Month: April 2025

Firefly Aerospace launched its two-stage Alpha rocket from California early Tuesday, but something went wrong about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, rendering the rocket unable to deploy an experimental satellite into orbit for Lockheed Martin.

The Alpha rocket took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base about 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles at 6:37 am PDT (9:37 am EDT; 13:37 UTC), one day after Firefly called off a launch attempt due to a technical problem with ground support equipment.

Everything appeared to go well with the rocket's first-stage booster, powered by four kerosene-fueled Reaver engines, as the launcher ascended through fog and arced on a southerly trajectory over the Pacific Ocean. The booster stage jettisoned from Alpha's upper stage two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, and that's when things went awry.

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This morning, Punchbowl News reported that Amazon was considering listing the cost of tariffs as a separate line item on its site, citing "a person familiar with the plan." Amazon later acknowledged that there had been internal discussions to that effect but only for its import-focused Amazon Haul sub-store and that the company didn't plan to actually list tariff prices for any items.

"This was never approved and is not going to happen," reads Amazon's two-sentence statement.

Amazon issued such a specific and forceful on-the-record denial in part because it had drawn the ire of the Trump administration. In a press briefing early this morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked a question about the report, which the administration responded to as though Amazon had made a formal announcement about the policy.

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The Sidephone is an upcoming cellphone that looks like a blast from the past thanks to its candy bar-style design with a small screen positioned above a keypad. The $249 phone is kind of a throwback to a style of handset that was designed primarily for making phone calls, and not much else. But it’s […]

The post Sidephone is a distraction-free phone with a 2.8 inch display and swappable keypads appeared first on Liliputing.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

In the wake of a high-profile court decision that upended the state of Montana’s climate policy, Republican lawmakers in the state are pushing a suite of bills that could gut the state’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The full-court legislative press targets the state’s environmental analysis, air quality regulation, and judicial system. It stems from the Held v. Montana case in which 16 young people sued the state over its contributions to climate change, claiming its fossil fuel-centric approach to energy violated the state constitution’s guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment.” The plaintiffs won, and in December 2024, the Montana Supreme Court upheld their victory.

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Zwar rudert Donald Trump bei den Autozöllen wieder etwas zurück. Doch eine angebliche Aktion des Onlinehändlers Amazon verärgert den US-Präsidenten. (Amazon, Politik)

Last year was big for zero-day exploits, security threats that appear in the wild before vendors have a chance to develop patches. Through its sprawling network of services and research initiatives, Google is the first to spot many of these threats. In a new report from the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), the company reveals it detected 75 zero-day exploits in 2024, which is a bit lower than the previous year. Unsurprisingly, a sizable chunk of them was the work of state-sponsored hackers.

According to Google, zero-day exploits are becoming increasingly easy for threat actors to develop and procure, which has led to more sophisticated attacks. While end-user devices are still regularly targeted, GTIG notes that the trend over the past few years has been for these vulnerabilities to target enterprise systems and security infrastructure. There were 98 zero-days detected in 2023 versus 75 in 2024, but Google says the overall trend in enterprise threats is increasing.

That's not to say the products you use every day are safe from sneaky hacks—a slim majority of GTIG's 2024 zero-day threats still targeted users. In fact, Google says hackers were even more interested in certain platforms last year compared to the year before.

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Eine kompakte und magnetische Wasserwaage von Bosch Professional ist bei Amazon kurz zum besten Vergleichspreis im Angebot. (Technik/Hardware)

President Donald Trump is set to ease up slightly on the automotive industry this week. After being warned that his trade war will result in hiked prices and fewer vehicles being built, government officials over the past two days have signaled that Trump will sign an executive order today that will mitigate some of the pain the 25 percent import tariffs will inflict.

Trump's approach to tariffs has been nothing if not inconsistent. In this case, the White House is not dropping the 25 percent tariff on all imported vehicles, but the other tariffs imposed by the Trump administration—like the 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum that went into effect in February—won't stack up on top.

The potential for multiple tariffs to have an additive effect on prices could have seen new car prices soar in the coming weeks; now, they are likely to just rise a lot instead. According to The Wall Street Journal, the move will be retroactive, and automakers who have (for example) paid aluminum or steel tariffs on top of the car import tariff can seek a refund for the former.

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Microsoft Defender bietet umfassende Schutzfunktionen für Unternehmen. Ein zweitägiger Workshop zeigt IT-Admins, wie sich die Microsoft-Sicherheitslösungen konkret in der Praxis einsetzen lassen. (Golem Karrierewelt, Sicherheitslücke)

Nobody does pasta quite like the Italians, as anyone who has tasted an authentic "pasta alla cacio e pepe" can attest. It's a simple dish: just tonnarelli pasta, pecorino cheese, and pepper. But its simplicity is deceptive. Cacio e pepe ("cheese and pepper") is notoriously challenging to make because it's so easy for the sauce to form unappetizing clumps with a texture more akin to stringy mozzarella rather than being smooth and creamy.

A team of Italian physicists has come to the rescue with a foolproof recipe based on their many scientific experiments, according to a new paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids. The trick: using corn starch for the cheese and pepper sauce instead of relying on however much starch leaches into the boiling water as the pasta is cooked.

"A true Italian grandmother or a skilled home chef from Rome would never need a scientific recipe for cacio e pepe, relying instead on instinct and years of experience," the authors wrote. "For everyone else, this guide offers a practical way to master the dish. Preparing cacio e pepe successfully depends on getting the balance just right, particularly the ratio of starch to cheese. The concentration of starch plays a crucial role in keeping the sauce creamy and smooth, without clumps or separation."

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