Month: March 2020

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  An example of Dark Sky's maps from the desktop Web version. [credit: Dark Sky ]

Popular weather app and data-collection service Dark Sky has been acquired by Apple for an undisclosed sum, a blog post from the Dark Sky team announced. The post claims that Dark Sky will now “reach far more people, with far more impact, than we ever could alone.”

The iOS app will not see any changes “at this time,” and it will continue to be listed on the App Store. Android and Wear OS are a different story, though. The Android app will no longer be available for download, and “service to existing users and subscribers will continue until July 1, 2020, at which point the app will be shut down.” Active subscribers will get a refund.

As for the website, which is also popular:

Enlarge / Future moon bases could be built with 3D printers that mix materials such as Moon regolith, water, and astronauts’ urine. (credit: ESA/Foster and Partners)

Early last year, NASA announced an ambitious plan to return American astronauts to the Moon and establish a permanent base there, with an eye toward eventually placing astronauts on Mars. The Artemis Moon Program has its share of critics, including many in the US House of Representatives, who appear to prefer a stronger focus on a crewed mission to Mars. As Ars' Eric Berger reported last August, "NASA stands a very real risk of turning the Artemis Program into a repeat of the Apollo Program—a flags-and-footprints sprint back to the Moon with no follow-through in the form of a lunar base or a sustained presence in deep space."

But if the Artemis Program's ambitious objectives survive the appropriations process, materials science will be crucial to its success, particularly when it comes to the materials needed to construct a viable lunar base. Concrete, for instance, requires a substantial amount of added water in order to be usable in situ, and there is a pronounced short supply of water on the moon. In a new paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production, an international team of scientists suggests that astronauts setting up a base on the moon could use the urea in their urine as a plasticizer to create a concrete-like building material out of lunar soil.

There's certainly a strong argument to be made for using existing materials on the Moon itself to construct a lunar base. NASA estimates that it costs around $10,000 to transport one pound of material into orbit, according to the authors. Past proposals have called for 3D printing with Sorel cement, which requires significant amounts of chemicals and water (consumables), and a rocklike material that would require both water and phosphoric acid as a liquid binder. (The latter might be better suited to constructing a base on Mars.)

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a couple of early deals on the entry-level models of Apple's latest MacBook Air and Mac Mini. The former is down to $950 at Amazon, a $50 discount, while the latter is down to $699 at B&H, a $100 discount. These offers are fairly modest, but they're still noteworthy considering Apple only launched the new computers a couple weeks ago.

We gave the new MacBook Air a favorable review earlier this month, calling it "a really good laptop, and easy to recommend." Have a look there for the full rundown, but the new Air is still very well-built, now comes with more base storage at 256GB, and most importantly, comes with a new "Magic Keyboard" that should be much more agreeable and durable than the ultra-low-travel "butterfly" keyboards of recent models.

The new Mac Mini, meanwhile, is essentially identical to the refreshed model Apple released in 2018, but with the base storage bumped from 128GB to 256GB. Otherwise, it remains the lowest-cost and most compact way to bring macOS into a desktop environment for more casual tasks. This offer is $200 cheaper than the previous-gen 256GB Mac Mini's current going rate.

Enlarge / Want new issues of your favorite comic book series? Switching to digital this week won't change their lack of availability. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty / Marvel)

Comic book fans received a huge blow last week when they learned that a ton of their favorite series wouldn't receive printed runs in the near future due to coronavirus concerns. That might be fine for those fans who have shifted to tablets and e-reader devices for their comics fix, but what about comics fans who not only want print versions, but also want to support their favorite local brick-and-mortar store?

This week, comics publishers responded by expressing solidarity with physical retail partners. For at least one week, Marvel, DC, and other major publishers will not launch new comics in print or on digital platforms.

On Tuesday, a bulletin sent by Marvel Entertainment President Dan Buckley to retail partners confirmed that its usual run of new Wednesday comic books would indeed not arrive in a physical format this Wednesday, April 1. No April Fool's joke there; this is due to Diamond Distributors, the biggest American publisher of print comic books, canceling shipment for any comics with a publish date of April 1 or later "until further notice," as per an announcement on March 23.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

If proof were needed that the Trump administration never met an environmental regulation it didn't want to eviscerate, on Tuesday morning the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published final fuel efficiency rules for new passenger cars and light trucks for model years 2021 through 2026. As has been widely anticipated, the EPA and NHTSA have gutted plans established in 2012 to make the nation's fleet of vehicles more fuel-efficient.

Under the old rules, automakers had to get their fleets to an average of 46.7mpg (5l/100km) by MY2025. As of today, even that not-very-ambitious target is toast. Instead, the US government is only requiring the industry to achieve an average of 40.4mpg (5.8l/100km) by MY2026. Fleet-wide CO₂ targets have been similarly watered down; by that same model year, the US passenger vehicle and light truck fleet must meet an average of 199g CO₂/mile (124g/km). By contrast, new European Union rules that went into effect this year require EU fleet averages to drop below 153g/mile (95g/km), with massive fines in store for automakers that fail.

As continues to be the case, the rules are based on the footprint of a vehicle, with large trucks and SUVs being held to an even weaker standard. As long as a MY2026 pickup or SUV can meet 34.1mpg (6.9l/100km) and emit no more than 240g/mile (150g/km) of carbon dioxide, that's enough to satisfy the new regulations.