Month: August 2018

Audi

Earlier on Thursday, we took a look at an all-electric concept from Infiniti that just broke cover. Now, it's Audi's turn.

The car maker has chosen Monterey Car Week to make a statement about the future, and that statement is called the PB18 e-tron. This is the first time Audi's unveiled a concept at Pebble Beach, and it's quite something—an electric sports car that leverages Le Mans-winning technology from the mighty Audi R18 e-tron quattro race car.

Enlarge / Vice President Mike Pence shakes hands with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at NASA's Johnson Space Center on Thursday. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

The Trump administration has established NASA’s main human spaceflight goal as a sustainable human return to the Moon, with eventual human missions to Mars. During what amounted to a pep talk at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence reiterated his commitment to this goal.

“We’re also renewing our national commitment to discovery and to exploration and to write the next great chapter of our nation’s journey into space,” Pence said. “NASA will awe the world with our daring heroes.”

Unfortunately for presidents who serve at most two four-year terms, government spaceflight during the modern era moves at a glacial pace. No astronauts will walk on Mars during Trump’s presidency or even on the Moon. Past presidents with ambitions for the Moon, Mars, or asteroids have faced similar conundrums because it takes so long to arrange funding for these plans, finalize designs, build and test, and finally to fly. Long before astronauts take flight, a new administration moves into the White House.

Enlarge (credit: Diy13/ Getty Images)

Doctors are urging caution after a 24-year-old UK man underwent emergency surgery after doctors discovered that his severely enlarged colon, filled with feces, had burst.

At the time of the surgery, the man had “reduced consciousness” and severe abdominal pain, as well as air trapped under his diaphragm, failing kidneys, and acidic blood.

In a short communication published this week in BMJ Case Reports, doctors elaborated on the man’s rare conditions, known as “megacolon” and “megarectum.” These are poorly understood ailments marked by enlarged entrails that aren’t caused by a physical blockage. Sometimes they can be explained by genetic abnormalities or other acquired conditions, such as diseases that affect intestinal motility or muscle and connective-tissue function. But in this case, the man seemed to have a chronic, idiopathic case, meaning there was no clear cause of the gargantuan guts.

Enlarge / Adding powdered silica to the electrolyte used in lithium-ion batteries keeps them from catching fire. (credit: Gabriel Veith)

Exploding lithium-ion batteries can wreak havoc on airline flights or in waste facilities after people toss their old electronics into the trash. Now, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have come up with a new chemical recipe that could combat the problem.

A lithium battery has two electrodes, separated by a thin plastic sheet and submerged in a liquid electrolyte—that's a chemical medium (usually a flammable lithium-ion fluid) that allows charge to flow between a lithium-ion cathode to a carbon anode. When that thin plastic sheet breaks (due to too much jostling in the cargo hold of an airplane, for instance), the electrodes can come together, shorting out the battery. This produces heat, which can ignite the liquid electrolyte, and boom! You have a small fire in the cargo hold.

That's why the FAA prohibits anything containing lithium-ion batteries in checked baggage. In 2017 alone, the agency reported 46 incidents of exploding batteries on airplanes.

Enlarge (credit: Mike Mozart / Flickr)

Having succeeded in killing federal net neutrality rules, broadband lobby groups are now asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to avoid imposing stricter regulations on the industry.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai claimed that his net neutrality repeal won't hurt consumers because the FTC will fill the gap left by the FCC's deregulation of broadband. But as things stand today, the FTC can only punish ISPs if they make net neutrality promises and then fail to keep them—ISPs could avoid FTC punishment simply by not making net neutrality promises.

ISPs want to keep it that way. In comments filed this week, cable industry lobby group NCTA told the FTC that "there is plainly no reasonable basis in today's marketplace for singling out ISPs for unique regulatory burdens." The FTC should let "market forces" prevent bad behavior and avoid specific net neutrality or privacy regulation for the broadband industry, the lobby group said.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by more of a PSA than an out-and-out deal: as we noted earlier this week, Amazon is changing its video game pre-order discount policy for Prime members. Currently, subscribers can take 20 percent off pre-orders for upcoming physical copies of video games. Since most standard titles go for $60, that typically works out to a $12 straight cash discount—a decent savings if you're the type who buys lots of games on launch day.

On August 28, however, the company says it will replace that 20-percent discount with a $10 store credit that only applies to "select games" and must be used within 60 days. This isn't the worst downgrade: Amazon's announcement suggests the credit will also be applicable to digital games, and if you use Amazon often, you're only effectively losing $2 per order. But if you're a Prime member with games on your radar and you're not sure if you'll use Amazon enough to make use of that timed credit, it may be worth taking advantage of the existing offer before next week.

We rounded up a handful of particularly anticipated upcoming games below, but the discount will apply to just about any future game with a physical copy. And if you're all set on the gaming front, we also have deals on gaming PCs, robot vaccums, headphones, and more.