Month: January 2018

Enlarge / A young woman looks at a photovoltaic installation at a booth at the InterSolar Europe trade fair in the southern German city of Munich on June 1, 2017. (credit: Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images)

In anticipation of tariffs that may be levied on solar cell and module imports, foreign solar manufacturers doubled what they shipped to the US in November 2017 compared to November 2016. That's according to trade data seen by The Wall Street Journal.

The trade data reflects that importers hope to take advantage of good market conditions before any tariffs are imposed. And a new report from the International Trade Commission (ITC) released last week suggests their efforts won't be wasted. The new supplemental report offers (PDF) some additional support to the Trump administration if it tries to bring a tariff decision before the World Trade Organization (WTO). Specifically, the report suggests that China "took advantage of the existence of programs implemented by the US government to encourage renewable energy consumption" and that the US couldn't have foreseen that market shift.

The solar cell and module tariffs in question will be decided on or before January 26 by President Donald Trump. The president is permitted to make any tariff decision he pleases if the International Trade Commission (ITC) finds that trade conditions harmed a certain US industry. In September 2017, the ITC made just such a finding, saying that US solar manufacturers had been harmed by cheap foreign imports of solar cells and modules.

Enlarge (credit: Mike Mozart)

AT&T was sued last week by a workers' union that is trying to stop the telco from instituting what it calls a "massive layoff." Thousands of employees are reportedly being laid off by the company, which reported $39.7 billion in revenue and $6.4 billion in operating income last quarter.

AT&T is "instituting an unprecedented massive layoff of employees represented by the union while at the same time massively subcontracting work that the employees are trained and qualified to perform," the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said in a lawsuit filed Saturday in US District Court in Austin, Texas. The union also filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

When contacted by Ars today, AT&T didn't deny the layoffs but said the union allegations that AT&T violated collective bargaining agreements are "baseless."

Enlarge / SpaceX's 18th (and final) mission of 2017 put on a show in the skies above Los Angeles. (credit: SpaceX)

For the United States, last year was a watershed in the launch industry. With 29 orbital launches from US soil, America led the world in total launches in 2017 for the first time in more than a decade. And it wasn't really a close competition, as the United States was followed by Russia, with 20 launches, and China, with 19. More than one-third of successful orbital missions flew from US soil last year.

All of the 29 US launch attempts were successful, whereas Russia had one failure (a Soyuz 2.1b rocket in November), and China had one failure (a Long March 5 rocket in July) and one partial failure (ChinaSat 9A in June). In 2016, the United States tied China for 22 launch attempts. Prior to that, Russia had led the world in orbital launch attempts every year since 2003, when space shuttle Columbia burnt up during its return through Earth's atmosphere.

The surge in US launch attempts last year was led by SpaceX, which had a record year and completed 18 missions with its Falcon 9 rocket. United Launch Alliance contributed eight flights, with six Atlas V missions and two Delta launches. Overall, with 18 flights, SpaceX very nearly exceeded the number of successful missions flown by any other country, with 18 flights compared to Russia's 19.

Enlarge / The iMac Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

iFixit has done a robust teardown of the iMac Pro, and we finally have a complete picture of which components can be upgraded and how easily. Additionally, the teardown found an impressively large cooling system responsible for the silent running we experienced when we saw the iMac Pro up close last month.

As we noted then, the Fusion Drive setup with a standard desktop hard drive from the standard 5K iMac is gone, as is the hatch that allowed upgrading the RAM. These changes and others have made room for a massive, dual-fan cooling system that Apple says offers 80 percent greater cooling capacity than we saw on the existing 5K iMac. There's also a bigger air vent on the back of the machine (see our earlier gallery below for a glimpse at that). Thanks to all this, the machine runs very quietly and is not warm to the touch, except right around the vent.

Enlarge / Optical microscope image of one of the purported microfossils on the left, and a Scanning Electron Microscope image of the same spot after carbon isotopes were measured in three pits on the right. (credit: Schopf et al./PNAS)

The title of “oldest evidence of life” has been provisionally claimed by a growing and confusing crowd of discoveries recently. At least until the last few years, the crown rested comfortably on a 3.47 billion-year-old rock from Western Australia called the Apex Chert. First described in the early 1990s, this rock contained a variety of microscopic structures that looked for all the world like the fossilized remains of microbial life.

Like other finds in this category, the Apex Chert has seen its fair share of controversy as researchers skeptically poked and prodded. Just two years ago, we covered a study that concluded these microfossils were simply clever lookalikes created by minerals crystallizing near a hydrothermal vent. In that version of events, some carbon (which may or may not have come from living things) stuck to vaguely microbe-shaped mineral crystals.

A recent study led by William Schopf—who discovered the Apex Chert in the first place—brings newer tools to bear on the question. And the researchers believe the results show that these microfossils are not impostors.

Enlarge / A big monitor. (credit: Samsung)

Not long after LG teased the new 34-inch “5K” monitor it plans to showcase at next week’s CES trade show, Samsung has announced a new widescreen panel of its own.

The latter Korean firm on Wednesday teased the CJ791, a not-imaginatively named 34-inch monitor with a 21:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440. That means it’s QHD, not 4K, and will thus not be as sharp as LG’s forthcoming screen. It is a curved panel, though, a form factor that makes more sense on the desktop than in the living room.

This is another one of Samsung’s quantum-dot-using QLED panels, which the company says have a 4ms response time and 178-degree viewing angle. Naturally, Samsung is hyping the improved black levels and brightness that QLED usually brings (albeit to a lesser degree than OLED), but we’ll have to see the panel for ourselves before making any judgments.

Enlarge / Troy Livingston, deputy chief of the Wichita police department. (credit: Wichita Police Facebook page)

An attorney representing Lisa Finch, the mother of a man who was killed by Wichita police last week after a "swatting" prank call, is calling for criminal charges to be filed against the officer who fired the fatal shot.

"Justice for the Finch family constitutes criminal charges against the shooting officer," attorney Andrew Stroth told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

The tragic death of Andrew Finch, 28, began with a prank phone call. A man called Wichita police claiming that he had shot his own father, taken his family hostage, and poured gasoline around the home. The caller claimed to be at the address where Andrew and Lisa Finch actually lived.