Month: July 2023

Enlarge / Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket rolls out of its hangar at Wallops Island, Virginia. Its two Russian engines are visible on the back of the first stage. (credit: NASA/Patrick Black)

A last gasp in a long-standing link between Russia and Ukraine in the field of rocketry could come this week in an unlikely place—the rural wetlands of eastern Virginia—halfway around the world from the battlefields where the nations' military forces are locked in a deadly conflict.

A commercial Antares rocket owned by the US aerospace and defense contractor Northrop Grumman is set for launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, as soon as Tuesday evening hauling an automated Cygnus supply ship into orbit on a mission to the International Space Station. When it takes off, the Antares rocket will be powered by two Russian-made engines affixed to the bottom of a first-stage booster built in Ukraine.

This is how Northrop Grumman has launched most of its 19 resupply missions to the space station since 2013, but this week's mission will be the last Antares flight to use Russian and Ukrainian components. Northrop Grumman has partnered with Firefly Aerospace, which has already built and launched a small satellite launcher of its own, to develop a new US-built first stage to replace the Ukrainian booster. Firefly will supply seven of its own engines, called the Miranda, to propel each of the new-generation Antares rockets into space.

Enlarge / The regional headquarters of Samsung in Mountain View, California. (credit: Getty Images/Smith Collection)

Samsung's Galaxy SmartTag 2 was a no-show at Galaxy Fold 5 launch, but considering it was just spotted at the Federal Communications Commission by 9to5Google, it should be out on store shelves eventually. A Galaxy SmartTag, if you haven't heard, is a Bluetooth tracker, just like a Tile or AirTag, but from Samsung. Previous versions have only worked with Samsung phones.

The FCC listing features a picture of this thing, and unlike the square, Tile-clone design of the original Galaxy SmartTag, this is definitely unique. It's a flat, pill-shaped device with a huge key ring hole at the top. It sort of looks like a cigar cutter. If that's actually a normal key ring-sized hole, this is about twice the size of an AirTag.

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  Samsung's new SmartTag. [credit: FCC ]

Just like the Galaxy SmartTag+, this device will come with UWB (ultra-wideband) tracking, which will help locate the device when it's nearby. When it's far away, you will rely on the device's smartphone network. Previously this device popped up in the Bluetooth SIG database, where it was listed with Bluetooth 5.3, which should make it more battery efficient than the old Bluetooth 5.1 tag.

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

Starting today, Facebook users may feel a little less safe posting anonymously. The Court of the Hague in The Netherlands ruled that Meta Ireland must unmask an anonymous user accused of defaming the claimant, a male Facebook user who allegedly manipulated and made secret recordings of women he dated.

The anonymous Facebook user posted the allegedly defamatory statements in at least two private Facebook groups dedicated to discussing dating experiences. The claimant could not gain access but was shown screenshots from the groups, one with about 2,600 members and one with around 61,000 members. The claimant argued that his reputation had suffered from the repeated postings that included photos of the man and alleged screenshots of his texts.

The claimant tried to get Meta to remove the posts, but Meta responded with an email saying that it would not do so because "it is not clear to us that the content you reported is unlawful as defamation."

Enlarge / 30 minutes in near-boiling water, and those soldered chips come right off, leaving you with something that's non-toxic, compostable, and looking like something from your grandparent's attic. (credit: Infineon)

Right now, the destination for the circuit board inside a device you no longer need is almost certainly a gigantic shredder, and that's the best-case scenario.

Most devices that don't have resale or reuse value end up going into the shredder—if they even make it into the e-waste stream. After their batteries are (hopefully removed, the shredded boards pass through magnets, water, and incineration, to pull specific minerals and metals out of the boards. The woven fiberglass and epoxy resin the boards were made from aren't worth much after they're sliced up, so they end up as waste. That waste is put in landfills, burned, or sometimes just stockpiled.

That's why, even if it's still in its earliest stages, something like the Soluboard sounds so promising. UK-based Jiva Materials makes printed circuit boards (PCBs) from natural fibers encased in a non-toxic polymer that dissolves in hot water. That leaves behind whole components previously soldered onto the board, which should be easier to recover.

