Month: November 2020

Enlarge (credit: Grant Hutchinson / Flickr)

For a home or business, the economics of installing battery storage are often challenging. While falling costs are gradually improving one end of the equation, a new study led by Stefan Englberger at the Technical University of Munich highlights the other side of the balance—optimizing the financial benefits.

Batteries are typically installed for one specific purpose. It could be to enable greater self-consumption of electricity generated by your own solar panels, for example, reducing purchases from the grid overnight. It could be to enable you to avoid purchasing power during peak times, when time-of-use pricing goes up. Or you could use the battery to smooth over outages on an unreliable grid. These strategies leave the battery "idle" for portions of the day—for comparison, imagine purchasing a taxi but only running it in the mornings. Having another driver operate it in the afternoon would put extra miles on the vehicle, but it would also pay back your investment faster.

The researchers set out to simulate a way to increase the utilization of batteries. Using the battery to provide multiple services could optimize the income generated, though this would of course have to be balanced against the faster degradation of the battery. But there's a large hurdle to clear before this balance matters, the researchers say. That's because regulations require "behind-the-meter" battery functions to be separable from "in-front-of-the-meter" functions that serve the grid rather than the battery's owner.

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  An unproven Falcon 9 rocket (B1062.1) streaks to orbit for the first time, lofting the GPS-III SV04 navigation satellite for the US Space Force. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann for Ars ]

Update 6:50pm EST : Right at the top of its launch window, a brand-new Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida on Thursday evening. The rocket appeared to soar through its first-stage flight without any issues, dropping its GPS III payload into a parking orbit. The first stage then returned to Earth and safely landed on a drone ship. This was SpaceX's 20th launch of 2020.

Pending a review of engine data from this launch, it is likely that NASA and SpaceX will clear the Falcon 9 for flight and press ahead with the Crew-1 mission on November 14.

Original post 3:35pm EST: SpaceX has not launched a brand-new rocket since June, when it boosted a GPS III satellite for the US Space Force on a Falcon 9 rocket. Since that time the company has launched several commercial missions and its own Starlink satellites on a variety of previously flown rockets, and they were all successful.

Enlarge / Netflix's Los Angeles office looms above a hapless palm tree. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images)

Netflix is apparently fighting controversy about a film on its platform by issuing copyright takedown requests against tweets that include negative commentary about the movie, according to a new report.

TorrentFreak reported today that Netflix has sent dozens of takedown requests to Twitter targeting specific posts that criticize the movie Cuties (Mignonnes), a French film written and directed by Maïmouna Doucouré and released in the United States on Netflix in September. While the tweets are still live (except where the original posters deleted them), the videos attached to the post now display messages reading, "This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner."

Why this movie?

Cuties is a coming-of-age drama about a Black girl in France on the cusp of adolescence. She rebels against her immigrant parents' traditional culture, in which women remain quietly covered up at home, by going overboard in the opposite direction—taking to dance and social media to express a sexuality she is too young to understand the implications of and too new to Western culture to know how to frame it all. Doucouré won a directing award for the film at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in January.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by another noteworthy early Black Friday deal, as Apple's AirPods are currently down of $99 at various retailers. This is the first time we've seen Apple's mega-popular wireless earbuds drop below $100 since this second-gen model launched in early 2019. The deal is $60 off Apple's MSRP and about $30 off the typical street price we've seen online in recent months.

The AirPods themselves continue to be a compelling choice for iPhone users in particular, though they still come with a few caveats. Their sound still isn't particularly detailed, they still only get about four hours of battery life per charge, and they still let in lots of ambient noise as you're listening (though some people may consider that a good thing). They aren't exactly welcoming to Android users, either. It's also important to note that Apple is reportedly working on an updated model that could release next year and skew closer to the company's AirPods Pro.

All that said, those earbuds aren't likely to launch around $100. The model on sale today is still pleasantly lightweight and highly convenient to use with iOS devices, with an easy pairing process and rock-solid connection quality. This second-gen model also supports hands-free Siri control. So, while we can't say the AirPods are the absolute best true wireless earbuds on the market, this is a good deal for Apple users who've understandably had their eye on them.

Enlarge / The iPhone 12, which runs iOS 14, and now (should you choose to update) iOS 14.2. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Today, Apple began rolling out iOS 14.2, iPadOS 14.2, tvOS 14.2, and watchOS 7.1 for supported devices. The last update to iOS and iPadOS was iOS 14.1 on October 22.

The new versions of iOS and iPadOS add 100 new emoji, which include "animals, food, faces, household objects, musical instruments, gender-inclusive emoji, and more," according to the release notes. iPhones and iPads got a new Shazam button in the control center. Shazam, which Apple acquired just over two years ago, identifies songs algorithmically by listening to them with the microphones in the devices. Before the acquisition, it was also used as a sort of audio QR code for marketing activations during TV commercials and the like.

There are also some AirPods-related changes, including variable battery charging to preserve battery longevity (something Apple has already implemented in other devices) and notifications that let you know when your volume level is high enough to cause hearing damage. Apple promised this with iOS 14 when it initially launched.

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  The Galaxy W21. It looks like a Fold 2 except... [credit: Samsung ]

Samsung's "Galaxy W" line of phones is really something. The company has been making this line of flagship smartphones targeted specifically at wealthy Chinese consumers for a while now, complete with sky-high prices. In the past, there have been phones like Samsung Galaxy W2019, a crazy dual-screen flip phone (with a number keypad) for $2,700. With the launch of the Galaxy Fold line, the big-screen foldable tablet phone has served as the basis for the W line, and this year's Galaxy W21 is a dressed-up Galaxy Z Fold 2. It's also somehow $1,000 more expensive than a Galaxy Z Fold 2 in the US, so it's ¥19,999, or about $3,027.

A hands-on comparison from phone leaker IceUniverse shows the W21 is somehow bigger than the Fold 2, but it's not clear why. Samsung doesn't have a complete spec sheet posted yet, but an official walkthrough of the phone lists a 6.2-inch outer screen and a 120Hz, 7.6-inch inner screen, the same as the Galaxy Z Fold 2. It also lists a 4390mAh battery, which is smaller than the 4500mAh battery on the Fold 2. Other than that, you get an exclusive bump up in storage to 512GB, plus dual-SIM support and all the usual Fold 2 specs: a Snapdragon 865+, 12GB of RAM, a side-mounted fingerprint reader, and all the same cameras.

There's also the, uh, unique color scheme, which is straight-up shiny, polished gold. We're working through translated descriptions here, but it sounds like the back is still glass. Samsung's site says the phone has a "7-layer nano-level optical film attached to the glass back panel." A brief hands-on video and some of Samsung's shots show that the back surface is flat, so the vertical ribbing that appears in pictures is just a design that lives under the top glass surface.

Enlarge / An Electron rocket stands on the launch pad in New Zealand, ready to go. (credit: Rocket Lab)

Rocket Lab said Thursday it will attempt to recover the first stage of its Electron rocket for the first time with its next mission, scheduled for liftoff in mid-November.

This step follows a series of tests during which Rocket Lab has been building toward a full stage recovery. During these earlier tests, engineers have deployed parachutes from the first stage at maximum loads and collected data as two earlier rockets returned through "the wall," which is what the company calls the high heat and pressure of reentry at supersonic velocity.

The company's founder, Peter Beck, said during a conference call with reporters that he was not sure what the company would fish out of the ocean. It could be a nearly intact first stage or, he admitted, "a smoldering stump." The key with this test, he said, was to gather data about the parachute system.