Category Archives: Technology

This Was CS50: Crying Poor, Yale To Stop Offering Harvard’s Famed CS50 Course

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Slashdot has been covering Harvard’s legendary introductory programming course “CS50” since it began setting attendance records in 2014.

But now long-time Slashdot reader theodp brings some news about the course’s fate over at Yale. From Yale’s student newspaper:

After a decade of partnership with Harvard, Yale’s CS50 course will no longer be offered starting in fall 2025…. One of Yale’s largest computer science courses, jointly taught with Harvard University, was canceled during a monthly faculty meeting after facing budgetary challenges. [Yale’s endowment is $40+ billion]… Since Yale started offering the course in 2015, CS50 has consistently seen enrollment numbers in the hundreds and was often the department’s largest class…. According to [Yale instructor Ozan] Erat, the original [anonymous] donation that made CS50 possible ended in June 2024, and the cost of employing so many undergraduate learning assistants for the course had become unsustainable.

theodp reminds us that CS50 and its progeny “will continue to live on in all their glory in-person and online at Harvard and edX.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple’s plans for AR glasses may not have been scrapped entirely

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Apple may have set aside its rumored plans for Mac-tethered augmented reality glasses, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s done with AR glasses altogether. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman — who reported last month that Apple was working on, but ultimately shelved, an AR glasses project — sources have told him that “Apple’s long-term goal of standalone AR glasses remains intact.” Rather than creating a “stopgap product” in the meantime that would need to be connected to a Mac, though, Gurman reports that the team is taking a slower, more cautious approach.

It’ll instead “keep working on underlying technology — like screens and silicon” to make a standalone device work, he writes. As described in earlier reports, the AR glasses Apple is rumored to be developing wouldn’t be another headset-style device like the Vision Pro, but would likely take a form more like the Xreal One, which look like regular glasses.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/apples-plans-for-ar-glasses-may-not-have-been-scrapped-entirely-200127426.html?src=rss

America’s IT Unemployment Rises To 5.7%. Is AI Hitting Tech Jobs?

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The unemployment rate in America’s information technology sector “rose from 3.9% in December to 5.7% in January,” reports the Wall Street Journal. (Alternate URL here.) Meanwhile last month’s overall jobless rate was just 4%, they point out, calling it “the latest sign of how automation and the increasing use of artificial intelligence are having a negative impact on the tech labor market.”

Companies began implementing their annual spending cuts in January, and there were layoffs at large tech companies like Meta. But whatever the reason, “The number of unemployed IT workers rose from 98,000 in December to 152,000 last month, according to a report from consulting firm Janco Associates based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor,” while the Labor Department said the overall economy added 143,000 jobs.

One management consulting firm offers this explanation:

Job losses in tech can be attributed in part to the influence of AI, according to Victor Janulaitis, chief executive of Janco Associates. The emergence of generative AI has produced massive amounts of spending by tech giants on AI infrastructure, but not necessarily new jobs in IT. “Jobs are being eliminated within the IT function which are routine and mundane, such as reporting, clerical administration,” Janulaitis said. “As they start looking at AI, they’re also looking at reducing the number of programmers, systems designers, hoping that AI is going to be able to provide them some value and have a good rate of return.”

Increased corporate investment in AI has shown early signs of leading to future cuts in hiring, a concept some tech leaders are starting to call “cost avoidance.” Rather than hiring new workers for tasks that can be more easily automated, some businesses are letting AI take on that work — and reaping potential savings. The latest IT jobs numbers come as unemployment among white-collar workers remains at its highest levels since 2020, according to Cory Stahle, an economist at hiring website Indeed. “What we’ve really seen, especially in the last year or so, is a bifurcation in opportunities, where white-collar knowledge worker type jobs have had far less employer demand than jobs that are more in-person, skilled labor jobs,” Stahle said.
Stahle notes that job postings at Indeed.com for software developers declined 8.5% in January from a year earlier…

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Retrocomputing Enthusiast Explores 28-Year-Old Powerbook G3: ‘Apple’s Hope For Redemption’

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Long-time Slashdot reader Shayde once restored a 1986 DEC PDP-11 minicomputer, and even ran Turbo Pascal on a 40-year-old Apple II clone.

