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An overhead shot of the Airlander 10, inside Hanger 1 at Cardington Airfield

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Airlander 10, the world's largest and longest aircraft, is preparing to gently glide out of its gargantuan shed—which is incidentally the largest hangar in the UK—at Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire.

Earlier this month Airlander 10, which is being built by Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), was officially named Martha Gwyn by the duke of Kent. HAV is now in the "final stages of testing" before it can exit the hangar, which will be a "matter of weeks" rather than months.

The Martha Gwyn is an odd beast. At its most basic, it's a 92-metre (302ft) blimp filled with 38,000 cubic metres of helium. There are four propellers—two at the back, one on the front left, one on the front right—that provide vectored thrust from four V8 turbo-diesel engines. But in addition to those rather mundane elements, the envelope (the bit that holds all the helium) has an aerofoil silhouette that reportedly increases lift efficiency by 40 percent.

(credit: Getty Images|Akio Kon/Bloomberg )

Everyone wants a slice of the self-driving car market, and we can now add electronics giant Panasonic to that list. Tom Gebhardt, head of Panasonic's US automotive division spelled out the company's plans in an interview with Automotive News. He said that Panasonic has ideas about the way we interact with autonomous cars, which the company will develop out of its expertise with infotainment systems.

The company is also working closely with Tesla on the battery "Gigafactory" in Nevada, which will be key to Tesla's ability to deliver almost 400,000 Model 3 electric vehicles to those in that gigantic queue of preorders. Gebhardt wasn't able to put a number on Panasonic's contribution to the factory—apparently that's down to Tesla—but he said that the company would "do what we need to do to assure supply."

As we've discussed previously, government regulators and the auto industry are hoping for great things from autonomous vehicle technology. In the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is extremely bullish on self-driving cars, which it sees as the answer to reducing the 33,000 deaths on US roads each year.

(credit: cncphotos)

Entertainment company Rovi announced that it has officially acquired DVR maker TiVo in a deal worth $1.1 billion. Rovi will pay for the deal mostly in stock at $10.70 per share, with approximately $277 million to be paid in cash at $2.75 per share. Rovi's CEO Tom Carson will continue to run the company, although it will now assume the "iconic TiVo brand" as its name.

The deal seems to be centered on patents. According to The New York Times, Rovi's interactive TV program guides account for less than half of its $526 million revenue last year, while the rest is made up of its licensed intellectual property. TiVo made a name for itself with its DVR technology, but the patents that make its DVR hardware and software work are proving to be more valuable. Together, Rovi and TiVo have over 6,000 patents issued and pending in the digital entertainment space.

"Rovi’s acquisition of TiVo, with its innovative products, talented team, and substantial intellectual property portfolio, strengthens Rovi’s position as a global leader in media discovery, metadata, analytics, and IP licensing,” Carson said in a statement. “It’s an exciting time as the media and entertainment landscape undergoes a significant evolution.... By working together, Rovi and TiVo will revolutionize how consumers experience media and entertainment and at the same time build value for our stockholders."

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket begins its reentry burn at an altitude of 70km. (credit: NASA)

In September, 2014, a Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida carrying a Dragon spacecraft bound for the International Space Station. The capsule carried some notable cargo, including the first 3D printer to be tested in space as well as 20 mousetronauts to study muscle loss. Yet the most far-reaching part of that mission came after the Falcon 9 deployed its upper stage and began falling back to Earth.

As it descended into the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere, the rocket's engines fired for its "reentry burn." A few minutes later, the first stage splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, completing one of the last flights before SpaceX began trying to land its rocket on an autonomous drone ship. But even as SpaceX was testing technology needed for terrestrial landings of its reusable Falcon 9 rocket, it was also taking some of its first steps toward landing on Mars.

That's because during that launch—and about 10 others since late 2013—SpaceX has quietly been conducting the first flight tests of a technology known as supersonic retro-propulsion—in Mars-like conditions. It did so by firing the Falcon 9's engines at an altitude of 70km down through 40km, which just happens to be where the Earth's thin upper atmosphere can act as a stand-in for the tenuous Martian atmosphere. Therefore, as the Falcon thundered toward Earth through the atmosphere at supersonic speeds and its engines fired in the opposite direction, the company might as well have been trying to land on Mars.

(credit: Ivan David Gomez Aarce)

Privacy activists and at least one senator are up in arms over a proposed change to a section of the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure that would allow any magistrate judge to issue warrants authorizing government-sanctioned hacking anywhere in the country.

If the proposal does go forward, it would mark a notable expansion of judicial power to sign off on "remote access" of criminal suspects’ computers. As Ars has reported previously, for more than two years now, the Department of Justice has pushed to change Rule 41 in the name of being able to thwart online criminal behavior enabled by tools like Tor.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court passed the proposed change to Rule 41 and sent it to Congress on Thursday, which will have until December 1 to modify, reject, or defer the proposal. If the House of Representatives and Senate do not pass a resolution in favor by simple majority, the revisions will become law that same day.

A petite young woman with pale skin and short hair braces herself for her next bite of food. A plate hovers directly in front of her mouth, holding five sauce-covered, finger-sized rice cakes (they look like tteokbokki, a popular Korean street food). She lines them up side-by-side with her chopsticks and slowly guides them all into her mouth. You can literally hear every bite, every chew that breaks down the rice cakes, every sniffle she makes as she tries to stop the sinus-relieving effects of the insanely spicy foods she's eating. She's talking into a small mic to her right, with one earbud in her right ear, as people watch her consume more food than her stomach should be able to handle—but she does so with a cheery attitude and the occasional smile. These kinds of videos are called mukbang videos, and believe it or not, they attract millions of viewers.

Mukbang combines the Korean word for "eat" (muok-da) with the word for “broadcast” (bang song) and describes exactly that: online shows where people eat a ton of food on camera. There are no gimmicks involved; no crazy costumes, no nudity (as far as I've seen), and no shock value of people eating unmentionable things. Mukbang videos simply follow one person as he or she consumes an entire (and often big) meal. If your eyebrows are raised up high in disbelief and judgement right now, you're likely not alone—but eating shows are just one genre of online videos that allow audiences to live out relatively harmless fantasies about everyday activities like eating a huge meal or going on a shopping spree.

Eating for an audience, getting paid in balloons

Some mukbang eaters have become stars. The craze began in South Korea, largely on the video website AfreecaTV. Mukbang stars, often referred to as Broadcast Jockeys or BJs (not kidding), make thousands of dollars a month just by having dinner on camera. This money isn't ad- or sponsorship-based; it's donated by mukbang viewers in the form of "star balloons," a type of virtual currency that can be exchanged for Korean won.