Category: Uncategorised

(credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX hopes to continue increasing the frequency of its rocket business with a Sunday launch. The two-hour launch window for the company's Falcon 9 rocket opens at 1:26am ET on Sunday, as SpaceX endeavors to deliver the JCSAT-16 commercial communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit.

After seven successful launches in 2016, SpaceX has already broken its previous mark for successful rocket missions during a calendar year, six. Sunday morning's attempt comes a little less than one month after the last flight of the Falcon 9 on July 18, when the Dragon spacecraft delivered two tons of supplies to the International Space Station. Considering the company's launch manifest through December, it is possible SpaceX will make a dozen or more flights of its Falcon 9 rocket in 2016, coming close to reaching its stated goal of a launching once every other week by the end of this year.

The other big question tonight again surrounds the company's prospects for a successful return of its Falcon 9 first stage to Earth. Because the rocket will be delivering the satellite to an altitude of 35,800km above the equator, the first stage must reach a high velocity before releasing its upper stage and payload into orbit.

Last year, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the draft of a major report on the practice of hydraulic fracking—a technique to harvest oil and natural gas trapped within shale rocks. Although the report is only a draft, it was four years in the making and represents one of the first formal evaluations of fracking in the US as a whole.

In general, the EPA report is positive. While various problems with fracking are brought up, the report seems to suggest that the technique has no systemic issues. With proper caution, the evaluation says, it should be possible to frack while keeping water sources safe.

Or, to use the EPA's own words:

(credit: Tao lab, Emory University)

When evolution hits on a solution that works, that solution tends to get reused. Researchers have found that genes that play key roles in development typically get deployed over and over again in different tissues. Once this happens, however, it can create a problem: you can't make major changes to the gene without messing up a whole lot of essential processes.

This week, however, a team of researchers from the Janelia Research Campus describe a case in which an essential gene that's critical for neural activity was tweaked in an incredibly subtle and specific way. The new version of the gene changed only a single feature of the species it evolved in: the details of the male courtship song.

You might not think fruit flies would do much in the way of singing, and they don't in the traditional sense. But their courtship behavior involves a song created by rapid vibrations of their wings. The song is a mixture of repeated chirps interspersed with longer, buzzing vibrations. The details of this song—the frequency of the buzzing, the space between the chirps, etc.—often varies among the dozens of species of Drosophila we've identified.

Gen Con bills itself as "the best four days in gaming"—and in many ways, it is. More than 60,000 people crammed into the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis to play, purchase, and demo the hottest new board games and RPGs releasing in 2016. The Ars crew spent several days at the show drowning in a delicious gaming gumbo; now that we're back, we've put together a list of the top titles we played at the show.

If you're looking for a solid overview of what's hot in board gaming for the second half of 2016, you've come to the right place. (And stay tuned for our coverage of the Essen Spiel fair in October for all your Eurogame needs.)

Unless otherwise noted, these games should be hitting store shelves soon.

(credit: Alistair)

A 27-year-old Irishman who American prosecutors believe was a top administrator on Silk Road named “Libertas” has been approved for extradition to the United States.

According to the Irish Times, a High Court judge ordered Gary Davis to be handed over to American authorities on Friday.

In December 2013, federal prosecutors in New York unveiled charges against Davis and two other Silk Road staffers, Andrew Michael Jones (“Inigo”) and Peter Phillip Nash (“Samesamebutdifferent”). They were all charged with narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy.

Ars visits 42 US. Filmed by Chris Schodt/Edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

FREMONT, Calif.—As you read these words, hundreds of students are hunched over iMacs in a massive computer lab. Most of them have little, if any, programming experience, and they haven’t paid a cent to get here.

And yet, here they sit, just 7.6 miles directly across the Dumbarton Bridge from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, dreaming of joining Silicon Valley’s legions of programmers. Each day, the students get new programming assignments, but there are no teachers. There is a help desk, or rather a “help” desk—which really, really doesn’t want students to ask for guidance—all in the name of “peer-to-peer learning.”