Ars Technica

The European Space Agency is inviting proposals to inject competition into the European launch market, an important step toward fostering a dynamic multiplayer industry officials hope, one day, will mimic that of the United States.

The near-term plan for the European Launcher Challenge is for ESA to select companies for service contracts to transport ESA and other European government payloads to orbit from 2026 through 2030. A second component of the challenge is for companies to perform at least one demonstration of an upgraded launch vehicle by 2028. The competition is open to any European company working in the launch business.

"What we expect is that these companies will make a step in improving and upgrading their capacity with respect to what they’re presently working," said Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA's acting director of space transportation."In terms of economics and physics, it’s better to have a bigger launcher than a smaller launcher in terms of price per kilogram to orbit."

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More heavy blows are landing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to reports Tuesday that reveal a wave of high-level departures from the country's beleaguered health agency. The agency is also losing $11.4 billion in funding for responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was largely doled out to chronically underfunded state health departments.

This afternoon, the Associated Press reported that five high-level leaders are departing the agency, which was announced today during a senior staff meeting. The departures, which were described as retirements, follow three other high-level departures in recent weeks. Given that the CDC has two dozen centers and offices, the recent departures reflect a loss of about a third of the agency's top management.

The departures announced today include: Leslie Ann Dauphin, who oversees the Public Health Infrastructure Center, "which serves as the connection point between the agency and state, local, and territorial jurisdictions, tribes. and CDC's public health partners," according to the CDC. Karen Remley, who heads the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, is also departing, as is Sam Posner, who heads the Office of Science, which provides scientific expertise across the agency and publishes the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Debra Lubar, who is the CDC's Chief Operating Officer and runs the Office of Policy, Performance and Evaluation, and Leandris Liburd, head of the Office of Health Equity, are also leaving.

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Software developer Xe Iaso reached a breaking point earlier this year when aggressive AI crawler traffic from Amazon overwhelmed their Git repository service, repeatedly causing instability and downtime. Despite configuring standard defensive measures—adjusting robots.txt, blocking known crawler user-agents, and filtering suspicious traffic—Iaso found that AI crawlers continued evading all attempts to stop them, spoofing user-agents and cycling through residential IP addresses as proxies.

Desperate for a solution, Iaso eventually resorted to moving their server behind a VPN and creating "Anubis," a custom-built proof-of-work challenge system that forces web browsers to solve computational puzzles before accessing the site. "It's futile to block AI crawler bots because they lie, change their user agent, use residential IP addresses as proxies, and more," Iaso wrote in a blog post titled "a desperate cry for help." "I don't want to have to close off my Gitea server to the public, but I will if I have to."

Iaso's story highlights a broader crisis rapidly spreading across the open source community, as what appear to be aggressive AI crawlers increasingly overload community-maintained infrastructure, causing what amounts to persistent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on vital public resources. According to a comprehensive recent report from LibreNews, some open source projects now see as much as 97 percent of their traffic originating from AI companies' bots, dramatically increasing bandwidth costs, service instability, and burdening already stretched-thin maintainers.

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Severance has just wrapped up its second season. I sat down with fellow Ars staffers Aaron Zimmerman and Lee Hutchinson to talk through what we had just seen, covering everything from those goats to the show's pacing. Warning: Huge spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 follow!

Nate: Severance season 1 was a smaller-scale, almost claustrophobic show about a crazy office, its "waffle parties," and the personal life of Mark Scout, mourning his dead wife and "severing" his consciousness to avoid that pain. It followed a compact group of characters, centered around the four "refiners" who worked on Lumon's severed floor. But season 2 blew up that cozy/creepy world and started following more characters—including far more "outies"—to far more places. Did the show manage to maintain its unique vibe while making significant changes to pacing, character count, and location?

Lee: I think so, but as you say, things were different this time around. One element that I’m glad carried through was the show’s consistent use of a very specific visual language. (I am an absolute sucker for visual storytelling. My favorite Kubrick film is Barry Lyndon. I’ll forgive a lot of plot holes if they’re beautifully shot.) Season 2, especially in the back half, treats us to an absolute smorgasbord of incredible visuals—bifurcated shots symbolizing severance and duality, stark whites and long hallways, and my personal favorite: Chris Walken in a black turtleneck seated in front of a fireplace, like Satan holding court in Hell. The storytelling might be a bit less focused, but it looks great.

