Month: July 2019

Enlarge / Bethesda is working to remove this login dialog from its recent re-released versions of the first three Doom games. (credit: Infernal Monkey / Twitter)

Late last week, Bethesda surprised QuakeCon attendees and retro gamers worldwide with the re-release of the first three Doom games on Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One (that last one with some issues of its own). It also surprised potential players by requiring a Bethesda.net login and an active Internet connection to play. That state of affairs led to a fair share of online joking imagining other classics given similarly restrictive DRM.

Over the weekend, Bethesda promised users that the situation was a mistake and that the company is working on patching it out. "The BethesdaNet login requirement was included for the Slayers Club, to reward members for playing the classic Doom games," Bethesda tweeted. "The login should be optional, and we are working on changing the requirement to optional now."

There's no public timeline for the fix rolling out, but Bethesda adds that it "will update everyone when a fix is ready."

May 2018 initially looked like an anxious month for fans of television's best sci-fi show in years, The Expanse. The ambitious SyFy series based on James SA Corey's beloved novels had just the right mix of visual gusto, gripping action, geopolitical drama, and addictively tense pacing to keep us glued for its three seasons. (We learned Belter! We podcasted!) But then, unexpectedly, SyFy did what SyFy does—it cancelled the show ahead of its S3 finale.

Luckily, Expanse fans know the rest of the story. Less than a month later at National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that his company would be saving the series and producing a fourth season as an Amazon original. And this weekend, Bezos and co. had more good news: before a single episode of The Expanse S4 airs on Amazon this December, the show has officially been renewed for a season five.

Variety reports that Amazon made the announcement during the Television Critics Association summer press tour over the weekend. The series showrunner to date, Naren Shankar, will presumably keep steering the ship going forward. While pre-ordering seasons of television in this regard isn't a rarity (based on its past, Netflix probably already has the Duffer Bros. moving on S5 of Stranger Things, for instance), the news stands out a bit more considering The Expanse's reported ratings struggles at SyFy and subsequent cancellation. Though Amazon doesn't green light everything in the same manner as its primary streaming service counterpart, the company has shown a willingness to strategically spend and support sci-fi and fantasy genre fare, from Good Omens to its future (hyper, hyper expensive) Lord of the Rings series. In that vein, The Expanse likely couldn't have landed at a better second home.

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  The Archinaut One satellite, illustrated above, will use robotic manufacturing and assembly to manufacture two 10-meter solar arrays on orbit. [credit: Made in Space ]

Made in Space is one of the most intriguing companies in aerospace because they're not so much focused on getting into space. Rather, the company is focused on doing interesting, meaningful, and potentially profitable things once there. Its long-term goal is to build factories in space using additive manufacturing.

A recent NASA contract, worth $73.7 million, will allow Made in Space to significantly accelerate those efforts. "For us, this is one of those watershed moments that take this technology and propel it into the next stage," said Andrew Rush, president and chief executive officer, in an interview with Ars. Made in Space started the year with 40 employees, and will end it with nearly 100.

The NASA contract will fund the company to build and fly a spacecraft it calls Archinaut One, with the aim of constructing two 10-meter solar arrays in orbit. These two arrays will power an ESPA-class satellite. (These are fairly small satellites, about 200kg, that are typically carried as secondary payloads by large rockets such as the Falcon 9 booster built by SpaceX.)

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  This is the 2020 Cadillac XT6, the brand's new three-row SUV. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

The Cadillac Escalade has much to answer for. Would the luxury SUV have become quite such a thing absent that body-on-frame behemoth? Few vehicles have been such cash cows for their makers, either; consider how long ago the R&D for that platform must have been amortized.

But great name recognition and high profit margins will only get you so far. The market for luxury three-row SUVs is a hot one, and Cadillac wants more of it, with a plan to tempt people away from vehicles like the Acura MDX and Infiniti QX60. That plan is the XT6.

The XT6 was first seen at this year's Detroit auto show in January. I find it handsome; a well-proportioned two-box shape that looks current without being too imposing. That should probably be read as a compliment to the design team, for the XT6 is just over 16.5 feet (5050mm) long. (The vehicle's full dimensions are 77.3in./1964mm wide, 68.9in./1750mm tall, and a 112.7in./2863mm wheelbase.) The narrow LED headlights contribute to the effect, as do the 21-inch wheels worn by all the media test cars. I'm old enough to remember when 18-inch wheels were the preserve of race cars, considered too big for anything street legal; after talking with the designers, I'm not sure those days are ever coming back.