Now he’s exploring a 27-year-old Macintosh PowerBook G3 — with 64 megabytes memory and 4 gigabytes of disk space. “The year is 1997, and Apple is in big trouble.” (Apple’s market share had dropped from 16% in 1980 to somewhere below 4%…)

Turns out this was one of the first machines able to run OS X, and was built during the transition period for Apple after Steve Jobs came back in to rescue the company from bankruptcy.

It’s clearly old technology. There’s even a SCSI connector, PCMCIA sockets, a modem port for your phone/landline cable, and a CD-ROM drive. There’s also Apple’s proprietary ports for LocalTalk and an Apple Desktop Bus port (“used for keyboards, mice, and stuff like that”). And its lithium-ion batteries “were meant to be replaced and moved around, so you could carry spare batteries with you.”

So what’s it like using a 27-year-old laptop? “The first thing I had to note was this thing weighs a ton! This thing could be used as a projectile weapon! I can’t imagine hauling these things around doing business…” And it’s a good thing it had vents, because “This thing runs hot!” (The moment he plugs it in he can hear its ancient fan running…) It seems to take more than two minutes to boot up. (“The drive is rattling away…”) But soon he’s looking at a glorious desktop from 1998 desktop. (“Applications installed… Oh look! Adobe Acrobat Reader! I betcha that’s going to need an update…”)

After plugging in a network cable, a pop-up prompts him to “Set up your .Mac membership.” (“I have so little interest in doing this.”) He does find an old version of Safari, but it refuses to launch– though “While puttering around in the application folder, I did notice that we had Internet Explorer installed. But that pretty much went as well as expected.” In the end it seems like he ends up “on the network, but we have no browser.” Although at least he does find a Terminal program — and successfully pings Google.

The thing that would drive me crazy is when opening the laptop, Apple’s logo is upside-down!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trump drops his appeal in legal battle over 2021 Twitter ban

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Trump and the company formerly known as Twitter appear to have ended their legal fight over the suspension of the president’s account back in 2021. In a filing spotted by Bloomberg, lawyers for both parties asked the court to dismiss the case. Trump sued Twitter arguing that his First Amendment rights were violated after he was banned from the social media platform “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” in the wake of the January 6 riot at the Capitol. A judge dismissed his lawsuit the following year, but Trump later appealed the decision.

Of course, Twitter has since been taken over by Elon Musk and renamed X, and Musk has become a key Trump ally in the president’s second term. There are no further details in the motion about the decision to dismiss. It comes shortly after Meta settled a lawsuit with Trump over the same issue, agreeing to pay $25 million after suspending his Facebook account in 2021.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trump-drops-his-appeal-in-legal-battle-over-2021-twitter-ban-175109968.html?src=rss

What Do Linux Kernel Developers Think of Rust?

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Keynotes at this year’s FOSDEM included free AI models and systemd, reports Heise.de — and also a progress report from Miguel Ojeda, supervisor of the Rust integration in the Linux kernel.

Only eight people remain in the core team around Rust for Linux… Miguel Ojeda therefore launched a survey among kernel developers, including those outside the Rust community, and presented some of the more important voices in his FOSDEM talk. The overall mood towards Rust remains favorable, especially as Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman are convinced of the necessity of Rust integration. This is less about rapid progress and more about finding new talent for kernel development in the future.
The reaction was mostly positive, judging by Ojeda’s slides:

– “2025 will be the year of Rust GPU drivers…” — Daniel Almedia

– “I think the introduction of Rust in the kernel is one of the most exciting development experiments we’ve seen in a long time.” — Andrea Righi

– “[T]he project faces unique challenges. Rust’s biggest weakness, as a language, is that relatively few people speak it. Indeed, Rust is not a language for beginners, and systems-level development complicates things even more. That said, the Linux kernel project has historically attracted developers who love challenging software — if there’s an open source group willing to put the extra effort for a better OS, it’s the kernel devs.” — Carlos Bilbao

– “I played a little with [Rust] in user space, and I just absolutely hate the cargo concept… I hate having to pull down other code that I do not trust. At least with shared libraries, I can trust a third party to have done the build and all that… [While Rust should continue to grow in the kernel], if a subset of C becomes as safe as Rust, it may make Rust obsolete…” Steven Rostedt

Rostedt wasn’t sure if Rust would attract more kernel contributors, but did venture this opinion. “I feel Rust is more of a language that younger developers want to learn, and C is their dad’s language.”

