Month: July 2018

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks onstage at SXSW on March 11, 2018 in Austin, Texas. (credit: Getty Images | Diego Donamaria )

A diver who helped rescue boys trapped in a Thailand cave may sue Elon Musk after the tech billionaire called the rescuer a "pedo guy."

Diver Vernon Unsworth was instrumental in the rescue, and he said that Musk's attempt to build a small submarine for the rescue effort was a "PR stunt" that had no chance of working. Musk soon promised to prove Unsworth wrong—and lobbed a baseless charge of pedophilia at the rescuer.

In a series of tweets yesterday, Musk initially challenged Unsworth to "show [the] final rescue video" before writing, "You know what, don't bother showing the video. We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it."

Update (7/17/2018 11:20am ET): We've updated our anti-Prime Day deals list with new discounts on the Nest Learning Thermostat, Google Pixelbook, Samsung 860 EVO SSD, and a nice sitewide discount code from eBay that slashes devices like the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One X, and 9.7-inch iPad down to new lows. Have a look for yourself below.

Original article (7/16/2018 11:10am ET): Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals to share. Today, as you may have heard, Amazon Prime Day begins—it's the annual sales event/advertisement/sunk cost celebration in which Amazon discounts thousands of items for members of its Prime subscription service.

While more than 100 million people now subscribe to Prime, the event still leaves a big chunk of would-be bargain hunters out in the cold, and the recent price hikes to the service don't make it any more welcoming. Naturally, this has left the door open for competing stores to swoop in and try to capitalize on the Prime Day buzz with alternative deals of their own.

Update (7/17/2018 8:10pm ET): Prime Day is nearing its end, so we've made one last update, adding deals on Logitech mice, Netgear Arlo security cameras, and more. We've also included a section with quick links to any last-minute Lightning deals that may arise before things come to a close. Now if you'll excuse us, the Dealmaster needs to grab a stiff drink.

Original article (7/16/2018 10:45am ET): Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. And not just any deals—Prime Day deals.

Yes, today is the big one. The one the Dealmaster has been stretching and preparing and running up steps Rocky II-style for. From now through Tuesday, it's Amazon's Prime Day 2018 event, in which the online shopping giant discounts an absolute truckload of things for members of its Prime subscription service. If you don't pay for Prime, you'll have to sit this one out, but remember that new signups can still get a 30-day trial for free.

Block Island, the largest meteorite yet found on Mars and one of several identified by the Mars Exploration Rovers. (credit: NASA)

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has done many great things in its decade-plus of service—but initially, it rolled 600 feet past one of the initiative’s biggest discoveries: the Block Island meteorite. Measuring about 67 centimeters across, the meteorite was a telltale sign that Mars' atmosphere had once been much thicker, thick enough to slow down the rock flying at a staggering 2km/s so that it did not disintegrate on impact. A thicker atmosphere could mean a more gentle climate, possibly capable of supporting liquid water on the surface, maybe even life.

Yet, we only know about the Block Island meteorite because someone on the Opportunity science team manually spotted an unusual shape in low-resolution thumbnails of the images and decided it was worth backtracking for several days to examine it further. Instead of this machine purposefully heading toward the rock right from the get-go, the team barely saw perhaps its biggest triumph in the rear view mirror. "It was almost a miss," says Mark Woods, head of autonomy and robotics at SciSys, a company specializing in IT solutions for space exploration that works for the European Space Agency (ESA), among others.

Opportunity, of course, made this near-miss maneuver all the way back in July 2009. If NASA were to attempt a similar initiative in a far-flung corner of the galaxy today—as the space organization plans to in 2020 with the Mars 2020 rover (the ESA has similar ambitions with its ExoMars rover that year)—modern scientists have one particularly noteworthy advantage that has developed since.