amazon claimed in a statement that "Google has chosen to no longer make YouTube available on Echo Show, without explanation and without notification to customers." However, Google claimed in its own statement that YouTube on the Echo Show violates its "terms of service" and creates a "broken user experience."

Amazon also noted that there was no technical reason for the decision, which implies that YouTube was working as the company expects it would on its Echo Show device. Google hasn't denied this, and it's odd that Google would remove YouTube support on the Echo Show after it had been working on Amazon's device for a while already. It appears Amazon and Google are in talks to fix the access situation, but there's no word on when the Echo Show will play YouTube videos again.

Apple gets sued for patent infringement dozens of times each year, mostly by little-known shell companies with no products—the types of companies often derided as "patent trolls." But the newest lawsuit seeking royalty payments from iPad sales is likely a first: the recently created plaintiff, MEC Resources LLC, is wholly owned by a Native American tribe.

The case had a typical beginning. In March, a Texas company named Prowire LLC filed a lawsuit (PDF) against Apple in Delaware federal court, claiming that the iPad 4 infringes its US Patent No. 6,137,390.

Apple asked the judge to transfer the case to California. Prowire lawyers opposed that motion, but they didn't hang around to see the litigation through. In August, they informed the court that the patent had been handed off to MEC Resources LLC, a North Dakota firm. Shortly thereafter, the Delaware judge granted a transfer to California, noting that MEC is a "North Dakota citizen" and that keeping Apple in Delaware's overcrowded courts made little sense.

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WatchOS 4 officially became available to all Apple Watch owners last week even if its release was overshadowed by the hype surrounding the Series 3 Apple Watch. The newest software update for Apple's wearable brings a decent amount of change, but it's not enough to make the Apple Watch feel like an entirely new machine. Some of the biggest new additions in watchOS 4 include a new vertical Dock, new Siri and Toy Story watch faces, a slew of new heart rate monitor calculations, and new Music and News apps.

While watchOS 4 is available for all Apple Watch models, I primarily tested it on an Apple Watch Series 2. Though we also spent time trying the new Series 3 Watch, I wanted to see how much of an impact watchOS 4 has for those who stick with an existing Apple Watch rather than upgrading to the newest model. And no matter which version of the Apple Watch you have, they'll all feel similar running watchOS 4.

Dock and interface

You won't notice many differences on watchOS 4 when first booting it up on your Apple Watch. Your preferred watch face fills the entire display. Swiping down from the top opens the notification drawer, swiping left or right changes the watch face, and swiping up from the bottom opens the Control Center. The Control Center now has a new feature, the flashlight switch, and it has three controls: one that puts a bright white rectangle on the display, one with a flashing white rectangle, and the last with a bright red rectangle. Apple explained the flashing option could be useful when you're doing outdoor activities at night like walking the dog or running. Reflective clothing makes it easier for cars to see you in the dark, and the flashing option can almost act as a similar warning to surrounding vehicles if you're not wearing that kind of clothing.