But still “contention exists within the kernel development community between those pro-Rust and -C camps,” argues The New Stack, citing the latest remarks from kernel maintainer Christoph Hellwig (who had earlier likened the mixing of Rust and C to cancer). Three days later Hellwig reiterated his position again on the Linux kernel mailing list:

“Every additional bit that another language creeps in drastically reduces the maintainability of the kernel as an integrated project. The only reason Linux managed to survive so long is by not having internal boundaries, and adding another language completely breaks this. You might not like my answer, but I will do everything I can do to stop this. This is NOT because I hate Rust. While not my favourite language it’s definitively one of the best new ones and I encourage people to use it for new projects where it fits. I do not want it anywhere near a huge C code base that I need to maintain.”

But the article also notes that Google “has been a staunch supporter of adding Rust to the kernel for Linux running in its Android phones.”
The use of Rust in the kernel is seen as a way to avoid memory vulnerabilities associated with C and C++ code and to add more stability to the Android OS. “Google’s wanting to replace C code with Rust represents a small piece of the kernel but it would have a huge impact since we are talking about billions of phones,” Ojeda told me after his talk.

In addition to Google, Rust adoption and enthusiasm for it is increasing as Rust gets more architectural support and as “maintainers become more comfortable with it,” Ojeda told me. “Maintainers have already told me that if they could, then they would start writing Rust now,” Ojeda said. “If they could drop C, they would do it….”

Amid the controversy, there has been a steady stream of vocal support for Ojeda. Much of his discussion also covered statements given by advocates for Rust in the kernel, ranging from lead developers of the kernel and including Linux creator Linus Torvalds himself to technology leads from Red Hat, Samsung, Google, Microsoft and others.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Skydiver Hooks Plane in Mid-Air, Gets Towed Up For Another Skydive

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“Can you skydive continuously without landing…?” asks Red Bull. Imagine jumping out of a helicopter, “only to latch onto a speeding plane in mid-air and soar back up into the sky.”

Harnessing the plane’s momentum, [skydiver Max Manow] soared out of the canyon, embarking on what he calls his “endless skydive”, a manoeuvre that potentially could be done continuously without him ever needing to land…

After exiting a helicopter, he manoeuvred his wingsuit to close the gap with a nosediving Cessna 182, piloted by Luke Aikins. Precision was key: Manow attached himself to a hook on the aircraft as the plane descended, allowing him to ascend back to a safe altitude of 2,500 feet before releasing into another freefall… Manow spent five months training, including sessions in a Stockholm wind tunnel, to master the techniques needed for mid-air connection. Meanwhile, Aikins modified his aircraft to ensure the feat was safe and repeatable.
Skydiver Max Manow’s goal was to develop a manoeuvre that could potentially be repeated an infinite number of times without ever having to land. Manow’s mid-air manoeuvre opens the door to a new vision of skydiving, where athletes could remain airborne without ever needing to land. Reflecting on the experience, Manow said: “Who knows where this will take the future of the sport?”

“If that wasn’t enough adrenaline for you,” writes New Atlas, “a previous bonkers wingsuit stunt from 2017 is equally jaw dropping, in which a pair of skydivers BASE-jumped off a mountain summit, and entered a passing airplane.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Did Google Fake Gemini AI’s Output For Its Super Bowl Ad?

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Google’s Super Bowl ad about a Gouda cheese seller appears to be using fake AI output, writes the Verge:

The text portrayed as generated by AI has been available on the business’s website since at least August 2020, as shown on this archived webpage. Google didn’t launch Gemini until 2023, meaning Gemini couldn’t have generated the website description as depicted in the ad.

The site Futurism calls the situation “beyond bizarre,” asking why Google doesn’t seem to trust its own technology.
Either Google faked the ad entirely, or prompted its AI to generate the web page’s existing copy word-for-word, or the AI was prompted to come up with original copy and instead copied the old version. In the publishing industry, that’s referred to as “plagiarism.”

