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On Sunday, SpaceX's Falcon booster successfully lifted the Jason-3 satellite into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Following that, the first stage attempted to achieve a landing on the Just Read the Instructions barge, which was floating off the California coast. The barge was experiencing 12-to-15-foot waves at the time of liftoff and just as the rocket descended towards the barge, communications went out possibly due to those rough seas.

Early indications are that it descended on target but experienced a rough landing; we'll have more details as they become available. Meanwhile, the Falcon's payload is on target for an insertion into polar orbit.

The water landing attempt follows the company's historic return to a landing site on the coast of Florida in December, when SpaceX became the first company to deliver a payload to orbit and then successfully fly the booster back to Earth.

(credit: See-ming Lee)

As body cams continue to flourish in police departments across the nation, an ongoing debate has ensued about how much, if any, of that footage should be made public under state open-access laws.

An overlooked twist to that debate, however, has now become front and center: How much should the public have to pay for the footage if the police agree to release it? News network NY1, a Time Warner Cable News operation, was billed $36,000 by the NYPD for roughly 190 hours of footage it requested under the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Now the network is suing (PDF) the police department in New York state court, complaining that the price tag is too steep. The network said the bill runs "counter to both the public policy of openness underlying FOIL, as well as the purported transparency supposedly fostered by the BWC (body worn camera) program itself."

No video game genre divides and unifies us like the kart racer. For every Mario Kart there are a dozen by-the-numbers cash-ins, and even that hallowed series receives regular criticism as too derivative. But while we all breathe a collective sigh of disappointment with each kid-friendly license that predictably goes the generic kart-racing route, it's hard not to get excited by that rare entry that feels fresh and new.

A great kart racer is a joyous thing. It's accessible yet deep, fun yet primed for oh-so-serious competition between friends, and full of colorful, wacky charm. It is a game for everyone. So in keeping with the spirit of the genre—and as the latest edition in our gaming genre history series that includes city builders, graphic adventures, and simulation games—it's time to ride through the ups and downs of kart racing.

(Before we start, a quick note: I've omitted go-kart racing sims such as Open Kart and Michael Schumacher Racing World Kart because they are essentially conventional racing games and not what we normally think of as kart racers.)

(credit: Davidlohr Bueso)

The Supreme Court will decide whether Microsoft must face a class-action lawsuit that claims a defect in the media giant's popular Xbox 360 console was prone to scratching game discs, rendering them unplayable.

The lawsuit alleges that vibrations or small movements of the console might cause the optical drive to scratch discs. The suit accuses Microsoft of knowing about the alleged issue before the Xbox 360 launched in 2005. According to the original lawsuit, brought in 2012, there were as many as 55,000 complaints about the scratching issue by as early as 2008.

(credit: Sanofi Pasteur)

With mounting evidence that the mosquito-spread Zika virus is behind the skyrocketing numbers of severe birth defects in Brazil, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Friday cautioned pregnant women and women planning to become pregnant to postpone travel to a set of Latin American and Caribbean countries and territories experiencing Zika outbreaks.

“Until more is known, and out of an abundance of caution, CDC recommends special precautions,” the agency said. The advisory relates to 14 countries and territories where Zika has newly spread: Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

The warning appears to be the first time the agency has ever recommended pregnant women avoid specific areas due to outbreaks. But health experts at the agency felt the “enhanced precaution” was prudent after new evidence directly linked the virus to four cases of microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and brains. The condition can be fatal.

(credit: climate.gov)

Agriculture is not responsible for the bulk of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions; that honor goes to more fossil-fuel intensive activities like transportation and generating electricity. Even still, greenhouse gas emissions from global agriculture are climbing by 1 percent a year.

Humans did once upon a time live without HDTVs and Hummers—we could do so again, at least in theory—but people will always have to eat. This makes reducing agricultural emissions particularly difficult. Researchers in the UK have reported that an approach called "land sparing" farming could offset the emissions coming from agriculture by sequestering carbon.

Land sparing increases the efficiency of existing farming practices, allowing more food to be produced on less land. The surplus farmland is then allowed to revert to a “natural” habitat. It all sounds sensible, and the paper led to a number of news articles earlier this month.