Month: August 2021

Enlarge / Coming September 9. We've only played a few minutes of this, but rest assured, Ars Technica will absolutely have a review of this real-world VR laser tag option upon the game's launch on Oculus Quest VR headsets. (credit: I-Illusions)

If you own either of the Oculus Quest VR headset models, you're about to get one heck of a must-buy gaming option... especially if you have access to a massive play space and a friend with a Quest system.

Space Pirate Trainer, one of the first arcade-shooter games to launch on the HTC Vive VR system in 2016, has continued receiving support on newer VR systems in the years since. The game's next update, launching on September 9, is its biggest yet—and it's entirely free for existing game owners. Dubbed Space Pirate Trainer Arena, the long-teased mode is currently an Oculus Quest exclusive, and it requires a massive play space and up to two untethered VR systems to enable real-world laser tag.

In the real world, you and a friend will stand on opposite sides of a large play space, like an indoor tennis or basketball court, and map out a Quest "chaperone" space for your system, no smaller than 10 m x 10 m (33 ft x 33 ft). Once the game starts, onlookers will see the two of you flailing around with headsets, looking like danged fools. In the VR space, however, your and your friend's play will sync up, and you'll each see a far more complicated virtual battlefield full of walls, hallways, and other architecture, as if you're inside an elaborate laser tag arena—with the object of finding and blasting your opponent before they do the same to you.

Enlarge / Waymo's 5th-generation cars, based on the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace. (credit: Waymo)

Waymo is finally thinking about expanding. The Alphabet self-driving car division has been running an impressive self-driving ride-hailing service for almost a year now, but only in a small suburb outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Now, the company is expanding commercial service to San Francisco, starting with a "trusted tester" rollout. Members of the public willing to sign up for the confidential testing program will soon be able to flag down a Waymo in the city via the app.

Google says the "Trusted Tester" program is "a confidential research program within Waymo One, where select riders will have access to our autonomous ride-hailing service and can share their experiences directly with our team to help shape the future of autonomous driving." During the San Francisco testing program, vehicles will require safety drivers who are ready to intervene if something goes wrong. Metro Phoenix Waymo rides no longer require safety drivers.

The San Francisco expansion will also mark the commercial rollout of the Jaguar I-Pace Waymo cars. Phoenix uses Chrysler Pacifica minivans for its commercial Waymo service, chosen because they could automatically close the sliding doors. Waymo originally theorized that if someone exited a Waymo vehicle and didn't close the door, the car would be stranded, so the company chose minivans with electric doors. That's apparently not a concern now.

Enlarge (credit: Chevrolet)

GM announced last Friday that it was recalling every Chevrolet Bolt it had ever made, including the new electric utility vehicle model that debuted this year. After a string of fires affected Bolt models, the company traced the problem to two simultaneously occurring defects in the cars’ LG Chem-made batteries.

The automaker initially discovered the problem in batteries from one of LG’s Korean plants, and it recalled cars with those cells last November. But then more Bolts caught fire, and other LG plants were ensnared in the investigation, spurring two expansions of the recall. The problem, GM said, has been traced to a torn anode tab and a folded separator. 

That’s all GM has said so far. It hasn’t said how widespread the defects are, nor has it said how, exactly, the fires started. But in what little information has been released, and in the timing of GM’s recalls, there are clues. To decipher them, Ars spoke with Greg Less, technical director of the University of Michigan’s Battery Lab.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto)

OnlyFans today said it has suspended its plan to prohibit sexually explicit content. The company had faced days of backlash from the sex workers who helped OnlyFans become a success, only to see the site announce a change that would dramatically reduce their income.

Less than a week ago, OnlyFans announced that it would "prohibit the posting of any content containing sexually explicit conduct" starting October 1 but continue to allow nudity. OnlyFans said it was making the change "to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers," which have faced pressure from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), an anti-pornography group that lobbied financial companies to stop processing payments for OnlyFans. The UK-based OnlyFans was also pressured into action by a BBC investigation that found some children were able to bypass the online platform's age-verification system.

Despite those developments, OnlyFans said on Wednesday that it will be able to continue processing payments from subscribers to creators who post sexually explicit photos and videos. In a tweet, OnlyFans wrote:

Enlarge / Leaked ULA emails are highly critical of Steve Jurczyk, who was NASA acting administrator this spring. (credit: NASA)

In what appear to be legitimate emails from April and May, a senior official of the US rocket company United Launch Alliance (ULA) characterizes the leadership of NASA as "incompetent and unpredictable."

The statement was made in one of six emails leaked on a hacking forum on Tuesday evening. The leaked emails all involve correspondence between Robbie Sabathier, the vice president of government operations and strategic communications at ULA, and Hasan Solomon, a lobbyist at the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a large aerospace union.

The emails make claims, some verifiable and some that seem to be wildly erroneous, about the relationship between NASA, the Trump administration, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, and China. The central argument put forth by ULA—a company whose launch business has been damaged by the rise of SpaceX—is that NASA, as led by Trump officials, favored SpaceX for political reasons.