Month: September 2018

Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2015. (credit: ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Tesla's newly hired chief accounting officer abruptly resigned on Tuesday, the company has disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He had been on the job for less than a month.

In the filing, now-former Tesla executive Dave Morton said that he was leaving because "the level of public attention placed on the company as well as the pace within the company have exceeded my expectations."

"I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission, and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla’s leadership or its financial reporting," Morton added.

Enlarge / Disclaimer: Artist's conception. Do not play Fortnite while skydiving. Ars Technica and Epic Games will not be held liable for any injuries sustained jumping out of planes while playing the game. Void where prohibited.

In bringing Fortnite to Android this summer, Epic gambled that the biggest video game phenomenon in the world could find success without relying on the centralized Google Play storefront (and its 30 percent cut of all revenues). That gamble seems to have paid off so far: Epic reports 15 million Fortnite downloads and 23 million players on Android just 21 days after the game's beta release.

For context, the iOS version of the game saw roughly 11 million installations in its first month, according to analysis firm Sensor Tower, though the first two weeks of that period were a more limited "closed beta." It took the iOS version of Fortnite about three months to reach 100 million downloads, according to analysis firm Apptopia.

Technical hurdles

The Android launch numbers come directly from Epic, which goes on to detail the technical challenges of the Android port in a lengthy blog post.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Spencer Platt)

Senate Democrats yesterday asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Verizon's throttling of firefighters during California's largest-ever wildfire.

US Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) also sent a letter to Verizon, accusing the carrier of misleading the fire department in its marketing of unlimited data. Additionally, the Democrats sent letters to the other major carriers asking for commitments that they won't throttle the data of public safety officials while they are responding to emergencies.

Though FCC Chairman Ajit Pai eliminated net neutrality rules, the commission maintains a revised version of a transparency rule that requires carriers to publicly disclose enough information about network management practices and commercial terms of service "to enable consumers to make informed choices regarding the purchase and use of such services."

Enlarge / 24 April 2018, Germany, Gundremmingen: No steam is ascending from the cooling towers of the nuclear power station. After block B was turned off end of 2017 in the course of phasing out nuclear energy, now block C has gone off the grid for the regular annual overhaul. Germany's most efficient nuclear power station at one time is going to be turned off around mid of May. Photo: Stefan Puchner/dpa (Photo by Stefan Puchner/picture alliance via Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images)

Nuclear energy has been struggling. Aging reactors are being shut down, a process accelerated after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and new reactors aren't being built. Even the exceptions bend more toward the rule in the US, where recent reactor construction was abruptly halted following the 2017 bankruptcy of reactor maker Westinghouse.

But many believe that total decarbonization of the energy sector can't fully happen without nuclear power. And decarbonization must occur in the near future if we want to have a shot at mitigating the effects of climate change. Nuclear power's advantages are that it suffers none of the variability of wind and solar power, and the energy it produces is essentially carbon-free, (although, of course, uranium fuel is generally mined and processed in ways that emit carbon dioxide). Nuclear power plants are also capable of supplying huge amounts of power to the grid, which is a boon as the global population keeps growing.

At the juncture of nuclear's sad present predicament and its apparent necessity in the future, a new, 270-page report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) details what it would take for nuclear energy to see a renaissance.