Month: November 2019

Enlarge / Still image from an animation of Boeing's launch abort system test. (credit: Boeing)

On Monday, Boeing will perform a consequential test of its Starliner spacecraft's launch abort system in New Mexico. And thanks to NASA chief Jim Bridenstine, it will be shown live.

"At my request," Bridenstine tweeted, the test will be shown live on NASA Television. "Transparency for the taxpayer." NASA is paying Boeing $4.2 billion for development of Starliner and up to six operational missions to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

And it's true—Boeing had apparently planned to record the test, but the company had not made a decision whether to broadcast it live. "A livestream of the Starliner Pad Abort Test is something we've been considering and planning for and are fully prepared to support at the request of our customer," Boeing's Rebecca Regan told Ars.

Enlarge (credit: Shelley Halpain/UC San Diego)

Huntington's disease is caused by a dominant mutation, meaning that anyone who inherits it will develop the disease. Symptoms typically start when people are in their 30s, and those include dementia and the loss of motor control. Despite having identified the gene decades ago, we've struggled to find a way to use that knowledge to make patient's lives better. The protein that's produced by the damaged gene is so similar to the normal version that targeting it has proven nearly impossible.

But now, scientists in China have devised a way to specifically get rid of the damaged protein. They've identified molecules that can link the damaged form of the protein to a system that cells use to target proteins for digestion and recycling. Tests in mice and flies seem to indicate that this is enough to reverse many of the problems caused by the Huntington's mutation.

A dangerous expansion

Huntington's disease belongs to a class of genetic disorders caused by an expansion of the DNA within the part of the gene that encodes the protein. When being translated into a protein, the bases of DNA are read in sets of three, with each triplet coding for a different amino acid (or telling the cell to stop translating). If a protein needs the same amino acid several times in a row, the same triplet may be repeated multiple times.

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  This entire gallery is made up of footage from Diablo IV's "gameplay" trailer. Looks legit to us. [credit: Blizzard Entertainment ]

During the opening ceremony of Blizzcon 2019, Blizzard Entertainment confirmed the most unsurprising game reveal in the company's recent history: Diablo IV.

"We've had Diablo IV in development for some time," Blizzard president J. Allen Brack said following its reveal (which we already suspected). He added that the company wanted to be sure the game was in a playable state before announcing it to the world. Hence, Diablo IV's reveal included a lengthy gameplay trailer and a promise that all conference attendees could play the game's demo during the weekend-long event.

The reveal included confirmation of the week's many leaks: that the game would revolve around the return of Diablo II's villain Lilith; that the new game's art style would return to a black-brown-and-red motif, a la Diablo II; and that its first three revealed classes would be the barbarian, sorceress, and druid. Game director Luis Barriga pledged to fully support a more "brutal" take on player-versus-player (PvP) combat, but he didn't go into further details on how that will operate.

(credit: ABC Photo Archives / Getty Images)

As many as 2,000 users of NordVPN, the virtual private network service that recently disclosed a server hack that leaked crypto keys, have fallen victim to credential-stuffing attacks that allow unauthorized access to their accounts.

In recent weeks, credentials for NordVPN users have circulated on Pastebin and other online forums. They contain the email addresses, plain-text passwords, and expiration dates associated with NordVPN user accounts.

I received a list of 753 credentials on Thursday and polled a small sample of users. The passwords listed for all but one were still in use. The one user who had changed their password did so after receiving an unrequested password reset email. It would appear someone who gained unauthorized access was trying to take over the account. Several other people said their accounts had been accessed by unauthorized people.

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  Switch Lite sales started strong in September but have since leveled off a bit. [credit: Nintendo ]

Since the portable-only Switch Lite was first announced, I've heard from quite a few people who wondered why anyone would buy such a "limited" version of the system that can't be docked to a TV for big-screen play. In its latest quarterly earnings report, though, Nintendo is showing that there is plenty of interest in a Switch that can't, uh, switch.

Nintendo reports it sold 1.95 million Switch Lite systems worldwide in the system's first 11 days on store shelves (i.e. through Sept. 30). That's a pretty good debut, considering Nintendo only sold 2.85 million standard Switch consoles in the three-month period through the end of September.

In a briefing accompanying that report, Nintendo presented an unscaled graph showing Switch Lite sales leveling off a bit in October. More importantly for the company, though, the graph also shows Switch Lite sales adding to sales of the original dockable system rather than replacing them.