Month: October 2021

Enlarge / Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin during a flight to the Vostochny cosmodrome, on September 4, 2021. (credit: ALEXEY DRUZHININ/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia plans to slash funding for spaceflight activities during the coming three-year period, from 2022 to 2024. The cuts will come to about 16 percent annually, several Russian publications, including Finanz.ru, report. (These Russian-language articles were translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell.)

For 2022, the state budget for space activities will be set at 210 billion rubles ($2.9 billion), a cut of 40.3 billion rubles ($557 million) from the previous year. Similar cuts will follow in subsequent years. The most significant decreases will be in areas such as “manufacturing-technological activities" and "cosmodrome development." Funding for "scientific research and development" was zeroed out entirely.

The publications say Russian President Vladimir Putin is unhappy with the performance of Russia's space program. At a space industry meeting on September 29, they report, Putin criticized the industry’s failure to fulfill directives on long-term goals in the space sphere. In 2020, for example, Roscosmos failed to hit 30 of the 83 stated goals of the national space program.

Enlarge / Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic. (credit: Samsung)

Everyone has a favorite Internet browser, right? Google Chrome and Safari are staples, Firefox is still kicking, and Microsoft Edge has somehow established itself as a beloved underdog. But when it comes to surfing the web on your smartwatch, options are understandably more limited. By bringing its own browser to its latest smartwatches, Samsung may make things simpler for smartwatch wearers while also reminding people of the browser’s existence.

As spotted by 9to5Google, the Samsung Internet Browser is now available on the Google Play Store for Samsung smartwatches using Wear OS, namely the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic. The browser is already available for the company's older Tizen-powered watches, such as the Galaxy Watch Active 2, and Samsung’s web surfer is also available on its phones and tablets. In fact, Samsung devices are often preloaded with the app, but since many also run Android, and thus come with Google Chrome, Samsung’s alternative frequently goes unused—or even unnoticed.

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  Samsung's Internet Browser app on a smartwatch.

But the needs for watch-based web surfing are a bit different, and as detailed by 9to5Google, exploring the Internet on your wrist may be easier than you’d think with the Samsung Internet Browser. For example, you can swipe diagonally left or right to grab a webpage. Swiping up reveals handy features like bookmarking, zooming, or the ability to send a webpage to your phone. The search button on Samsung’s Internet Browser lets you access your favorite search engine, whether it's Google, DuckDuckGo, or Bing.