Month: April 2024

NASA has confirmed that the object that fell into a Florida home last month was part of a battery pack released from the International Space Station.

This extraordinary incident opens a new frontier in space law. NASA, the homeowner, and attorneys are navigating little-used legal codes and intergovernmental agreements to determine who should pay for the damages.

Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, told Ars he is fairly certain the object came from the space station, even before NASA's confirmation. The circumstances strongly suggested that was the case. The cylindrical piece of metal tore through his roof March 8, a few minutes after the time US Space Command reported the reentry of a space station cargo pallet and nine decommissioned batteries over the Gulf of Mexico on a trajectory heading forward the coast of southwest Florida.

Enlarge / Honda's forward collision warning system has always been sensitive. Now the NHTSA is investigating some Hondas for false-positive automatic emergency brake activations. (credit: Honda)

This week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration decided to expand an ongoing investigation into the alarming tendency of some modern Hondas to inappropriately trigger their automatic emergency braking systems. Studies have shown that automatic emergency braking systems have reduced road deaths in the US, Europe, and China, but so-called phantom braking problems have dogged systems from both Tesla and Honda.

We first learned of the problem in 2022, when NHTSA opened a preliminary investigation into the matter, based on 278 complaints. Now, NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation has received 1,294 complaints from drivers of Honda CR-Vs (model years 2017–2022) and Honda Accords (model years 2018–2022), all claiming that their Hondas' automatic emergency braking system slammed on the brakes with no apparent obstruction in the way.

Honda says it's aware of even more cases—1,991 in all, and NHTSA says that, when it takes out cases where multiple reports affect the same vehicle, it knows of 2,976 reports of inadvertent automatic emergency braking, with 93 injury reports and 47 crashes to date.

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Electricity supply is becoming the latest chokepoint to threaten the growth of artificial intelligence, according to leading tech industry chiefs, as power-hungry data centers add to the strain on grids around the world.

Billionaire Elon Musk said this month that while the development of AI had been “chip constrained” last year, the latest bottleneck to the cutting-edge technology was “electricity supply.” Those comments followed a warning by Amazon chief Andy Jassy this year that there was “not enough energy right now” to run new generative AI services.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet are investing billions of dollars in computing infrastructure as they seek to build out their AI capabilities, including in data centers that typically take several years to plan and construct.

Enlarge / EV charger status is coming to Google Maps. (credit: Google)

Google Maps is making itself friendlier for electric vehicles. A couple of years ago it added the option to select different powertrain types when calculating a route—gas, hybrid, electric, and so on. Lower-energy routes with fewer hills are helpful for electric vehicles, but mostly what EV drivers on unfamiliar terrain really want to know about are the chargers: Where are they, how fast are they, and do they work? Soon, that critical information will be available to Google Maps users via a new update.

Live charger status is usually available from the on-board navigation system built into an EV. Better yet, those native nav systems invariably talk to the powertrain, so they know how much state of charge is currently in the battery and how much to expect upon arrival. Add in real-time status on chargers—how many are working, how many are available—and it's not hard to see why plenty of EV drivers stick with the built-in system.

But for some EVs, that built-in system is Google Maps, including EVs from Ford, Honda, General Motors, Volvo, Polestar, and soon even Porsche. These will be the first devices to receive the update, Google says, which will roll out globally in the coming months. After the connected cars, smartphones will be next.