Month: May 2019

Enlarge / Hermeus concept for a Mach 5 aircraft. (credit: Hermeus)

A new aerospace company has entered the race to provide supersonic commercial air travel. On Monday, a US-based company named Hermeus announced plans to develop an aircraft that will travel at speeds of up to Mach 5. Such an aircraft would cut travel time from New York to Paris from more than 7 hours to 1.5 hours.

Hermeus said it has raised an initial round of funding led by Khosla Ventures, but declined to specify the amount. This funding will allow Hermeus to develop a propulsion demonstrator and other initial technologies needed to make its supersonic aircraft a reality, Skyler Shuford, the company's chief operating officer, told Ars.

The announcement follows three years after another company, Boom Supersonic, declared its own intentions to develop faster-than-sound aircraft. As of January 2019, Boom had raised more than $140 million toward development of its Overture airliner, envisioned to travel at Mach 2.2, which is about 10 percent faster than the Concorde traveled.

Enlarge / Completed customer orders are seen in their boxes, awaiting delivery, at the Amazon Fulfillment Centre on November 14, 2018, in Hemel Hempstead, England. (credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

In efforts to fulfill orders faster, Amazon will help some employees transition to entrepreneurial life. An expansion of its Delivery Service Partner program, the new initiative will give Amazon employees funding to start their own businesses delivering packages for the online retail giant.

Amazon employees who take the plunge will receive funding for "startup costs, up to $10,000, as well as the equivalent of three months of the former employee’s last gross salary." According to the announcement, Amazon developed the new arm of the program to help employees who are interested in the Delivery Service Partner program but need assistance during the transition process.

The program is reportedly open to a variety of Amazon employees including warehouse workers. However, Whole Foods employees are not eligible to participate in the program.

Enlarge / Breakpoint is the first Ubsioft game in recent memory to never be made available on Steam.

Gamers hoping to stick with Steam and avoid Epic's major effort to compete in PC game distribution will have to ignore two more major upcoming PC titles, at least for a little while.

The first newly announced exclusive, Ubisoft's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, doesn't come as much of a surprise. Following The Division 2's last-minute move to the Epic Games Store in January, Epic and Ubisoft announced in March that the publisher would be bringing "several major PC releases" to Epic's store instead of Steam. Since then, Ubisoft moved historical real-time strategy title Anno 1800 away from Steam to the Epic Games Store ahead of its April 16 launch.

For those two titles, Ubisoft was put in the awkward position of having to honor Steam pre-orders that were made before the store transition took place. Breakpoint will be the first Ubisoft title in recent memory to never be available on Steam, however. The game is currently available only via Epic and Ubisoft's own UPlay store.

Enlarge / Assange arrives at court in London on May 1, 2019 to be sentenced for bail violation. (credit: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)

Prosecutors in Sweden have re-opened their investigation into a 2010 rape allegation against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, a first step toward seeking his extradition to Sweden. The Swedish case was closed in 2017 due to Assange's ongoing asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

That asylum—which began in 2012—ended last month when Assange was finally evicted from the embassy and was promptly arrested by the British authorities. A judge sentenced him to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail.

"There is still probable cause to suspect that Mr. Assange committed rape," Swedish prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson said at a Monday press conference.