Month: June 2023

Enlarge / United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket completes a "flight readiness firing" last week. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

The Vulcan rocket took a critical step toward its much-anticipated debut launch last week with a successful engine-firing test. However, one critical issue remains unresolved before the large booster can lift off.

This final hurdle involves modifications to the rocket's Centaur V upper stage, which exploded during a test at the end of March. On Tuesday, the chief executive of Vulcan manufacturer United Launch Alliance, Tory Bruno, wrote on Twitter that a root cause of the failure had been identified, and the investigation has been concluded.

As part of their recent updates, neither Bruno nor United Launch Alliance established a new target launch date. Two sources indicated to Ars, however, that this flight likely would not occur before the fourth quarter of this year due to additional needed work.

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel / Contributor | Photothek)

Google may soon be ordered to break up its lucrative ad business, which amounted to nearly $225 billion in 2022 and represented nearly 80 percent of Google's total revenue. Today, as expected, the European Commission (EC) sent Google a statement of objections, detailing ad tech antitrust charges and explaining exactly why the EC thinks that breaking up Google's ad business may be the only acceptable remedy.

"We are concerned that Google may have illegally distorted competition in the online advertising technology industry," Margrethe Vestager, the EC's executive vice president, said in remarks published today.

According to Vestager, an EC investigation launched in 2021 found that Google may have favored its own ad tech services when serving as an intermediary ad exchange, matching advertiser supply and publisher demand for advertising space online.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado )

Comcast is not happy about new federal rules that will require it to provide broadband customers with labels displaying exact prices and other information about Internet service plans.

Broadband label that ISPs will be required to display to consumers at the point of sale. (credit: FCC)

In a filing last week, Comcast told the Federal Communications Commission that it is "working diligently to put in place the systems and processes necessary to create, maintain, and display the labels as required." But according to Comcast, "two aspects of the Commission's Order impose significant administrative burdens and unnecessary complexity in complying with the broadband label requirements."

Comcast noted that five major cable and telecom industry trade groups petitioned the FCC in January to change the rules. Comcast's new filing urged the FCC to grant the petition "as soon as possible before the rules become effective to help providers streamline and simplify their labeling processes, which will ultimately benefit consumers."