Enlarge / An endangered species, the sedan is starting to adapt to the new crossover-based environment. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

The sedan might not be properly extinct like non-avian dinosaurs, but it has certainly fallen out of favor with the car-buying public. That's a topic that Toyota knows plenty about—even as the SUV becomes ascendant, its Camry sedan remains the nation's best-selling vehicle that isn't a pickup, crossover, or SUV. So its designers were evidently reading the tea leaves when it came time to replace the Avalon. That replacement is called the Crown, and while it definitely checks the "four doors and a trunk" criteria, its bold styling makes it the most SUV-like sedan I've encountered in some time.

The Crown shares its TNGA-K platform with other large Toyotas and Lexuses, including the aforementioned Camry, plus SUVs like the Venza, Highlander, and RX, and even a minivan. Those are all largely conventional, ignoring for the moment Lexus' large cheese grater grille.

The Crown is less conventional, starting with a height that's almost four inches taller than the Camry—60.6 inches (1,539 mm) despite near-identical ground clearance. It's the same width as a Camry (72.4 inches or 1,840 mm depending on which flavor you speak) but four inches longer at 196.1 inches (4,980 mm), and with an inch-longer wheelbase (112.2 inches/2,850 mm). And it conforms—sort of—to the three-box shape one expects of a sedan.

Enlarge / The Nintendo Switch OLED. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Development hardware for Nintendo's next console is already in some third-party developers' hands in preparation for a launch in the second half of 2024, according to sources who spoke with gaming news site Video Games Chronicle.

Sources that spoke to Eurogamer corroborated the late 2024 release window, and a Nikkei Asia report previously claimed earlier this year that Nintendo planned to launch its next console sometime after spring of 2024.

Citing "multiple people with knowledge of Nintendo's next-gen console plans," Video Games Chronicle also claims to clarify a few details about the Nintendo Switch's successor. Like the Switch, it will also be usable in portable mode. However, two of Video Games Chronicle's sources suggested that Nintendo will go with an LCD screen to keep costs down, which would make it a downgrade from the latest Switch model in one key area.

Enlarge (credit: zoom)

Large language models are a class of AI algorithm that relies on a high number computational nodes and an equally large number of connections among them. They can be trained to perform a variety of functions—protein folding, anyone?—but they're mostly recognized for their capabilities with human languages.

LLMs trained to simply predict the next word that will appear in text can produce human-sounding conversations and essays, although with some worrying accuracy issues. The systems have demonstrated a variety of behaviors that appear to go well beyond the simple language capabilities they were trained to handle.

We can apparently add analogies to the list of items that LLMs have inadvertently mastered. A team from University of California, Los Angeles has tested the GPT-3 LLM using questions that should be familiar to any Americans that have spent time on standardized tests like the SAT. In all but one variant of these questions, GPT-3 managed to outperform undergrads who presumably had mastered these tests just a few years earlier. The researchers suggest that this indicates that Large Language Models are able to master reasoning by analogy.

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  The keyboard comes with detachable "Super Buttons." [credit: 8BitDo ]

Iconic, impactful, and unforgettable, the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) changed the video game industry for good when it came out in the '80s. Originally released as the Family Computer, aka Famicom, in Japan, the landmark console still holds a place in people's hearts, whether it's through cherished maintained consoles, DIY designs, or old-school titles. Now that nostalgia can trickle down to your fingertips, too.

Today, 8BitDo, a gaming peripherals maker with a flair for retro designs, announced via Twitter a mechanical keyboard that will give '80s Nintendo fans the warm fuzzies. 8BitDo, likely aware of Nintendo's stringent legal team, doesn't outright state the keyboard's similarity to the original Nintendo console. And the product's name, Retro Mechanical Keyboard, is vague and unrevealing. But the colors, extra buttons, and color scheme names—N Edition (with NES colors) and Fami Edition (with Famicom colors)—are enough to bring you back to your '80s gaming den.

Both the N and Fami Edition have console-controller-looking "B" and "A" buttons where FN and Menu keys are expected. The keys, as like the rest of the keyboard's keys, are programmable without software or using 8BitDo's Ultimate Software V2.