Month: October 2023

Enlarge (credit: Netflix)

"Netflix and chill" usually implies a cozy night in with a companion and no one else in your living room besides those on your TV screen. In 2025, the term could start taking on an opposite meaning, as Netflix opens physical stores with merchandise and activities inspired by its content.

Netflix House will debut in two undetermined cities in the US before expanding globally, Josh Simon, Netflix VP of consumer products, told Bloomberg yesterday. Netflix House will be the streaming company's first permanent retail location and will seek to promote fandom around its original programming.

Netflix didn't disclose many specifics about what customers will be able to do there beyond buying Stranger Things T-shirts (presumably) and other merch. By far the most exciting aspect teased is the potential for a real-life Squid Game obstacle course.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket rides a column of thrust off its launch pad Friday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann/Ars Technica)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—A roughly 3-ton spacecraft launched Friday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a six-year trip to an enigma in the asteroid belt, an unusual metallic world the size of Massachusetts that could hold clues about the formation of Earth and other rocky planets.

This mission, named Psyche, will survey its namesake asteroid for at least 26 months, moving to different altitudes to map the metal world with three science instruments. Like all missions exploring the Solar System, the Psyche spacecraft has a long journey to reach its destination, covering some 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers) with the help of plasma engines.

No one knows what the spacecraft will find when it reaches the asteroid Psyche. The best images of the asteroid captured through telescopes only show Psyche as a fuzzy blob a few pixels wide. Scientists know it is dense and at least partially made of metal, primarily iron and nickel. The leading hypothesis among Psyche's science team is that the asteroid is likely a leftover remnant from the early history of the Solar System more than 4.5 billion years ago, the exposed core of a failed planet that may have had its outer layers of rock blasted away during collisions with other objects in that chaotic time.