Month: December 2020

Enlarge / Rocket Lab's Catch of the Day recovery vessel nears the Electron rocket's first stage. (credit: Rocket Lab)

Welcome to Edition 3.24 of the Rocket Report! It's December, and we could see a number of big smallsat launches this month, including from Virgin Orbit and Astra. But in the immediate future, our eyes are on South Texas, where a Starship prototype is due to make a high leap early next week.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Aevum unveils its Ravn X launch system. Until now, Aevum has largely operated in the background. But now, it's ready to show off some hardware, and it's starting with the "Ravn X" launch system's first stage, Ars reports. This autonomous aircraft and launch vehicle measures 24 meters long and has a wingspan of 18 meters. It has a gross takeoff mass of 25,000kg—massive for an uncrewed aerial vehicle. It will drop a rocket capable of carrying 100kg to Sun-synchronous orbit.

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It's once again that special time of year when we give you a chance to do well by doing good. That's right—it's time for the 2020 edition of our annual Charity Drive.

Every year since 2007, we've been actively encouraging readers to give to Penny Arcade's Child's Play charity, which provides toys and games to kids being treated in hospitals around the world. In recent years, we've added the Electronic Frontier Foundation to our annual charity push, aiding in their efforts to defend Internet freedom. This year, as always, we're providing some extra incentive for those donations by offering donors a chance to win pieces of our big pile of vendor-provided swag. We can't keep it (ethically), and we don't want it clogging up our offices anyway. So, it's now yours to win.

This year's swag pile is full of high-value geek goodies. We have 50 prizes valued at nearly $5,000 total, including game consoles, computer accessories, collectibles, smartwatches, and more. In 2019, Ars readers raised over $33,000 for charity, contributing to a total haul of more than $330,000 since 2007. We want to raise even more this year, and we can do it if readers really dig deep.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Android apps with hundreds of millions of downloads are vulnerable to attacks that allow malicious apps to steal contacts, login credentials, private messages, and other sensitive information. Security firm Check Point said that the Edge Browser, the XRecorder video and screen recorder, and the PowerDirector video editor are among those affected.

The vulnerability actually resides in the Google Play Core Library, which is a collection of code made by Google. The library allows apps to streamline the update process by, for instance, receiving new versions during runtime and tailoring updates to an individual app’s specific configuration or a specific phone model the app is running on.

A core vulnerability

In August, security firm Oversecured disclosed a security bug in the Google Play Core Library that allowed one installed app to execute code in the context of any other app that relied on the vulnerable library version.

Micro Magic's new CPU prototype is seen here running on an Odroid board. (credit: Micro Magic)

Micro Magic Inc.—a small electronic design firm in Sunnyvale, California—has produced a prototype CPU that is several times more efficient than world-leading competitors, while retaining reasonable raw performance.

We first noticed Micro Magic's claims earlier this week, when EE Times reported on the company's new prototype CPU, which appears to be the fastest RISC-V CPU in the world. Micro Magic advisor Andy Huang claimed the CPU could produce 13,000 CoreMarks (more on that later) at 5GHz and 1.1V while also putting out 11,000 CoreMarks at 4.25GHz—the latter, all while consuming only 200mW. Huang demonstrated the CPU—running on an Odroid board—to EE Times at 4.327GHz/0.8V, and 5.19GHz/1.1V.

Later the same week, Micro Magic announced the same CPU could produce over 8,000 CoreMarks at 3GHz while consuming only 69mW of power.