And ironically if Gemini did plagiarize that text, the text that it plagiarized is also inaccurate.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The best streaming deals: Save on Disney+, Peacock, DirecTV and more

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If you’ve been shocked by how much you spend on streaming services lately, you’re not alone. Companies like Netflix, Disney, Max and others have been consistently raising prices to the point where you may question if streaming is even worth it anymore. We at Engadget still think it is, but we also think you should be smart with your money — and that’s where streaming deals come in.

Yes, it is possible to get discounts on services like Peacock and Paramount+, even if those deals aren’t as common as a sale on AirPods. If you’re looking to save money and still stream all of the content you want, Engadget can help by laying out the best streaming deals you can get right now, how you can save with bundles and everything you should know before paying for yet another streaming service.

True streaming deals can be hard to come by. Most often, they’ll pop up during the Black Friday shopping period. On occasion, we’ll see them sparingly throughout the year and they usually take the form of a discounted monthly or annual rate for a limited period of time. Also, true streaming deals are typically on the ad-supported versions of a service, but once in a while you’ll find a unicorn of a deal on a tier that has ad-free viewing.

If you’re able to wait for a deal before subscribing to a streaming service, we recommend doing so. You’ll save money upfront and in the long run, and you also have the option to cancel your subscription before the price goes back up to the normal rate. Maybe you find you like the service so much that you’re fine paying full price for it — that’s the ideal situation. But if you’re not compelled to keep that app on rotation in your smart TV, most streaming services make it easy for you to cancel at any time. With that said, these are the best streaming deals you can snag right now.

DirecTV MySports beta for $50/month for three months ($20/month off): DirecTV’s recently announced MySports beta package is $50 per month for the first three months if you sign up before the end of February. That means you’ll save a total of $60 for that timeframe. In addition to sports channels like FS1, ESPN and NFL Network, the package includes more than 25 live and local TV channels and unlimited DVR recordings.

Fubo Essential for $60/month for the first month ($25 off): Fubo has introductory discounts on most of its packages, but Essential may be the best for most people. It offers access to 215 channels, unlimited cloud DVR and up to 10 simultaneous streams. Note that regional sports content is not included here; you’ll have to go up to Pro or Elite plans for that.

Sling Orange for $23/month for the first month (50 percent off): New customers can get Sling Orange or Sling Blue for half off the usual price for the first month, bringing the final prices to $23/month and $25.50/month, respectively. Orange is likely best for sports fans, with eight exclusive sports and family channels, while Blue includes 19 exclusive news and entertainment channels. You can get both Orange and Blue access also for half off for one month, or $33 total.

YouTube TV for $70/month for the first six months ($78 off): New subscribers can save a total of $78 when they sign up for YouTube TV’s base plan, which includes access to over 100 channels, unlimited DVR space and six household accounts with the ability to stream on three devices at once.

Spotify student discount – Premium + Hulu with ads for $6/month (72 percent off): Spotify’s student offer continues to be one of the best around, giving you access to the Premium tier of the music streamer and Hulu’s ad-supported plan for only $6 monthly. Purchased separately, you’d pay $22 per month for both of the services. Plus, the first month is free when you sign up.

Hulu student discount – subscribe for $2/month (75 percent off): Those with a valid student ID can get Hulu’s ad-supported tier for 75 percent off the typical rate. They’ll keep the same sale price for as long as they’re a student as well.

Max student discount – subscribe for $5/month (50 percent off): Max offers their ad-supported tier to students for half off the usual rate. You’ll just have to verify that you’re a student through Unidays, and make note that this offer is only good for up to 12 months of service.

There’s more consolidation happening now than ever before in the streaming space, and that means there are more streaming bundle options. These bundles offer you access to more content with one subscription price, but those prices are typically higher than paying for a single service by itself (obviously). It may be tempting to just get the bundle, but if only one of those services in the bundle speaks to you, you’ll spend less overall by just paying for the single service.

Speaking of a deep love for a single streaming service: if all of your favorite shows are on Peacock or the latest releases on Max consistently bring you joy, consider paying for one year upfront. Subscribing with an annual plan usually saves you money in the long term over paying on a monthly basis. Unfortunately, not all streaming services (looking at you, Netflix) have an annual subscription option. Here are some of the best streaming bundles you can get right now.

