Month: March 2018

President Donald Trump shakes hands with NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, as First Daughter Ivanka Trump looks on, during a 2017 ceremony in the Oval Office. (credit: NASA)

During a cabinet meeting on Thursday inside the White House, President Donald Trump called attention to several model rockets on the table before him. They included an Atlas V, a Falcon 9, a Space Launch System, and more. The president seemed enthused to see the launch vehicles. "Before me are some rocket ships," the president said. "You haven't seen that for this country in a long time."

Then, in remarks probably best characterized as spur of the moment, the president proceeded to absolutely demolish the government's own effort to build rockets by noting the recent launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket. He cited the cost as $80 million. (The list price on SpaceX's website is $90 million.)

"I noticed the prices of the last one they say cost $80 million," Trump said. "If the government did it, the same thing would have cost probably 40 or 50 times that amount of money. I mean literally. When I heard $80 million, I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA.''

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

Last month, leaked documents revealed that Microsoft would be making Windows 10 S, the restricted version of Windows 10 that can only run applications installed from the Microsoft Store, a mode of Windows rather than a separate version. That change is now official, and Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president for Windows, has provided further details on how S Mode will work in the future. It will be available to all desktop versions of Windows, and removing the 10 S restrictions will be free for all.

Currently, Windows 10 S is treated as a distinct Windows variant. Functionally, it's a specially pre-configured version of Windows 10 Pro, using existing Windows features to restrict it to only being able to use Store apps and to block certain built-in programs such as the command-line and PowerShell. Because of this close similarity to Windows 10 Pro, Microsoft has offered an upgrade from 10 S to 10 Pro for those who want to lift the restrictions. On some systems this upgrade has been offered for free (albeit only for a promotional period); on others, it's a $50 upgrade.

With the next major Windows Update, this is changing. Instead of a distinct Windows 10 S version, there will instead be an S Mode for Windows. This mode will apply all the same restrictions as 10 S, but it'll now be an option for all the Windows versions: not just Pro, but now also Home and Enterprise. Moreover, as a mode, removing the S restrictions will now be free, regardless of which version of Windows it's applied to.

Enlarge / An example of some of the "hilarious" options for how to pick up women in Super Seducer.

Sony won't allow a controversial game about seducing women on the PlayStation 4's online marketplace, the company said this week.

Super Seducer, which launched on PC and Mac via Steam on Monday, was planned for a PS4 release according to press materials from last month. But Sony said in a statement to the BBC that the game "will not be made available" on the platform. While the outlet additionally reported that it was Sony's decision to block the game, the reasoning behind the decision is unclear (a Sony representative was not immediately available to comment to Ars Technica)

As the title suggests, Super Seducer is built around "world-renowned dating coach Richard La Ruina," who "teaches players the secret psychological tricks of attraction experts, accumulated from over 20 years of live workshops," according to a press release. Players in the game select from multiple choice options on how to respond to live-action video depicting attempts to pick up women, with La Ruina explaining the "right" and "wrong" way to go about things.

The decisions that the Department of Defense made about its "radios of the future" more than 20 years ago are still having an impact on the communications gear the military services purchase today. The Joint Tactical Radio System program may have ended, but it left behind a legacy that the US Army is now trying to get away from—while still holding fast to parts of JTRS' framework.

JTRS, as Ars reported in 2012, was DOD's quest to build the perfect set of communications gear based on software-defined radio (SDR) technology. SDR was in its infancy in the mid-1990s, but the Joint Program Office JTRS (the organization driving the DOD-wide program) was convinced that investing early would pay off with cheaper hardware in the longterm, and the government-owned software (a sort of closed open source, with a library available to all vendors) would prevent lock-in with a limited set of contractors.

CORBA style

JPEO JTRS is gone, but its software lives on. The Joint Tactical Networking Center (JTNC) has taken over management of the Software Communications Architecture, the application framework and POSIX-based real-time operating system that powers all the software-defined radios birthed from JTRS-descendant communications gear, along with libraries for the various mission-specific "waveforms" used by different radios. SCA provides an interface for software to manipulate the field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in radio hardware to reconfigure how they function. And until recently, those interfaces required radio developers to use the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) to access them.

The decisions that the Department of Defense made about its "radios of the future" more than 20 years ago are still having an impact on the communications gear the military services purchase today. The Joint Tactical Radio System program may have ended, but it left behind a legacy that the US Army is now trying to get away from—while still holding fast to parts of JTRS' framework.

JTRS, as Ars reported in 2012, was DOD's quest to build the perfect set of communications gear based on software-defined radio (SDR) technology. SDR was in its infancy in the mid-1990s, but the Joint Program Office JTRS (the organization driving the DOD-wide program) was convinced that investing early would pay off with cheaper hardware in the longterm, and the government-owned software (a sort of closed open source, with a library available to all vendors) would prevent lock-in with a limited set of contractors.

CORBA style

JPEO JTRS is gone, but its software lives on. The Joint Tactical Networking Center (JTNC) has taken over management of the Software Communications Architecture, the application framework and POSIX-based real-time operating system that powers all the software-defined radios birthed from JTRS-descendant communications gear, along with libraries for the various mission-specific "waveforms" used by different radios. SCA provides an interface for software to manipulate the field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in radio hardware to reconfigure how they function. And until recently, those interfaces required radio developers to use the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) to access them.

Enlarge / Vector gets ready for the launch of Vector-R Block 0.1 in 2017. (credit: Vector Space Systems)

The cofounder of the Vector rocket company, James Cantrell, said this week that he is 100 percent confident that his Vector-R vehicle will launch this year. This launch will occur from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska, carrying a payload of two PocketQube satellites and an Alba Orbital deployer.

"My confidence level is 100 percent," Cantrell said during a telephone interview with Ars on Thursday. "Not to pick on them, but we don't work on SpaceX schedules. We can't afford to run a business like that. We're not giving you schedules that we know we can't live with."

The company's two-stage Vector-R launcher (the R stands for "rapid") uses three LP-1 engines to lift the rocket off the pad, and it can deploy a payload with a maximum of 66kg into orbit. A later variant, the Vector-H (heavy), will have the capacity to deploy up to 110kg into space.