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Nvidia has seen its fortunes soar in recent years as its AI-accelerating GPUs have become worth their weight in gold. Most people use their Nvidia GPUs for games, but why not both? Nvidia has a new AI you can run at the same time, having just released its experimental G-Assist AI. It runs locally on your GPU to help you optimize your PC and get the most out of your games. It can do some neat things, but Nvidia isn't kidding when it says this tool is experimental.

G-Assist is available in the Nvidia desktop app, and it consists of a floating overlay window. After invoking the overlay, you can either type or speak to G-Assist to check system stats or make tweaks to your settings. You can ask basic questions like, "How does DLSS Frame Generation work?" but it also has control over some system-level settings.

By calling up G-Assist, you can get a rundown of how your system is running, including custom data charts created on the fly by G-Assist. You can also ask the AI to tweak your machine, for example, optimizing the settings for a particular game or toggling on or off a setting. G-Assist can even overclock your GPU if you so choose, complete with a graph of expected performance gains.

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Infinite Reality, a media, ecommerce, and marketing company focused on 3D and AI-powered experiences, has entered an agreement to acquired Napster. That means that the brand originally launched in 1999 as a peer-to-peer (P2P) music file-sharing service is set to be reborn again. This time, new owners are reshaping the brand into one focused on marketing musicians in the metaverse.

Infinite announced today a definitive agreement to buy Napster for $207 million. The Norwalk, Connecticut-based company plans to turn Napster into a “social music platform that prioritizes active fan engagement over passive listening, allowing artists to connect with, own, and monetize the relationship with their fans." Jon Vlassopulos, who became Napster CEO in 2022, will continue with his role at the brand.

Since 2016, Napster has been operating as a (legal) streaming service. It claims to have over 110 million high-fidelity tracks, with some supporting lossless audio. Napster subscribers can also listen offline and watch music videos. The service currently starts at $11 per month.

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People are often quite selective about the information they'll accept, seeking out sources that will confirm their biases, while discounting those that will challenge their beliefs. In theory, search engines can potentially change that. By prioritizing results from high-quality, credible sources, a search engine could ensure that people found accurate information more frequently, potentially opening them to the possibility of updating their beliefs.

Obviously, that hasn't worked out on the technology side, as people quickly learned how to game the algorithms used by search engines, meaning that the webpages that get returned have been created by people with no interest in quality or credibility. But a new study is suggesting that the concept fails on the human side, too, as people tend to devise search terms that are specific enough to ensure that the results of the search will end up reinforcing their existing beliefs.

The study showed that invisibly swapping search terms to something more general can go a long way toward enabling people to change their mind.

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation yesterday launched a task force "to try to nail the criminals setting fire to Tesla vehicles and charging stations," and is looking into an anarchist blog that has been "calling for more" attacks, The New York Post reported.

"The bureau has received reports of 48 instances so far this month related to Tesla vehicles, dealerships and charging stations and is investigating at least seven of them in conjunction with local law enforcement, The Post has learned," the article said. "The agency's newly formed 10-person task force will deploy ATF personnel—special agents and intelligence analysts from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the Treasury Department—and personnel from the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, including its Domestic Terrorism Operations Section and Weapons of Mass Destruction."

ATF is embedding personnel in some FBI field offices, starting in San Antonio, Texas, "where some of the Molotov cocktail attacks have been carried out," the report said. There were previously three arrests. The FBI is reviewing security camera footage and gained access to cell phone location data in an attempt to find more culprits, the report said.

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With the vast majority of President Donald Trump's cabinet members now approved by the US Senate, focus is turning to senior positions within the administration that are just below the cabinet level.

The administrator of NASA is among the most high-profile of these positions. Nearly four months ago Trump nominated private astronaut Jared Isaacman to become chief of the space agency, but he has yet to receive a hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Almost immediately after his nomination, much of the space community fell in behind Isaacman, who has flown to space twice on private Crew Dragon missions, raised charitable funds, and is generally well-liked. Since then, Isaacman has worked to build support for his candidacy through conversations with people in the space community and officeholders.

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Apple has suffered a blow in its efforts to salvage its lucrative search placement deal with Google. A new ruling from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals affirms that Apple cannot participate in Google's upcoming antitrust hearing, which could leave a multibillion-dollar hole in Apple's balance sheet. The judges in the case say Apple simply waited too long to get involved.

Just a few years ago, a high-stakes court case involving Apple and Google would have found the companies on opposing sides, but not today. Apple's and Google's interests are strongly aligned here, to the tune of $20 billion. Google forks over that cash every year, and it's happy to do so to secure placement as the default search provider in the Safari desktop and mobile browser.

The antitrust penalties pending against Google would make that deal impermissible. Throughout the case, the government made the value of defaults clear—most people never change them. That effectively delivers Google a captive audience on Apple devices.

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World of Warcraft Classic's Hardcore mode has set itself apart from the average MMO experience simply by making character death permanent across the entire in-game realm. For years, Blizzard has not allowed any appeals or rollbacks for these Hardcore mode character deaths, even when such deaths came as the direct result of a server disconnection or gameplay bug.

Now, Blizzard says it's modifying that policy somewhat in response to a series of "unprecedented distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks" undertaken "with the singular goal of disrupting players’ experiences." The World of Warcraft developer says it may now resurrect Classic Hardcore characters "at our sole discretion" when those deaths come "in a mass event which we deem inconsistent with the integrity of the game."

RIP OnlyFangs?

The high stakes inherent to WoW's Classic Hardcore mode have made it an appealing target for streamers and other online content creators looking to build an audience. Dozens of the most popular Hardcore WoW streamers have been gathering together as part of the OnlyFangs Guild, a group dedicated to the idea that "every decision matters and one mistake can mean the end of a character’s journey."

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Boeing is trying to withdraw a plea agreement and obtain more lenient treatment from the Trump administration in a case involving two deadly 737 Max crashes, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

Boeing previously agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States. Boeing could still plead guilty but face weaker penalties than it agreed to last year if the Justice Department and a federal judge agree.

Trump's Department of Justice "is reviewing numerous pending criminal cases that haven't yet gone to trial or been approved by courts," and "Boeing stands to benefit from fresh eyes at Trump's Justice Department, which is inclined to at least modify parts of the agreement," the WSJ wrote, citing people familiar with the matter. "Allowing Boeing to rescind its plea agreement, or lightening the company's punishment, would mark one of the most prominent examples of the Trump administration's lighter-touch approach to some white-collar enforcement."

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Netflix announced today that it has started offering HDR movies and shows in the HDR10+ format.

Since December 2014, when season 1 of Marco Polo debuted, Netflix has supported the HDR10 and Dolby Vision formats. Like Dolby Vision, HDR10+ is a more advanced form of HDR that uses dynamic metadata fine-tuned to specific content. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision let creatives set how each frame looks, enabling a final result that should have more detail and look closer to how the content's creators intended. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are especially impactful when watching HDR content on lower-priced HDR TVs that could suffer from poor black levels and other performance gaps.

You have to subscribe to Netflix's Premium ad-free plan to stream content in HDR and 4K resolution. The plan is $25 per month, compared to $18 per month for the Standard ad-free plan that limits users to 1080p resolution.

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The global backlash against the second Donald Trump administration keeps on growing. Canadians have boycotted US-made products, anti–Elon Musk posters have appeared across London amid widespread Tesla protests, and European officials have drastically increased military spending as US support for Ukraine falters. Dominant US tech services may be the next focus.

There are early signs that some European companies and governments are souring on their use of American cloud services provided by the three so-called hyperscalers. Between them, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) host vast swathes of the Internet and keep thousands of businesses running. However, some organizations appear to be reconsidering their use of these companies’ cloud services—including servers, storage, and databases—citing uncertainties around privacy and data access fears under the Trump administration.

“There’s a huge appetite in Europe to de-risk or decouple the over-dependence on US tech companies, because there is a concern that they could be weaponized against European interests,” says Marietje Schaake, a nonresident fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and a former decadelong member of the European Parliament.

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Polestar provided flights from Los Angeles to Lulea and accommodation so Ars could visit Polestar's winter testing site. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

LULEA, Sweden—Staring out the window of a puddle jumper descending from Stockholm into Lulea, I spy frozen seawater for the first time in my life. Not nearly as much as I expected, though, for the middle of February at the northern end of Sweden. I've flown here to drift electric Polestars on an icy lake called Stor-Skabram, near the small outpost of Jokkmokk, fully above the Arctic Circle. Yet the balmy weather serves as a constant reminder of the climate change that inspires much of the narrative around the electric vehicle industry.

EVs on ice

An opportunity to get somebody else's cars sideways as much as possible on ice and snow is a particularly enjoyable way to spend a day, if you like driving cars. More importantly, automotive manufacturers rely on this kind of winter testing to fine-tune traction and stability-control programming, ensuring their cars can work well in the depths of the deepest winter. For EVs in particular, winter testing presents a more complex range of equations.

First of all, an EV can't ever turn the electronic nannies off entirely, because electric motors will rev to the moon with instantaneous torque the very instant their tires lose traction. So while software uses wheel speed sensors and regenerative braking, as well as accelerometers that detect yaw rates, each EV needs to then maintain progressive output responses to driver inputs that allow for confident performance and safety simultaneously.

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Late Saturday night, technicians at Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the core stage for NASA's second Space Launch System rocket into position between the vehicle's two solid-fueled boosters.

Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used heavy-duty cranes to first lift the butterscotch orange core stage from its cradle in the VAB's cavernous transfer aisle, the central passageway between the building's four rocket assembly bays. The cranes then rotated the structure vertically, allowing workers to disconnect one of the cranes from the bottom of the rocket.

That left the rocket hanging on a 325-ton overhead crane, which would lift it over the transom into the building's northeast high bay. The Boeing-built core stage weighs about 94 tons (85 metric tons), measures about 212 feet (65 meters) tall, and will contain 730,000 gallons of cryogenic propellant at liftoff. It is the single largest element for NASA's Artemis II mission, which is slated to ferry a crew of astronauts around the far side of the Moon as soon as next year.

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The H5N1 bird flu has spilled over to a sheep for the first time, infecting a domesticated ruminant in the United Kingdom much like it did US dairy cows, according to UK officials.

The single sheep—a ewe—in Yorkshire, England, was confirmed infected after captive birds on the same property had tested positive for the virus, according to an announcement Monday. The ewe's milk was found to be positive for the virus through a PCR test, which detected genetic signatures of the virus. The ewe also had H5 antibodies in its blood. At the time of the confirmation, the ewe had symptoms of the infection in the way of mastitis, inflammation of the mammary glands.

This mirrors what US dairy farmers have been seeing in cows. An outbreak of H5N1 in dairy cows erupted a year ago, on March 25, 2024. Since then, at least 989 herds across 17 states have been infected with bird flu. In previous reports, farmers and researchers have noted that the virus appears to attack the animal's mammary glands and their milk is teeming with the virus.

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On Thursday, Google and the Computer History Museum (CHM) jointly released the source code for AlexNet, the convolutional neural network (CNN) that many credit with transforming the AI field in 2012 by proving that "deep learning" could achieve things conventional AI techniques could not.

Deep learning, which uses multi-layered neural networks that can learn hierarchical representations directly from data without explicit programming, represented a significant departure from many earlier traditional AI approaches that relied on hand-crafted rules and features.

The Python code, now available on CHM's GitHub page as open source software, offers AI enthusiasts and researchers a glimpse into a key moment of computing history. AlexNet served as a watershed moment in AI because it could accurately identify objects in photographs with unprecedented accuracy—correctly classifying images into one of 1,000 categories, like "strawberry," "school bus," or "golden retriever" with significantly fewer errors than previous systems.

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It is an immutable law of nature that when you receive a corporate email with a subject line like "Changes coming to your Pixel 4a," the changes won't be the sort you like. Indeed, a more honest subject line would usually be: "You're about to get hosed."

So I wasn't surprised, as I read further into this January missive from Google, that an "upcoming software update for your Pixel 4a" would "affect the overall performance and stability of its battery."

How would my battery be affected? Negatively, of course. "This update will reduce your battery’s runtime and charging performance," the email said. "To address this, we’re providing some options to consider. "

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A prominent journalist knew the US military would start bombing Houthi targets in Yemen two hours before it happened on March 15 because top Trump administration officials accidentally included the reporter on a Signal text chain in which they discussed the war plan.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, described the surprising leak of sensitive military information in an article today. The National Security Council confirmed that the messages were real and said it is investigating how Goldberg was added to a thread in which the war information was discussed.

"The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen," Goldberg wrote. "I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing."

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