Disney+ and Hulu Duo Premium for $20/month: This bundle removes the ads from both Disney+ and Hulu (with the exception of select live and linear content) and allows you to download content for offline viewing. You’ll save 43 percent with this bundle, as opposed to paying for both ad-free tiers individually.

Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Trio Basic for $17/month: You get full access to Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ content with this package, albeit with ads across the board. This bundle price is 47 percent off the total price of all three separate subscriptions.

Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Trio Premium for $27/month: Similarly to the Duo bundles, the Premium version of the Trio removes ads from most content in Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, and you can download content for offline viewing. This price represents a 43-percent savings when compared to paying for all three ad-free tiers separately.

Disney+, Hulu, Max bundle with ads for $17/month: Max may not technically be under the Disney mega-umbrella, but you get full, ad-supported access to its content here along with Disney+ and Hulu. You’ll save 43 percent with this bundle, as opposed to paying for all three services individually.

Disney+, Hulu, Max bundle no ads for $30/month: The major difference between this bundle and the previous is the lack of ads across most content in all three services. Download support for offline watching is included, too. Compared to the $52/month you’d pay for these tiers separately, you’ll save 42 percent with this combination.

Hulu + Live TV with Disney+ and ESPN+ for $96/month: This streaming bundle amalgamation is a bit confusing but it does offer a lot: you get live TV streaming via Hulu’s service plus access to the following VOD services: Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+. Out of those three, only ESPN+ will have ads.

Paramount+ with Showtime for $13/month or $120/year: This includes everything in Paramount+’s Essential plan, except the ads, and also provides access to Showtime content, live CBS streams and download features.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/best-streaming-service-deals-133028980.html?src=rss

C++ on Steroids: Bjarne Stroustrup Presents Guideline-Enforcing ‘Profiles’ For Resource and Type Safety

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“It is now 45+ years since C++ was first conceived,” writes 74-year-old C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup in an article this week for Communications of the ACM. But he complains that many developers “use C++ as if it was still the previous millennium,” in an article titled 21st Century C++ that promises “the key concepts on which performant, type safe, and flexible C++ software can be built: resource management, life-time management, error-handling, modularity, and generic programming…

“At the end, I present ways to ensure that code is contemporary, rather than relying on outdated, unsafe, and hard-to-maintain techniques: guidelines and profiles.”

To help developers focus on effective use of contemporary C++ and avoid outdated “dark corners” of the language, sets of guidelines have been developed. Here I focus on the C++ Core guidelines that I consider the most ambitious… My principal aim is a type-safe and resource-safe use of ISO standard C++. That is:

– Every object is exclusively used according to its definition
– No resource is leaked
This encompasses what people refer to as memory safety and much more. It is not a new goal for C++. Obviously, it cannot be achieved for every use of C++, but by now we have years of experience showing that it can be done for modern code, though so far enforcement has been incomplete… When thinking about C++, it is important to remember that C++ is not just a language but part of an ecosystem consisting of implementations, libraries, tools, teaching, and more.
WG21 (and others) are working on “profiles” to enforce guidelines (though they’re “not yet available, except for experimental and partial versions”). But Stroustrup writes that the C++ Core Guidelines “use a strategy known as subset-of-superset.”

First: extend the language with a few library abstractions: use parts of the standard library and add a tiny library to make use of the guidelines convenient and efficient (the Guidelines Support Library, GSL).
Next: subset: ban the use of low-level, inefficient, and error-prone features.
What we get is “C++ on steroids”: Something simple, safe, flexible, and fast; rather than an impoverished subset or something relying on massive run-time checking. Nor do we create a language with novel and/or incompatible features. The result is 100% ISO standard C++. Messy, dangerous, low-level features can still be enabled and used when needed.
Stroustrup writes that the C++ Core Guidelines focus on rules “we hope that everyone eventually could benefit from.”

