Month: June 2018

Enlarge / Google's logo for the Android P Developer Preview. (credit: Google)

With the launch of Android 8.0 last year, Google released Project Treble into the world. Treble was one of Android's biggest engineering projects ever, modularizing the Android operating system away from the hardware and greatly reducing the amount of work needed to update a device. The goal here is nothing short of fixing Android's continual fragmentation problem, and now, six months later, it seems like the plan is actually working.

At Google I/O this year, you could see signs of the Treble revolution all over the show. The Android P beta launched, but it wasn't just on Google's own Pixel devices—for the first time ever, an Android Developer Preview launched simultaneously on devices from Google, Nokia, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Essential, Vivo, Sony, and Oppo, all thanks to Project Treble compatibility. Even car makers—some of the slowest adopters of technology on Earth—were on the Project Treble train. Dodge and Volvo both had prototype cars running Android as the infotainment system, and both were running Android P.

As is becoming custom for our annual trip to Google I/O, we were able to sit down with some core members of the Android Team: Iliyan Malchev, the head of Project Treble, and Dave Burke, Android's VP of engineering. (We quoted Iliyan Malchev a million times during the Android 8.0 review, so it was nice to get information from him first hand, and Dave Burke has been through the Ars interview gauntlet several times now.) And through this lengthy chat, we got a better understanding of what life is like now that Project Treble is seeing some uptake from OEMs.

Enlarge / We need your help to produce a new newsletter to chronicle the dynamic launch industry. (credit: Aurich Lawson/background image United Launch Alliance)

Welcome to Edition 1.03 of the Rocket Report! This collaborative effort with readers of Ars Technica seeks to diversify our coverage of the blossoming launch industry. The Rocket Report publishes as a newsletter on Thursday and on this website every Friday morning.

We welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe in the box below. Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Virgin Orbit "months" away from first rocket launch. In an in-depth feature on Virgin Orbit, the company's VP of special projects, Will Pomerantz, told Ars that the LauncherOne rocket is nearing completion. "We are getting pretty darn close," Pomerantz said when Ars visited Virgin Orbit recently for a tour of the factory. "I'm always hesitant to put dates on it, because we're always wrong, like everyone in the industry. But I think we're months away."

Review cars long enough and a pattern emerges. Car is dropped off, people find out what you're driving, ask a couple of cursory questions, and that's it. That's because while most of the crossovers and SUVs I review are compelling in their own way, they are still yet-another SUV.

Not so with the Maserati Levante S GranSport. No car that I've driven has garnered as many looks and questions as Maserati's $80,000+ SUV, and for good reason. It's a stunner.

Maserati has a long and storied history. Founded in 1914, the company is probably best known these days for making fast, expensive, and luxurious cars that are easy on the eyes. The Levante is no exception. It's all sleek, gentle curves on the outside with the hood in perfect proportion to the cabin. Although it's a two-row SUV, it's only 2 inches (5cm) shorter than three-row SUVs like the Audi Q7 and Mazda CX-9 and about 5 inches (12.5cm) longer than a Q5 or BMW X5. From the side, the exterior is adorned only with the iconic trident on the C pillar and three vents right as the hood slopes into the windshield. From the front, the trident sits dead center in the large grille with a large air intake below.