Month: August 2024

Enlarge / OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush shows David Pogue the 2010-era game controller that pilots the Titan sub during a CBS Sunday Morning segment broadcast in November 2022. (credit: CBS Sunday Morning)

In a 2022 CBS Sunday Morning segment, CEO Stockton Rush of deep-water submersible company OceanGate gave journalist David Pogue a fun reveal. "We run the whole thing with this game controller," Rush said, holding up a Logitech F710 controller with 3D-printed thumbstick extensions. The controller was wireless, and it was the primary method for controlling the Titan submersible, which would soon make a visit to the wreck of the Titanic. Pogue laughed. "Come on!" he said, covering his eyes with his hand.

Journalists loved the controller story, covering the inexpensive F710 and the ways that video game controllers have become common control solutions in various military and spaceflight applications in recent years. After all, if your engineers and pilots grew up using two-stick controllers to waste their friends in Halo multiplayer, why not use that built-in muscle memory for other purposes?

So the use of a video game controller was not in itself a crazy decision. But after the Titan sub imploded on a June 2023 dive to the Titanic site, killing all five passengers including Stockton Rush, the use of a wireless $30 control interface began to look less "cool!" and more "isn't that kind of risky?" The only question at that point was how long it would take the Logitech F710 to show up in a lawsuit.

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Inertial confinement fusion is one method for generating energy through nuclear fusion, albeit one plagued by all manner of scientific challenges (although progress is being made). Researchers at LeHigh University are attempting to overcome one specific bugbear with this approach by conducting experiments with mayonnaise placed in a rotating figure-eight contraption. They described their most recent findings in a new paper published in the journal Physical Review E with an eye toward increasing energy yields from fusion.

The work builds on prior research in the LeHigh laboratory of mechanical engineer Arindam Banerjee, who focuses on investigating the dynamics of fluids and other materials in response to extremely high acceleration and centrifugal force. In this case, his team was exploring what's known as the "instability threshold" of elastic/plastic materials. Scientists have debated whether this comes about because of initial conditions, or whether it's the result of "more local catastrophic processes," according to Banerjee. The question is relevant to a variety of fields, including geophysics, astrophysics, explosive welding, and yes, inertial confinement fusion.

How exactly does inertial confinement fusion work? As Chris Lee explained for Ars back in 2016:

Enlarge / Screenshot from AT&T commercial featuring Ben Stiller making a satellite call to Jordan Spieth. (credit: AT&T)

AT&T has been told to stop running ads that claim the carrier is already offering cellular coverage from space.

AT&T intends to offer Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) and has a deal with AST SpaceMobile, a Starlink competitor that plans a smartphone service from low-Earth-orbit satellites. But AST SpaceMobile's first batch of five satellites isn't scheduled to launch until September.

T-Mobile was annoyed by AT&T running an ad indicating that its satellite-to-cellular service was already available, and filed a challenge with the advertising industry's self-regulatory system run by BBB National Programs. The BBB National Advertising Division (NAD) ruled against AT&T last month and the carrier appealed to the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), which has now also ruled against AT&T.

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Federal authorities have arrested a Nashville man on charges he hosted laptops at his residences in a scheme to deceive US companies into hiring foreign remote IT workers who funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in income to fund North Korea’s weapons program.

The scheme, federal prosecutors said, worked by getting US companies to unwittingly hire North Korean nationals, who used the stolen identity of a Georgia man to appear to be a US citizen. Under sanctions issued by the federal government, US employers are strictly forbidden from hiring citizens of North Korea. Once the North Korean nationals were hired, the employers sent company-issued laptops to Matthew Isaac Knoot, 38, of Nashville, Tennessee, the prosecutors said in court papers filed in the US District Court of the Middle District of Tennessee. The court documents also said a foreign national with the alias Yang Di was involved in the conspiracy.

The prosecutors wrote: