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Enlarge / The Euclid mission is ready to go—all it needs is a launch vehicle. (credit: Thales Alenia Space)

The author of this piece is part of the team that has helped developed the Euclid mission.

The European Space Agency had been on the verge of launching the billion-euro Euclid satellite, which is designed to address the most pressing unsolved questions in astronomy: What are the true natures of dark matter and energy? ESA had scheduled a March 2023 launch for Euclid from French Guiana—but it was on a Soyuz rocket. The war in Ukraine brought an end to Soyuz operations from Guiana and started a period of uncertainty for Euclid’s team.

Keeping Euclid in storage could cost 100 million euros per year and put its entire scientific team and infrastructure in standby mode, potentially compromising European leadership in space-based observational cosmology. The partner ESA has used for almost all its launches, Arianespace, is building what should be a good backup launcher, the Ariane 62. But that rocket has not flown yet, and with each passing month, its test flight date slips further. Once it’s ready, Euclid would not even be the first Ariane 62 launch: at least four other satellites are in the queue before it.

Enlarge / Ubisoft insists that its first video game based on the film series Avatar is still on the way—but will now miss its original "2022" launch window. (credit: Ubisoft)

Fans of gaming mega-publisher Ubisoft may have held out hope that an upcoming presentation, slated to stream online in September, might contain a few surprises or confirmations for more big games coming in 2022. The company's latest financial disclosure presentation popped that balloon, however, in a massive way.

A Thursday disclosure to investors was paired with an audio presentation hosted by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, and its first nine minutes contained mostly doom and gloom. After confirming previously announced plans to launch a Mario + Rabbids sequel and the long-delayed Skull & Bones pirate-battling game, Guillemot confirmed two lengthy game delays and four game cancellations—while remaining mum about at least two games in apparent development limbo.

More like “The Way of the Wait”

The arguably biggest news concerns a delay to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an open-world adventure game based on James Cameron's Avatar film series. The game is now slated to launch in Ubisoft's "fiscal year 24," which could mean any time between April 2023 and March 2024. That's a substantial bump from its original "2022" launch window—which could have put it near the December 16 launch of that film series' first sequel in 13 years, Avatar: The Way of the Water.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | peterhowell)

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has ordered mobile carriers to explain what geolocation data they collect from customers and how they use it. Rosenworcel's probe could be the first step toward stronger action—but the agency's authority in this area is in peril because Congress is debating a data privacy law that could preempt the FCC from regulating carriers' privacy practices.

Rosenworcel sent letters of inquiry Tuesday "to the top 15 mobile providers," the FCC announced. The chairwoman's letters asked carriers "about their policies around geolocation data, such as how long geolocation data is retained and why and what the current safeguards are to protect this sensitive information," the FCC said.

The letters also "probe carriers about their processes for sharing subscriber geolocation data with law enforcement and other third parties' data-sharing agreements. Finally, the letters ask whether and how consumers are notified when their geolocation information is shared with third parties," the FCC said.

Enlarge / Pouch cells of the sort tested for endurance. (credit: Cuberg)

While lithium-ion batteries have experienced steady improvements, a lot of research has gone into new chemistries that provide a much larger leap in performance. Some of that work has focused on materials like silicon or sulfur that can potentially store far more lithium than existing electrode materials. But other options get rid of electrode materials entirely. These include lithium-air and lithium-metal batteries.

All of these have faced issues with stability, with batteries based on the technology having a short life span compared to existing lithium-ion batteries (though batteries with some silicon are already in use). But on Thursday, a company is announcing that a lithium-metal battery it has in development has reached a stability that's competitive with existing lithium-ion batteries, retaining 80 percent of its initial capacity out to nearly 700 charge/discharge cycles—and that this has been validated by an outside testing lab.

To learn more about this advance and where lithium metal might get used, we talked with Richard Wang, founder of Cuberg, a subsidiary of battery giant Northvolt.

Enlarge / The 2021 14-inch MacBook Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

This week, Apple released software updates for all of its platforms, including iOS 15.6, iPadOS 15.6, macOS Monterey 12.5, watchOS 8.7, tvOS 15.6, and HomePod software version 15.6.

With iOS 16 and its peers just a couple of months away, these updates add no major new features. The most visible addition in iOS 15.6, iPadOS 15.6, and macOS 12.5 this week is the ability to pause, rewind, fast-forward, or restart a live sports game. Also, Siri can now recognize voices in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese on the HomePod.

Beyond that, it's all about bug fixes, performance improvements, and other smaller tweaks.

Enlarge / A firefighter stands by flames as a wildfire rages in the Monts d'Arree, near Brasparts, Brittany, on July 19, 2022. A heatwave fueling ferocious wildfires in Europe pushed temperatures in Britain over 40° Celsius (104° Fahrenheit) for the first time after regional heat records tumbled in France. (credit: Loic Venance/Getty)

Europe is on fire: For days, temperatures have skyrocketed above 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius), shattering records and triggering huge wildfires that have forced tens of thousands from their homes. From Portugal to Spain to Greece, the flames have spread like a contagion. In the countryside surrounding Bordeaux, France, 75 square miles have charred in the past week. Blazes are even breaking out across London, a city not exactly known for fire weather.

Wildfires are, of course, a perfectly natural phenomenon and have periodically reset ecosystems for new growth throughout history. But in modern times, due to humanity's meddling with the climate and the landscape, these fires have ballooned into unnatural beasts that instead obliterate ecosystems. Fire historian Stephen Pyne has termed this the Pyrocene, an age of flames.

Enlarge / Microsoft is testing a new way to handle taskbars with too many open apps. (credit: Microsoft)

We appear to be entering a period of Windows' development where we can expect new features and tweaks to come to the operating system several times a year. To that end, Microsoft continues to add, remove, and generally experiment with Windows 11's features and user interface via its Insider Preview channels.

The most interesting addition we've seen in a while is rolling out to users on the experimental Dev Channel now: a modified version of the taskbar with much-improved handling of app icon overflow when users have too many apps open at once. Click an ellipsis button on your taskbar, and a new icon overflow menu opens up, allowing you to interact with any of those extra icons the same way you would if they were sitting on the taskbar.

This would be a big improvement over the current overflow behavior, which devotes one icon's worth of space to show the icon for the app you last interacted with, leaving the rest inaccessible. That icon will continue to appear on the taskbar alongside the new ellipsis icon. Microsoft says that app icons in the overflow area will be able to show jump lists and other customizable shortcuts the same as any other app icon in the taskbar.

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  The Pixel 6a has a flat screen with a slightly thicker bezel on the bottom. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

Google is really swinging for the fences this year. The Pixel 6a is not only the latest entry in the reliably excellent Pixel A series; that "mid-range" A-line is also getting a massive upgrade in the form of a flagship-class system on a chip. Yes, the Google Tensor SoC that debuted in the Pixel 6 is also in the Pixel 6a. It's the same chip, and that means the Pixel A series is doubling in speed year over year. Did we mention the phone is still $449?

Google has created a mid-range juggernaut.

A new family of smartphones

With the launch of the Pixel 6 last year, Google finally landed on a solid path forward for its smartphone division. Besides the in-house Google SoC (with lots of help from Samsung), Google also had a hardware design that it could finally call its own, based on the distinctive and even somewhat useful camera bar.