No uninitialized variables
No range or nullptr violations
No resource leaks
No dangling pointers
No type violations
No invalidation

Bjarne Stroustrup answered questions from Slashdot readers in 2014…

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Engadget review recap: Samsung’s Galaxy S25 phones, OnePlus 13 and Oura Ring 4

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We may bit a post-CES news lull some days, but the reviews are coming in hot and heavy as February begins. Samsung has already debuted its latest premium phones and we’ve published a few long-term reviews of devices we’ve been testing for months. In this installment of the reviews roundup, we’ve got phones, a wearable, a robot vacuum and a smart grill. There’s something for everyone this week. 

Samsung has given us the first flagship phones of 2025 and they rely heavily on AI features to lure users. Sam notes that the company has improved those tools, but the Galaxy S25 Ultra feels like an iterative update due to the limited hardware upgrades. “This means a lot of what Samsung focused on in this generation feels more like a bonus rather than a must-have feature,” he writes. “And when you can get around 90 percent of the phone’s capabilities from previous models, the most dangerous thing Samsung is asking buyers to consider is why they need to upgrade at all.”

Like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Samsung leaned heavily into the AI features on the regular S25. However, the company didn’t spend a lot of time updating the design and major components of this model either. As Mat explains, this makes for a boring release for the long-running flagship line. “Unless you’re desperate for a bump in processing power and battery life, it would be wise to see how heavily last year’s models get discounted in the coming months,” he says. 

The Eufy E20 is a first-of-its-kind transforming robot vacuum. While it works best in its core function as a robo vac, you do have the option of cordless stick and handheld vac configurations in the same device. “While Eufy isn’t a stranger to making solid robot vacuums, this device is still a first-gen product in my mind — and a solid one at that,” Valentina notes. “But you have to know what you’re buying upfront: an above-average robot vacuum that can turn into a just-average stick and hand vacuum.”

Smart rings may still be niche, but there’s one company that stands above the rest. With the Ring 4, Oura fixed flaws of the previous model to ensure its crown is safe for the time being. “If there’s a downside, it’s that Oura remains forever constrained by the limitations a smart ring imposes,” Dan explains. “If you want something more comprehensive, then it’s likely a smartwatch is a better option, but for everything else, there’s this.”

While most phone companies are focused on AI features, OnePlus decided to build a compelling, flagship-level handset that isn’t overloaded with bloat. “Throughout the years, OnePlus has used taglines like ‘flagship killer’ and ‘ultra in every way’ as a means of taking shots at its biggest rivals from Samsung, Google and more,” Sam writes. “But for the OnePlus 13, it feels like the company just went and made a really solid premium handset without a bunch of AI fluff.”

Weber’s first pellet grill, the SmokeFire, was a learning experience for the company. Thankfully, the longstanding brand learned from those missteps when it built the Searwood. The company’s second smart pellet grill offers more reliable performance, excelling at low-and-slow smoking. Weber opted for an all-new design for this model, from the cooking area to the new display. There’s also a manual mode that allows for open-lid griddling and searing. And while there are some caveats, the Searwood is a much-improved grill compared to its predecessor. 

According to Bloomberg, Apple will debut a new iPhone SE next week. This will be the first update to that model since 2022, and will reportedly nix the home button. The report also details specifics like a camera notch, USB-C and the use of Apple’s first in-house cellular modem. If the timing holds true, we’ll expect to begin our testing shortly after the news drops. 

In that same report, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman explains that Beats’ PowerBeats Pro 2 earbuds are expected to debut next week as well. The Apple-owned brand first teased an update to its fitness-focused model with a over-the-ear hook design last September. Gurman reports that the new model will have heart rate monitoring, which will be a first for a set of Apple earbuds. If the PowerBeats Pro 2 are indeed announced soon, we’ll expect to have a review ready shortly after. 

I’ve got the Technics EAH-AZ100 earbuds in for testing too. These buds won one of Engadget’s Best of CES awards last month and I’ve been eager to get my hands… er, ears… on them ever since. During a brief hands-on in Las Vegas, the company’s newly designed Magnetic Fluid drivers offered impressive sound, but I’m looking forward to seeing how this set holds up during a full gamut of tests. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-review-recap-samsungs-galaxy-s25-phones-oneplus-13-and-oura-ring-4-180039298.html?src=rss

2025 is going to be another big year for commercial moon missions

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As soon as late February, a lunar lander will depart from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on its way to the moon carrying instruments that could investigate what’s just beneath the surface. Barely two months into the year, it’ll be the third mission to have set out on a journey toward the moon so far in 2025. If 2024 was all about establishing a commercial presence on the moon, 2025 is the year of doubling down. Well, unless Trump decides to deprioritize moon missions and shift the focus to Mars under Elon Musk’s direction, throwing off the whole timeline. But as it stands, it should be a busy year for the moon.

