Month: April 2019

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by the return of a popular deal on the latest 9.7-inch iPad, as the 32GB variant of Apple's mainstream tablet is back down to $250. That's $80 off its normal going rate.

We've highlighted similar deals a few times in the past and reviewed this model when it launched last year. There's not much more to say about the base-level iPad beyond "it's an iPad," but that doesn't make it any less pleasant for browsing the Web, reading e-books, streaming videos, and doing whatever else you'd do with a basic tablet. If you were thinking of getting one for your Mom for Mother's Day, this could be a good opportunity to take advantage.

If you don't need a new tablet, we also have deals on Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Instant Pots, the Fitbit Versa, Switch accessories, and much more. Have a look for yourself below.

Enlarge / The Oculus Quest, as enjoyed by an invisible model. (credit: Oculus)

I can take the Oculus Quest with me practically anywhere, pull it over my eyes, map out a VR space with my hands, and quickly start playing some of the best VR games currently on the market. That "anywhere" includes, for instance, the bathroom in the food court beneath Valve Software's headquarters.

Today is a big news day for Oculus, the Facebook-owned virtual reality headset manufacturer. The company's two recently announced VR headsets, the $400 Oculus Quest and the $400 Oculus Rift S, now have release dates (May 21), pre-order announcements (right meow, right here), and a review embargo lifted after nearly two weeks of hands-on time.

But as you may have seen, there's other VR news today: review embargoes for the Valve Index, which you can also read about on Ars today, have been lifted, too. Thanks to those neighboring testing periods, I did, in fact, get an opportunity to test one of Oculus Quest's use cases in the heart of one of its main competitors. It ended up being a pointed comparison. While the Index builds upon the home VR ecosystem as we know it—the cables, the connected "gaming" PC, the exterior sensors—the Oculus Quest throws all those requirements in the trash.

Enlarge / NASA's aspirations to reach the Moon by 2024 may be a fading dream. (credit: NASA)

It was only a little more than one month ago that Vice President Mike Pence gave NASA a bold new direction—a goal of landing humans back on the Moon by 2024. Be urgent, he told the space agency. Work with purpose. We can, and must, do better as a nation in space, he said.

But in the weeks since Pence's speech in Huntsville, Alabama, the reality of space policy has begun to settle in. For starters, it won't be cheap to return to the Moon. Moreover, elements of NASA's bureaucracy have already begun to resist the accelerated schedule and pressure the White House to hew to existing plans. And politically, the goal may well be a non-starter in a divided Congress.

Cost

For the last month, NASA has been working with the White House Office of Management and Budget to develop an amendment to President Trump's budget request for fiscal year 2020, which will seek additional funding for the accelerated Moon program. The amendment may come out this week, or it could be delayed further as wrangling continues. When it is released, the amendment will provide our first clear indication of how much bringing forward a lunar landing from NASA's originally planned date, 2028, to 2024 would cost.