Month: January 2024

Enlarge / Astrobotic's Peregrine lander is seen recently encapsulated inside the Vulcan rocket's payload fairing. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

Early on Monday morning, the new Vulcan rocket made a smashing debut, launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida and performing flawlessly. After 50 minutes of flight, the rocket's upper stage deployed its primary payload—the Peregrine lunar lander—into a Moon-bound trajectory. United Launch Alliance declared complete success with its new rocket.

After deployment of the spacecraft, its developer, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, also said its ground controllers had successfully established contact with Peregrine. All seemed well as the spacecraft entered a highly elliptical orbit that will bring it toward the Moon in the coming weeks.

However, later on Monday morning, about six hours after liftoff, Astrobotic released an updated statement. While the vehicle's avionics systems, including the primary command and data handling unit and the thermal, propulsion, and power controllers, had all powered on and performed as expected, there was a problem.

Enlarge / The iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282, discovered by Seanathan Bates under a bush on the side of the road. (credit: Seanathan Bates via X)

On Sunday, game developer Seanathan Bates discovered a working iPhone that fell 16,000 from Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on Friday. Flight 1282 suffered an explosive decompression event when a door plug blew off the plane. No one was injured during the incident. The iPhone wasn't injured, either—still unlocked and with a torn charging cable connector plugged in, it appeared largely undamaged and displayed information that matched the flight.

"Found an iPhone on the side of the road," wrote Bates in a post on X. "Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly in tact!"

The discovery location of the iPhone that fell from Alaska Airlines flight 1282. (credit: Seanathan Bates via X)

After the discovery, Bates contacted the NTSB, who took possession of the device and told him the iPhone was actually the second phone that had been found from the flight. During a press conference on Sunday, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy confirmed that two people had discovered cell phones that fell from flight 1281. The other cell phone was discovered in someone's yard.

Enlarge / Nvidia's latest GPUs, apparently dropping out of hyperspace. (credit: Nvidia)

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  Nvidia's latest GPUs, apparently dropping out of hyperspace. [credit: Nvidia ]

If there’s been one consistent criticism of Nvidia’s RTX 40-series graphics cards, it’s been pricing. All of Nvidia’s product tiers have seen their prices creep up over the last few years, but cards like the 4090 raised prices to new heights, while lower-end models like the 4060 and 4060 Ti kept pricing the same but didn’t improve performance much.

Today, Nvidia is sprucing up its 4070 and 4080 tiers with a mid-generation “Super” refresh that at least partially addresses some of these pricing problems. Like older Super GPUs, the 4070 Super, 4070 Ti Super, and 4080 Super use the same architecture and support all the same features as their non-Super versions, but with bumped specs and tweaked prices that might make them more appealing to people who skipped the originals.

The 4070 Super will launch first, on January 17th, for $599. The $799 RTX 4070 Ti Super launches on January 24th, and the $999 4080 Super follows on January 31st.

Enlarge / The Dual Loop Band as seen on a model head. (credit: Apple)

Apple's highly anticipated mixed-reality Vision Pro headset will be available starting on February 2 at US retail Apple locations and on the Apple Store website, the company announced this morning. Preorders for the $3,499 "spatial computing" headset will start on January 19 at 5 am PST.

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  The "Dual Loop Band" offers a separate option for holding the Vision Pro securely on your face. [credit: Apple ]

The stock model of the Vision Pro will include 256 GB of storage, which can be used to store existing iOS apps or apps made specifically for the Vision Pro's new spatialOS. The package will include the flexible Solo Knit Band seen in previous marketing materials, as well as a newly revealed "Dual Loop Band," which adds a portion that goes over the top of the skull. Apple says the extra included band will "give users two options for the fit that works best for them."

Here are the other items included in the Vision Pro box, according to Apple:

Enlarge / From mid-2024, ChatGPT is coming to VWs. (credit: Volkswagen)

This year's Consumer Electronics Show got underway in Las Vegas today. For nearly a decade, automakers and their suppliers have increasingly expanded their presence at CES, such that today, it's arguably a more important auto show than the once-proud, now-sad, extremely under-attended events held in places like Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Volkswagen is one of the first automakers out of the blocks with CES news this morning. Working with the voice recognition company Cerence, VW is adding ChatGPT to its infotainment system.

We first experienced Cerence's excellent in-car voice recognition at CES in 2016—back then, it was still part of parent company Nuance, and the system was called Dragon Drive. Nuance spun Cerence off in 2019, and its conversational AI and natural language processing can be enjoyed in current Mercedes and BMW infotainment systems, among others. I remain in the minority here, but I think it really does make a good alternative to poking away at a touchscreen.

From mid-2024, we can add the VW ID.3, ID.4, ID.5, ID.7, Tiguan, Passat, and Golf to the list of cars with decent voice commands. Using "Hello IDA" as the prompt, VW drivers will be able to control their infotainment, navigation, and climate control by voice, and there's also a general-knowledge search built in. VW notes that ChatGPT doesn't get access to any vehicle data, and search queries and answers are deleted immediately. The feature should come to VW electric vehicles if those vehicles already have the latest infotainment system, VW told Ars.