Month: July 2018

Enlarge / Red Bull aerodynamics genius Adrian Newey designed this F1 car of the future for Gran Turismo, but I have an even more radical idea for the sport. (credit: Sony)

Ever since Liberty Media bought Formula 1, it has been working on plans to improve the sport. There is a lot for it to do; during its tenure as owner of the sport, vulture fund CVC Capital Partners had no interest other than sucking as much cash out each year as possible. Some of the problems are structural, like the extremely inequitable financial situation that rewards some teams (like Ferrari and Red Bull) more for just showing up than others could possibly earn through race results. Other problems also involve money—more specifically, how to cut the costs involved without diluting the sport's essence. And some are a question of physics, like how to improve the quality of the actual racing.

Let's leave aside the thorny issue of revenue sharing and focus on the technical issues, specifically, the proposed technical changes to the cars for the 2021 season.

Cheaper engines, simpler aerodynamics

We've known for a while that F1 wants to significantly cut the cost and complexity of F1 engines as well as make them sound better. This would happen by dropping one of the two hybrid systems currently employed on an F1 car: in this case, the MGU-H (Motor Generator Unit-Heat), which alternately captures waste energy from the V6's turbocharger or uses stored energy to spin the turbine. Unlike the other hybrid system (called an MGU-K for Kinetic), MGU-Hs are ludicrously expensive to develop and have zero road relevance.

CBS

After a raucous Season 1, CBS dropped a first glimpse into the forthcoming Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery last Friday at San Diego Comic-Con International. The season will begin January 2019.

Spoilers ahead. If you continue to read and then complain about spoilers, you'll be sent to Rura Penthe.

Enlarge / Coking coal. (credit: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the conviction of a coal company executive and a lawyer on charges related to bribing an Alabama state lawmaker.

The two men—David Roberson, vice president of Government and Regulatory Affairs for coal firm Drummond Company, and Joel Gilbert, a partner at law firm Balch & Bingham—paid Alabama State Representative Oliver Robinson $360,000 to oppose an environmental clean-up program near Robinson's district.

In 2013, Drummond Company, a company that mines and processes coal, was alerted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that one of its subsidiaries could possibly be on the hook to help pay for the cleanup of an EPA-designated Superfund site north of Birmingham, Alabama. The site had tested positive for "elevated levels of arsenic, lead, and benzo(a)pyrene," according to the Justice Department.

Enlarge / Uber's current self-driving cars are based on the Volvo XC90. (credit: Uber)

Four months after a fatal crash forced Uber to halt testing of its self-driving cars nationwide, the company announced Tuesday that it is resuming testing on Pittsburgh streets. But the announcement comes with an important caveat: initially, the cars will only be driven in "manual mode" with human drivers—not Uber's software—controlling them.

"We're starting with cars in manual mode, with a Mission Specialist sitting behind the wheel and manually controlling the vehicle at all times," writes Eric Meyhofer, the leader of Uber's self-driving car program. "While we are eager to resume testing of our self-driving system, we see manual driving as an important first step."

Driving around in manual mode won't allow Uber to directly test its self-driving car software. But it will allow the company to gather data that will improve Uber's maps and simulation software. It's also a way for Uber to test the political waters in Pittsburgh before diving in headfirst. Uber's plan to resume testing in Pittsburgh initially met with criticism from Mayor Bill Peduto.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by new price lows on Samsung's EVO Select microSD cards, with the 64GB model down to $18 and the 128GB variant down to $35. Neither of those is a massive discount, all told, but they are the cheapest prices we've seen for a microSD card that was already a great mix of performance and value to begin with.

The EVO Select is a U3-rated Class 10 card, so its sequential write speeds will at least stay above 30MB/s, which is generally the speed required to record 4K video. Exactly how fast the card can be is affected by the device with which you plan to use it, but on their own both cards are rated as getting up to 100MB/s read speeds. The 128GB variant is rated at up to 90MB/s write speeds, compared to 60MB/s for the 64GB model. Both cards come with a standard 10-year warranty. With a 4.6 rating on Amazon after more than 8,000 user reviews, it should be a safe and speedy buy if you need more storage for your Android phone, Nintendo Switch, or what have you.

If you're not in need of extra space, we also have deals on Dell laptops, Philips Hue lights, Roku's Streaming Stick+, Instant Pots, and much more. Have a look for yourself below.

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai speaks about improving rural connectivity during an Agriculture Department forum on April 18, 2018 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Alex Wong )

A broadband provider from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's hometown says one of his latest plans could prevent it from purchasing spectrum needed to bolster its network.

Wave Wireless is a locally owned and operated home Internet provider in Parsons, Kansas, where Pai grew up. Last year, Pai met with Wave's owner and wrote in a tweet that Wave is "connecting Parsons (including my parents) & smaller towns nearby."

Terrific meeting Galen Manners of fixed wireless ISP Wave Wireless! Wave's connecting Parsons (including my parents) & smaller towns nearby. pic.twitter.com/89LYFyprmV

— Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) September 21, 2017

Pai heard from his hometown ISP again yesterday when Wave and 181 other fixed wireless broadband providers wrote a letter opposing an FCC plan that could limit the small ISPs' access to wireless spectrum.

Enlarge (credit: Tony Alter / Flickr)

Since February, Google has planned to brand non-HTTPS sites as "Not Secure," and today, with Chrome 68, that change is being rolled out to a wide audience.

With the change, every site now gets a label in its address bar: "Secure" if the site is loaded over HTTPS, "Not Secure" otherwise. In September, Google will make another change and remove the "Secure" label, marking the transition to a world where secure HTTP is the default rather than the exception.

Most major online sites and services do now support and default to HTTPS. Correctly configured, servers should redirect any attempt to access a page over insecure HTTP to secure HTTPS, ensuring that a site cannot be intercepted or tampered with. However, Troy Hunt—creator of the Have I Been Pwned service—has found that a number of popular sites can still serve content insecurely.

Enlarge / The Falcon Heavy is just the beginning of big rocket debuts ... (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

Rocket enthusiasts are lucky to see the debut of a handful of large, powerful rockets per decade. For example, during the last 10 years, just three rockets with a capacity of 25 tons or more to low-Earth orbit have made their debuts: the Russian Angara A5 flew in 2014, the Chinese Long March 5 in 2016, and the SpaceX Falcon Heavy earlier this year.

However, there is now a chance that up to four large and powerful rockets will make their debuts during a single year, as four boosters have maiden launches scheduled for 2020. Of course, there is also a chance that none of them will fly. Delays are often inevitable in the launch industry, especially with such large and in some ways unprecedented boosters. But given the uncertainty and the unprecedented potential, we thought it might be fun to assess whether any or all of them might make it.

Ars reached out to several launch industry experts and colleagues in aerospace journalism to gauge opinions on the viability of these launch dates. To be perfectly clear: the "confidence" in achieving a 2020 launch—and "estimated launch dates" below are at best educated guesses—is a reflection of what these informed people think may happen. Keep in mind that there are many, many variables that go into an actual launch date: finding, hardware readiness, component testing, integrated testing, software, ground systems readiness, and so much more. So caveat emptor.