Last year kicked off with the launch of Astrobotics’ Peregrine lander, marking the first of several missions led by companies working under multimillion-dollar contracts as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Peregrine ultimately didn’t make it to its destination after suffering a propellant leak post-launch, but only a few weeks later, Intuitive Machines launched and successfully landed its Odysseus spacecraft on the moon — a first for a private spacecraft. (Odysseus tipped over when it hit the ground, but its payloads were still able to collect and transmit some data).

Now, fast-forward to this year, and NASA has half a dozen CLPS missions on its schedule. The first of these, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, launched on January 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. That same rocket also carried a lunar lander made by the Japanese company ispace, which is making a second attempt for its own commercial exploration endeavor, Hakuto-R.

Firefly’s lander, Blue Ghost, is expected to arrive at the moon first, with a target landing date of March 2 in an area called Mare Crisium. The 6.6-foot-tall solar-powered spacecraft is carrying 10 science payloads for NASA and other partners. That includes a new dust shield system to demonstrate how future missions might prevent particulates from accumulating on spacecraft, instruments for testing sample collection and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based navigation and a radiation tolerant computer. “The objectives of the mission are to investigate heat flow from the lunar interior, plume-surface interactions, [and] crustal electric and magnetic fields,” according to NASA. “It will also take X-ray images of the Earth’s magnetosphere.”

Resilience, the ispace lander, is taking a different, low-energy path to the moon and won’t reach its site, Mare Frigoris, until late May or June. That craft has a micro rover called Tenacious on board that is designed to explore, collect surface material and relay data. In addition to a camera and shovel, Tenacious has a tiny model house mounted on it — specifically the “Moonhouse,” by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg. The lander is carrying water electrolyzer equipment, a deep space radiation probe and a food production experiment module. (And how could we forget, it also contains a commemorative alloy plate from Bandai Namco Research Institute made in the style of the Gundam franchise’s “Charter of the Universal Century”).

The tiny model red house, Moonhouse, is shwn mounted on ispace's lander
ispace

Intuitive Machines, the company that pulled off the first-ever commercial moon landing with its Odysseus craft last year, is slated to launch its second CLPS mission in the next month or so, around the end of February. The IM-2 Nova-C lander dubbed Athena is headed to the lunar south pole with a meter-long drill and a mass spectrometer for NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1). Its goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of drilling for samples and analyzing those samples on-site for things like water. IM-2 will also serve as a rideshare for NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, a small orbiter that will “study the form, abundance and distribution of lunar water and its relation to geology.”

Besides the PRIME-1 instruments, Athena will transport a laser retroreflector array, an Intuitive Machines Micro-Nova Hopper — described as “a propulsive drone that deploys off of a Nova-C lander and hops across the lunar surface” — and a Lunar Surface Communication System “network in a box” made by Nokia. The two companies plan to set up the moon’s first cellular network, which is “engineered to handle surface connectivity between the lander and vehicles, carrying high-definition video streaming, command-and-control communications and telemetry data.”

Intuitive Machine's lunar lander
Intuitive Machines

There’s a chance Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander will take its first trip to the moon as soon as this spring or summer. John Couluris, a senior VP at Blue Origin, said in an interview with 60 Minutes last March that “we’re expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today.” At the time, the company hadn’t yet launched its New Glenn rocket — which would be the vehicle for this mission — even once, so that claim didn’t hold much weight. But after many, many delays, New Glenn finally took its maiden flight in mid-January.

NASA revealed, in an FCC filing spotted by SpaceNews back in August, that it had selected Blue Origin’s lander to bring a camera system, the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS), to the moon’s south pole this year under the CLPS program. In the filing, NASA notes that this needs to be done before 2025 is over, as the data collected by the instrument at landing will help inform plans for the first crewed Artemis moon landing. SCALPSS payloads have flown on other CLPS missions, but the thrust level of Blue Origin’s Mark 1 lander is closer to the scale of the Human Landing System NASA will use for astronauts.

Blue Origin said in another FCC filing the same month that its demonstration lunar mission, Pathfinder, could launch as early as March 2025, SpaceNews reported. Don’t be surprised if it actually happens much later.

The next CLPS mission after that isn’t expected to take off until the fall, when Astrobotic will get another shot at landing on the moon. This time, it’ll be sending its larger Griffin lander to a region near the south pole. Griffin Mission 1 was initially supposed to carry NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), but the space agency canceled development of that project late last year due to delays and rising costs. Astrobotic’s lander won’t show up to the moon empty-handed, though. It’ll have a tiny solar-powered CubeRover in tow, as well as a laser retroreflector array to pinpoint the lander’s location.

An artist's rendering of Astrobotic’s Griffin lander and Astrolab rover on the moon
Astrobotic

We may see a third Intuitive Machines mission before the end of this year. The company and NASA are eyeing late 2025 or early 2026 for the launch of IM-3, which will deliver a suite of instruments focused on studying the magnetic and plasma properties of the Reiner Gamma lunar swirl, an area with its own “mini-magnetosphere.” A rover called the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) will also be on board, plus a trio of small rovers from the Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) project that will demonstrate mostly autonomous robots working together. The European Space Agency’s MoonLIGHT laser retroreflector will fly with IM-3 too, along with and the Lunar Space Environment Monitor, from South Korea’s Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).

While this year is certain to bring a lot of activity on and around the moon, there’s one thing we won’t see there just yet — humans. NASA has adjusted the timeline of the Artemis missions a few times since the program’s announcement, and most recently said in December that it’s pushing the first crewed flight, Artemis II, to April 2026. The agency previously said it was shooting for September 2025. Artemis III, the mission in which two astronauts will go to the lunar surface, now isn’t expected to launch until mid-2027.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/2025-is-going-to-be-another-big-year-for-commercial-moon-missions-160038622.html?src=rss

TikTok advises Android users in the US to sideload the app

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If you need to download and install TikTok in the US, you can do so on Android even though the app isn’t back on the Play Store yet. In a tweet, the TikTok Policy account has announced that the service has made Android Package Kits available for download through its official web site. Companies don’t typically endorse sideloading, but Tiktok is, of course, a special case. 

The app briefly went offline on January 19 before a law banning it in the US — unless its parent company ByteDance sells it to an owner based in the country — took effect. Under that law, the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store are required to remove its listing if they don’t want to get slapped with a fine amounting to $5,000 for every user in the US who downloads the app. It didn’t take a full day before TikTok restored access to its service, but its app has yet to reappear on Google’s and Apple’s stores in the US.

One of the executive orders President Donald Trump signed when he took office put a 75-day pause on the law that banned the app, giving ByteDance until April to reach a deal. Trump has reportedly put Vice President J.D. Vance in charge of negotiating a potential sale before the deadline. ByteDance repeatedly said in the past that it had no plans to sell the social media app, but one of the company’s biggest investors recently said that a deal is in “everybody’s interest.” Several companies and individuals have already expressed their intention to purchase TikTok in the US, including Perplexity AI and MrBeast.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/tiktok-advises-android-users-in-the-us-to-sideload-the-app-130015055.html?src=rss

Feds putting the kibosh on national EV charging program

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The US Department of Transportation has ordered states to kill their implementation plans related to the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, according to a memo obtained by WIRED that was later made public. The decision appears to halt in its tracks a $5 billion program designed to fund state projects to install electric vehicle charging stations across the United States.

Officials at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), which manages the program, ordered state transportation directors to “decertify” the plans that all 50 states have used to outline where and how they will build their charging stations, and with what companies they’ll contract to do so. States have followed those plans to build more than 30 charging stations across the US, with hundreds more on the way.

Surveys show prospective car buyers cite the country’s lagging electric vehicle charging infrastructure as a major reason they won’t buy electric. The NEVI program, established by 2021’s Infrastructure Law, was the government’s answer to those concerns. It attempts to build chargers along thousands of miles of federal highway, with a focus on places that might not otherwise be able to financially support a charger.

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