Month: February 2019

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Valentine's Day and consumer technology don't exactly go hand in hand. Every couple is different, but if you're getting a loved one a gift for the holiday, it should come from the heart. A new smartphone or portable hard drive is nice, but it doesn't always scream "romance."

For the tech-obsessed robots at Ars Technica, though, good gear will always win out against fickle concepts like "human emotions." So instead of posting a more conventional gift guide, I decided to celebrate this Valentine's Day in a more Arsian manner: by asking my colleagues to point their hearts not toward other people but toward the tech in their lives that they appreciate the most.

Here are a few things we love.

Enlarge / A view of the Falcon Heavy rocket on Monday, from one-quarter of a mile away. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann for Ars Technica)

In a memorandum released Monday night, the US Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General informed Air Force leadership that it will evaluate the military's certification of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy for national security missions.

"We plan to begin the subject evaluation in February 2019," the memorandum states. "Our objective is to determine whether the US Air Force complied with the Launch Services New Entrant Certification Guide when certifying the launch system design for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle-class SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles."

The memorandum does not explain why the inspector general believes such an evaluation is necessary. Signed by Deputy Inspector General Michael Roark, the memorandum only states that the evaluation will take place at the Space and Missile Systems Center, which is headquartered at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, California. This is just a few miles from SpaceX's headquarters in neighboring Hawthorne.

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  Daimler and Freightliner demonstrated their new advanced driver assistance systems for class 8 trucks at CES this year. [credit: Daimler ]

LAS VEGAS—For obvious reasons, the automotive coverage at Ars often focuses on ADAS—advanced driver assistance systems. From convenience features like adaptive cruise control and lane keeping to more safety-oriented features like blind spot monitoring or automatic emergency braking, ADAS are becoming more common in new vehicles—usually with brand-specific and potentially confusing names. When the features are implemented well, they can be incredibly useful; I've found that rear cross-traffic alerts regularly come in handy when reversing out of a space in a crowded parking lot. Which is why I was very surprised to find out that these kinds of systems are only now just being rolled out to the biggest, heaviest vehicles on our roads: class 8 semi-trailer trucks.

As we've remarked (or complained about) on more than one occasion, the annual CES trade show in January has effectively turned into an auto show, with OEMs and their suppliers demoing their latest tech advances. And Daimler's truck brand, Freightliner, is part of that crowd. In 2015, it used the Hoover Dam to show off an autonomous truck concept, and this year it returned with the production version. Called "Detroit Assist 5.0," it features many of the same assists you might find in a current Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicle: adaptive cruise control down to zero mph, lane-keeping assistance, automatic emergency braking, and even blind spot monitoring that keeps a virtual eye on the passenger-side length of the trailer as well.

Although Volvo (for instance) has offered automatic emergency braking on its biggest trucks for some years now, Daimler says that the model year 2020 Freightliner Cascadia is the first US class 8 truck to offer a full ADAS suite and is first to market with trailer-length blind spot monitoring and lane keeping.

Enlarge / A trio of Eero devices. (credit: Eero)

Amazon has announced that it will acquire Eero, one of the biggest players in the networking hardware space known for its easy-to-set up mesh Wi-Fi solutions.

Bay Area-based Eero, named after Finnish industrial designer Eero Saarinen, has been in operation since early 2015. It has already shipped several products. Neither Amazon nor Eero revealed how much money the tech giant paid in the acquisition, but Eero had raised $90 million in venture capital since its founding.

In case there was any doubt that the acquisition is part of a larger smart home strategy, a quote in Amazon's press release from SVP of Amazon Devices and Services Dave Limp named that as a reason right off the bat:

Enlarge / A trio of Eero devices. (credit: Eero)

Amazon has announced that it will acquire Eero, one of the biggest players in the networking hardware space known for its easy-to-set up mesh Wi-Fi solutions.

Bay Area-based Eero, named after Finnish industrial designer Eero Saarinen, has been in operation since early 2015. It has already shipped several products. Neither Amazon nor Eero revealed how much money the tech giant paid in the acquisition, but Eero had raised $90 million in venture capital since its founding.

In case there was any doubt that the acquisition is part of a larger smart home strategy, a quote in Amazon's press release from SVP of Amazon Devices and Services Dave Limp named that as a reason right off the bat: