Ars Technica

On the evening of November 19, art adviser Adam Biesk was finishing work at his California home when he overheard a conversation between his wife and son, who had just come downstairs. The son, a kid in his early teens, was saying he had made a ton of money on a cryptocurrency that he himself had created.

Initially, Biesk ignored it. He knew that his son played around with crypto, but to have turned a small fortune before bedtime was too far-fetched. “We didn’t really believe it,” says Biesk. But when the phone started to ring off the hook and his wife was flooded with angry messages on Instagram, Biesk realized that his son was telling the truth—if not quite the full story.

Earlier that evening, at 7:48 pm PT, Biesk’s son had released into the wild 1 billion units of a new crypto coin, which he named Gen Z Quant. Simultaneously, he spent about $350 to purchase 51 million tokens, about 5 percent of the total supply, for himself.

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Lamborghini provided flights from Albany, New York, to Bologna, Italy, and accommodation so Ars could drive the Urus SE. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

The original Urus was an SUV that nobody particularly wanted, even if the market was demanding it. With luxury manufacturers tripping over themselves to capitalize on a seemingly limitless demand for taller all-around machines, Lamborghini was a little late to the party.

The resulting SUV has done its job, boosting Lamborghini's sales and making up more than half of the company's volume last year. Even so, the first attempt was just a bit tame. That most aggressive of supercar manufacturers produced an SUV featuring the air of the company's lower, more outrageous performance machines, but it didn't quite deliver the level of prestige that its price demanded.

The Urus Performante changed that, adding enough visual and driving personality to make itself a legitimately exciting machine to drive or to look at. Along the way, though, it lost a bit of the most crucial aspect of an SUV: everyday livability. On paper, the Urus SE is just a plug-in version of the Urus, with a big battery adding some emissions-free range. In reality, it's an SUV with more performance and more flexibility, too. This is the Urus' Goldilocks moment.

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In March, Google showed off its first Genie AI model. After training on thousands of hours of 2D run-and-jump video games, the model could generate halfway-passable interactive impressions of those games based on generic images or text descriptions.

Nine months later, this week's reveal of the Genie 2 model expands that idea into the realm of fully 3D worlds, complete with controllable third- or first-person avatars. Google's announcement talks up Genie 2's role as a "foundational world model" that can create a fully interactive internal representation of a virtual environment. That could allow AI agents to train themselves in synthetic but realistic environments, Google says, forming an important stepping stone on the way to artificial general intelligence.

But while Genie 2 shows just how much progress Google's Deepmind team has achieved in the last nine months, the limited public information about the model thus far leaves a lot of questions about how close we are to these foundational model worlds being useful for anything but some short but sweet demos.

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Within hours of NASA announcing its decision to fly the Artemis II mission aboard an Orion spacecraft with an unmodified heat shield, critics assailed the space agency, saying it had made the wrong decision.

"Expediency won over safety and good materials science and engineering. Sad day for NASA," Ed Pope, an expert in advanced materials and heat shields, wrote on LinkedIn.

There is a lot riding on NASA's decision, as the Artemis II mission involves four astronauts and the space agency's first crewed mission into deep space in more than 50 years.

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On Friday, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it would begin a nationwide testing program for the presence of the H5N1 flu virus, also known as the bird flu. Testing will focus on pre-pasteurized milk at dairy processing facilities (pasteurization inactivates the virus), but the order that's launching the program will require anybody involved with milk production before then to provide samples to the USDA on request. That includes "any entity responsible for a dairy farm, bulk milk transporter, bulk milk transfer station, or dairy processing facility."

The ultimate goal is to identify individual herds where the virus is circulating and use the agency's existing powers to do contact tracing and restrict the movement of cattle, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the virus from US herds.

A bovine disease vector

At the time of publication, the CDC had identified 58 cases of humans infected by the H5N1 flu virus, over half of them in California. All but two have come about due to contact with agriculture, either cattle (35 cases) or poultry (21). The virus's genetic material has appeared in the milk supply and, although pasteurization should eliminate any intact infectious virus, raw milk is notable for not undergoing pasteurization, which has led to at least one recall when the virus made its way into raw milk. And we know the virus can spread to other species if they drink milk from infected cows.

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On Friday, a US appeals court upheld a federal law that could ban or force a sale of TikTok early next year.

Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act into law in April, and the US was soon after sued by TikTok and its Chinese owner, ByteDance, as well as a group of individual TikTok users in the US. These plaintiffs tried and failed to enjoin the attorney general from enforcing the law, which takes effect January 19, 2025—a day before Donald Trump's first day in office.

In the ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected all constitutional claims, including free speech claims that had notably blocked prior TikTok bans during Trump's last administration. In siding against TikTok and its fans, the court's decision likely surprised some law professors who had warned earlier this year that TikTok seemingly had a strong First Amendment defense.

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On Tuesday, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation advised Americans to share a secret word or phrase with their family members to protect against AI-powered voice-cloning scams, as criminals increasingly use voice synthesis to impersonate loved ones in crisis.

"Create a secret word or phrase with your family to verify their identity," wrote the FBI in an official public service announcement (I-120324-PSA).

For example, you could tell your parents, children, or spouse to ask for a word or phrase to verify your identity if something seems suspicious, such as "The sparrow flies at midnight," "Greg is the king of burritos," or simply "flibbertigibbet." (As fun as these sound, your password should be secret and not the same as these.)

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Microsoft has formally discontinued its Surface Studio all-in-one desktop, the company confirmed to Windows Central, a $4,300 touchscreen PC that the company updated with new components twice in the space of eight years. Windows Central reports that there are currently no plans for a follow-up to the Surface Studio and that a Surface Studio 3 may have been among the casualties of cutbacks to Microsoft's Surface lineup.

Like the Surface Laptop Studio, the desktop's claim to fame was a unique hinge design for its screen, which could reposition it to make it easier to draw on with the Surface Pen. But the desktop's high cost and its perennially outdated internal components made it a less appealing machine than it could have been.

The first version of the Surface Studio desktop debuted in late 2016. As the company's first desktop PC, it used the same basic design as the current version and was praised for its high-quality screen and unique hinge. But the first Surface Studio of the machine had some of the same issues that the desktop would always have: a high starting price and relatively outdated and underpowered components compared to other desktop systems.

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Lizards are ancient creatures. They were around before the dinosaurs and persisted long after dinosaurs went extinct. We’ve now found they are 35 million years older than we thought they were.

Cryptovaranoides microlanius was a tiny lizard that skittered around what is now southern England during the late Triassic, around 205 million years ago. It likely snapped up insects in its razor teeth (its name means “hidden lizard, small butcher”). But it wasn’t always considered a lizard. Previously, a group of researchers who studied the first fossil of the creature, or holotype, concluded that it was an archosaur, part of a group that includes the extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs along with extant crocodilians and birds.

Now, another research team from the University of Bristol has analyzed that fossil and determined that Cryptovaranoides is not an archosaur but a lepidosaur, part of a larger order of reptiles that includes squamates, the reptile group that encompasses modern snakes and lizards. It is now also the oldest known squamate.

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Car people, like most flavors of enthusiasts, are often given over to ideological purity tests. Car X is better than car Y because it's naturally aspirated, not turbocharged. Hybrid Q is a pure series hybrid and is thus better than hybrid R, which sometimes operates as a parallel hybrid when that's more efficient. That kind of thing. And we definitely see that attitude when it comes to electric cars, with some people saying that a dedicated BEV will always be better than an electric version of a powertrain-agnostic platform. It's just that these kinds of purity tests rarely stand up when the actual rubber meets the road. That's true with today's car, the 2025 BMW i5 M60 xDrive.

When it was time for BMW to develop its fifth-generation EVs, it made more sense, as a smaller automaker, to create a vehicle architecture that could be equipped with internal combustion engines, plug-in hybrid powertrains, or a fully electric setup of battery plus electric motors. Purists will tell you this results in a lesser vehicle, but if that's true, why is the new i5 so much better than similar electric sedans from rivals like Mercedes, which use dedicated EV-only platforms?

In low-light conditions, the i5 M60's grille gets illuminated. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin The i5 actually has a lower drag coefficient than the smaller i4. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin The rear is rather reminiscent of the current Honda Accord. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

Today's tester is the range-topping i5 M60 version, which boasts a hefty 593 hp (442 kW) and 586 lb-ft (795 Nm) from a pair of electrically excited synchronous motors fed by its 84.3 kWh (useable) lithium-ion battery pack. There's now a PHEV M5 that exceeds this battery EV in both performance and MSRP, but with a 0–60 time of 3.7 seconds and a starting price of $84,100–$95,395 as configured, the i5 M60 is still pretty superlative.

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You may want to be extra careful if you're booking holiday travel for family and friends this year through Booking.com. A stunned user recently discovered that a typo in an email address could inadvertently share private trip info with strangers, who can then access sensitive information and potentially even take over bookings that Booking.com automatically adds to their accounts.

This issue came to light after a Booking.com user, Alfie, got an email confirming that he had booked a trip he did not.

At first, Alfie assumed it was a phishing attempt, so he avoided clicking any links in the email to prevent any malicious activity and instead went directly to his Booking.com account to verify that the trip info wasn't there. But rather than feeling the sweet relief that his account had not been compromised, he was shocked to find the trip had somehow been booked through his account.

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Sodium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage are moving toward the mainstream. Wider use of these batteries could lead to lower costs, less fire risk, and less need for lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

On November 18, CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, announced its second-generation sodium-ion battery, mass production of which would begin in 2027. The China-based company said the new battery has an energy density of 200 watt-hours per kilogram, which is an increase from 160 watt-hours per kilogram for the previous generation that launched in 2021. Higher energy density in an EV battery translates into more driving range.

On Nov. 21, a consortium of seven US national laboratories announced a new initiative in which they would spend $50 million to foster collaboration to accelerate the development of sodium-ion batteries. The partnership is led by Argonne National Laboratory in the Chicago area.

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Welcome to Edition 7.22 of the Rocket Report! The big news is the Trump administration's announcement that commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman would be put forward as the nominee to serve as the next NASA Administrator. Isaacman has flown to space twice, and demonstrated that he takes spaceflight seriously. More background on Isaacman, and possible changes, can be found here.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Orbex pauses launch site work in Sutherland, Scotland. Small-launch vehicle developer Orbex will halt work on its own launch site in northern Scotland and instead use a rival facility in the Shetland Islands, Space News reports. Orbex announced December 4 that it would "pause" construction of Sutherland Spaceport in Scotland and instead use the SaxaVord Spaceport on the island of Unst in the Shetlands for its Prime launch vehicle. Orbex had been linked to Spaceport Sutherland since the UK Space Agency announced in 2018 it selected the site for a vertical launch complex.

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Two spacecraft developed by the European Space Agency launched on top of an Indian rocket Thursday, kicking off a mission to test novel formation flying technologies and observe a rarely seen slice of the Sun's ethereal corona.

ESA's Proba-3 mission is purely experimental. The satellites are loaded with sophisticated sensors and ranging instruments to allow the two spacecraft to orbit the Earth in lockstep with one another. Proba-3 will attempt to achieve millimeter-scale precision, several orders of magnitude better than the requirements for a spacecraft closing in for docking at the International Space Station.

"In a nutshell, it’s an experiment in space to demonstrate a new concept, a new technology that is technically challenging," said Damien Galano, Proba-3's project manager.

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Two years ago next week, NASA's Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean to wrap up what, at first glance, seemed to be a highly successful unpiloted test flight that made a return to the Moon feel within reach.

The Orion capsule descended under parachutes, right on target near a US Navy recovery ship on December 11, 2022. In 25-and-a-half days, the Orion spacecraft entered the Moon's sphere of influence, flew within about 60 miles (100 kilometers) of the lunar surface, and, for the most part, worked as designed in deep space. On top of that, the rocket's launch vehicle, NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System, also performed near-flawlessly on its first flight, known as Artemis I.

However, once NASA engineers got a closer look at the Orion spacecraft, their optimism faded. They saw cracks in the craft's heat shield and divots in the ablative thermal protection layer resembling potholes on a neglected street. This isn't what engineers expected, and they spent the next two years investigating the cause of the problem and determining whether it posed a safety risk for NASA's next Artemis mission, Artemis II. If the results weren't favorable, NASA might have to disassemble the Orion spacecraft, pushing back the flight a year or more beyond the Artemis II mission's already-delayed launch date.

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Historically, games based on popular film or TV franchises have generally been seen as cheap cash-ins, slapping familiar characters and settings on a shovelware clone of a popular genre and counting on the license to sell enough copies to devoted fans. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle clearly has grander ambitions than that, putting a AAA budget behind a unique open-world exploration game built around stealth, melee combat, and puzzle solving.

Building such a game on top of such well-loved source material comes with plenty of challenges. The developers at MachineGames need to pay homage to the source material without resorting to the kind of slavish devotion that amounts to a mere retread of a familiar story. At the same time, any new Indy adventure carries with it the weight not just of the character's many film and TV appearances but also well-remembered games like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Then there are game franchises like Tomb Raider and Uncharted, which have already put their own significant stamps on the Indiana Jones formula of action-packed, devil-may-care treasure-hunting.

No, this is not a scene from a new Uncharted game. Credit: Bethesda / MachineGames

Surprisingly, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle bears all this pressure pretty well. While the stealth-exploration gameplay and simplistic puzzles can feel a bit trite at points, the game's excellent presentation, top-notch world-building, and fun-filled, campy storyline drive one of Indy's most memorable adventures since the original movie trilogy.

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Most drones on the market are rotary-wing quadcopters, which can conveniently land and take off almost anywhere. The problem is they are less energy-efficient than fixed-wing aircraft, which can fly greater distances and stay airborne for longer but need a runway, a dedicated launcher, or at least a good old-fashioned throw to get to the skies.

To get past this limit, a team of Swiss researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne built a fixed-wing flying robot called RAVEN (Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments) with a peculiar bio-inspired landing gear: a pair of robotic bird-like legs. “The RAVEN robot can walk, hop over obstacles, and do a jumping takeoff like real birds,” says Won Dong Shin, an engineer leading the project.

Smart investments

The key challenge in attaching legs to drones was that they significantly increased mass and complexity. State-of-the-art robotic legs were designed for robots walking on the ground and were too bulky and heavy to even think about using on a flying machine. So, Shin’s team started their work by taking a closer look at what the leg mass budget looked like in various species of birds.

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A US judge today rejected a Boeing plea agreement that was opposed by families of crash victims who say the deal would fail to hold Boeing accountable. The judge's ruling said the US "Government has monitored Boeing for three years now," and that, if US officials are correct that Boeing violated a previous agreement, "it is fair to say the Government's attempt to ensure compliance has failed."

In July 2024, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge and pay $243.6 million for violating a 2021 agreement that was spurred by two Boeing 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed a combined 346 people. If a new deal is not reached, Boeing could have to face trial over the charge for conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration's Aircraft Evaluation Group.

In his ruling today, Judge Reed O'Connor in US District Court for the Northern District of Texas objected to the process for selecting an independent monitor to oversee Boeing's ethics and anti-fraud compliance program.

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Broadcom will no longer take VMware's biggest 2,000 customers directly. Instead, it will work with VMware's 500 biggest customers, giving channel partners the opportunity to participate in deals and provide additional value for VMware customers. The reversal is being viewed as an effort from Broadcom to discourage migrations from VMware, but there's skepticism around how much impact it will truly have.

Various customers have lamented the changes that succeeded Broadcom buying VMware about a year ago. Controversial moves have included ending perpetual license sales, bundling VMware products into a smaller number of SKUs, and ending VMware's channel partner program. These changes have led some firms to consider reducing their business with VMware.

This week, for example, UK-headquartered cloud operator Beeks Group said that a 1,000 percent increase in VMware costs led to it moving most of its 20,000-plus virtual machines to OpenNebula. And numerous customers that Ars Technica has spoken with in the last year are seriously researching or planning total or partial VMware migrations.

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2023 was always going to be a hot year, given that warmer El Niño conditions were superimposed on the long-term trend of climate change driven by our greenhouse gas emissions. But it's not clear anybody was expecting the striking string of hot months that allowed the year to easily eclipse any previous year on record. As the warmth has continued at record levels even after the El Niño faded, it's an event that seems to demand an explanation.

On Thursday, a group of German scientists—Helge Goessling, Thomas Rackow, and Thomas Jung—released a paper that attempts to provide one. They present data that suggests the Earth is absorbing more incoming sunlight than it has in the past, largely due to reduced cloud cover.

Balancing the numbers on radiation

Years with strong El Niño conditions tend to break records. But the 2023 El Niño was relatively mild. The effects of the phenomenon are also directly felt in the tropical Pacific, yet ocean temperatures set records in the Atlantic and contributed to a massive retreat in ice near Antarctica. So, there are clearly limits to what can be attributed to El Niño. Other influences that have been considered include the injection of water vapor into the stratosphere by the Hunga Tonga eruption, and a reduction in sulfur emissions due to new rules governing international shipping. 2023 also corresponds to a peak in the most recent solar cycle.

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