Month: February 2019

Enlarge / Zanardi in the paddock. He is almost as fast in this chair as he is in the race car—I'm surprised he hasn't been given a penalty for speeding in the pit lane! (credit: Elle Cayabyab Gitlin)

Although we usually cover our own travel arrangements, in this case Rolex flew me to Orlando and provided two nights in a hotel in Daytona Beach.

One of the biggest buzzes at this year's Rolex 24 at Daytona was the presence of one Alex Zanardi, racing in one of the two BMW M8 GTEs. Racing fans will remember Zanardi from his time in single seaters. There was a spell in F1 with the Williams team, but he's primarily known by the racing crowd as a double champion in the open-wheel CART series (in 1997 and 1998). In 2001, after returning to CART, he lost both his legs in a horrific crash at the Lausitzring in Germany in 2001. Other sports fans may well know him for his post-crash success in handcycling; he's won multiple marathons (Venice, 2009, Rome, 2010, New York, 2011) as well as gold medals in the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics.

Oh, and he's kept driving, too. First in the World Touring Car Championship from 2004-2009, with wins in 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009, then more recently in the Blancpain Sprint Series in 2014, all with BMW. But this year's Rolex 24 saw him added to BMW's roster for the #24 BMW Team RLL M8 GTE, where he was just one of the car's four drivers (the other three of whom were all able-bodied).

Enlarge / Ellen Page as Vanya Hargreeve and a CGI chimpanzee as Pogo, the Hargreeve family's primate butler. (credit: Netflix)

The Umbrella Academy is by no means a perfect comic series, even though it's one of the best mid-'00s alterna-comics to take on X-Men archetypes. Its stories, which were first published by Dark Horse in 2007, play out like charged, orchestral emo songs—full of delightfully melodramatic hooks, sweeping segments, and a few shamelessly hackneyed takes on emotion. (Which makes sense, considering Gerard Way of emo cultural bellwether My Chemical Romance fame is the writer.)

Years after the comics' first two volumes concluded, a live-action adaptation has emerged, courtesy of Netflix. Though the show doesn't debut until February 14, we were given early access to its ten-episode season—but I struggled to get through the whole thing. Between a total plot rewrite, questionable casting, and abysmal pacing, this series lands pretty low on Netflix's all-time adaptation list in terms of quality and watchability.

Grieving over Hargreeves

The most stark issue is Umbrella Academy's decision to take roughly six comic books' worth of material (from the series' first volume) and convert it into ten 50-minute episodes. The amount of plot and action contained in each episode is the equivalent of roughly 18 comic book pages. Conversations drag on. Every "important" scene is preceded and followed by a ridiculous amount of slowly panning views of brooding characters mixed with generic, synthesized orchestral swells. Imagine if two complete comic book pages were dedicated to someone walking up to a troubling scene, whispering an expletive, and then staring at the scene some more, and you'll get the idea.

Enlarge (credit: Getty / Aurich)

Lidar, short for light radar, is a crucial enabling technology for self-driving cars. The sensors provide a three-dimensional point cloud of a car's surroundings, and the concept helped teams win the DARPA Urban Challenge back in 2007. Lidar systems have been standard on self-driving cars ever since.

Over the last decade-plus, dozens of lidar startups have been created to challenge industry leader Velodyne. They've all made big promises about better prices and performance. At the start of 2018, Ars covered the major trends in the lidar industry and why experts expected cheaper, better systems to arrive in the next few years. But that piece didn't go into much detail about individual lidar companies—largely because most companies were closely guarding information about how their technology worked.

But over the last year, I've gotten a steady stream of pitches from lidar companies, and I've talked to as many of them as I could. Ars has now been in contact with senior executives from at least eight lidar companies as well as others involved in the industry as customers or analysts. These conversations have provided a lot of insight not only into trends in the lidar industry in general but also about the technology and business strategy of individual companies.

Enlarge (credit: Getty / Aurich)

Lidar, short for light radar, is a crucial enabling technology for self-driving cars. The sensors provide a three-dimensional point cloud of a car's surroundings, and the concept helped teams win the DARPA Urban Challenge back in 2007. Lidar systems have been standard on self-driving cars ever since.

Over the last decade-plus, dozens of lidar startups have been created to challenge industry leader Velodyne. They've all made big promises about better prices and performance. At the start of 2018, Ars covered the major trends in the lidar industry and why experts expected cheaper, better systems to arrive in the next few years. But that piece didn't go into much detail about individual lidar companies—largely because most companies were closely guarding information about how their technology worked.

But over the last year, I've gotten a steady stream of pitches from lidar companies, and I've talked to as many of them as I could. Ars has now been in contact with senior executives from at least eight lidar companies as well as others involved in the industry as customers or analysts. These conversations have provided a lot of insight not only into trends in the lidar industry in general but also about the technology and business strategy of individual companies.

Enlarge / The Electron launch vehicle is ready to soar. (credit: Rocket Lab)

Welcome to Edition 1.34 of the Rocket Report! We've got lots of news this week about large rockets, from New Glenn to the Falcon Heavy and Ariane 6 boosters. There's also a delightfully intriguing story about the CIA's plan during the 1960s to launch spy satellites on an as-needed basis.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). 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 Galactic lays off dozens of employees. Virgin Galactic laid off about 40 employees in January as it transitions from building its VSS Unity spaceship in California to launching commercial flights from southern New Mexico. The cuts were necessary "to position our organization for the drive to commercial operations" and to "make room for new skillsets that we need to bring in over the course of this year," Aleanna Crane, a Virgin Galactic spokeswoman, told NM Politics.

Enlarge / The US Courthouse in Austin, Texas. (credit: Nathan Mattise)

Sometimes lawsuits can be like real estate—all about location, location, location. And this week at a federal court in Texas, US District Judge Robert Pitman made a ruling (PDF) that ended Defense Distributed v. Grewal (PDF), the lawsuit brought last summer by the 3D printed firearms company (and colleagues like the Second Amendment Foundation) against New Jersey State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.

From Defense Distributed's perspective, the core question involved whether a NJ statute aimed at regulating “ghost guns” violated the Constitution. The company believed such a law infringed on its right to free speech (among other legal claims). Judge Pitman, however, did not ultimately have to weigh in on that matter. Instead, he granted New Jersey's motion to dismiss on the grounds that he did not have jurisdiction to hear this matter in the first place.

The case for jurisdiction

Back at a hearing on January 15 (transcript available), attorneys for Defense Distributed and New Jersey outlined their arguments as to why or why not this particular case should be heard in a Texas federal courtroom. Prior legal precedent appeared split, but Defense Distributed attorney Chad Flores argued this case resembled Calder v. Jones. In that ruling, the Supreme Court did allow a court within a state to have personal jurisdiction over a national entity (the National Enquirer, based in Florida then, was sued for defamation in California after copies were distributed in-state). Flores argued that like Enquirer in Calder, the NJ statute does “change what people can say here in Texas,” therefore Pitman should have jurisdiction.